PRELIMS CURRENT

AFFAIRS
12TH OCTOBER 2018
 Overview

✤ Global Hunger Index

✤ How babies are born ?

✤ Directorate of Enforcement

✤ Quick Bites
MENTORSHIP
PROGRAMME
SOCIETY
Global Hunger Index
✤ At least one in 5 children in India under age of 5 are wasted (low weight for
height) — only country with higher numbers is war-torn South Sudan

✤ rates highest for 0 to 5 months age

✤ low maternal body mass index

✤ India’s ranking drops by 3 (103/119) — hunger levels categorised as serious

✤ Indicators

✤ Under-nourishment (reflects insufficient calorie intake)

✤ Wasting (under-nutrition)

✤ Stunting (low height for age) (reflects chronic under-nutrition)

✤ Child Motality
How babies are born ?
✤ Number of babies born globally through C-section almost
doubled between 2000 and 2015

✤ In India, use of C-section has increased from 9% in 2005-6 to

18.5% in 2015-16

✤ Disparities

✤ Inter-state : Nagaland (7%), AP (49%)

✤ Economic status : Wealthiest women 6 times more likely to

get C-section compared to poorest

✤ Facilities : 1.6 times more common in private hospitals

compared to public
✤ Why so ?

✤ trends of fertility are changing — women marrying

late, more career oriented and with delayed
pregnancies preparedness is poor

✤ Fear of pain and lack of motivation to deliver

normally in certain sections of upper-middle and
high income group

✤ In rural and semi-urban areas, non-availability of

doctors, anaesthetists and paediatricians and
infrastructure is lacking
Kanyashree Prakalpa
✤ A conditional cash transfer scheme by West Bengal
gov, aimed at improving the status and well being of
the girl child in West Bengal by incentivizing schooling
of all teenage girls and delaying their marriages until
the age of 18, the legal age of marriage.

✤ 2 components

✤ Annual scholarship

✤ One time Grant

✤ Awarded UN Public Service Award in June 2017

Polity and International
Relations
Directorate of Enforcement
✤ Law enforcement agency and economic intelligence agency, part of
Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance

✤ Enforces Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999 and Prevention of

Money Laundering Act 2002

✤ Attachment of Property

✤ Section 5 of PMLA : Director of ED or any other officer authorised

by him can issue orders for attachment of a property that is
suspected to have been acquired with the proceeds of crime

✤ The order is valid for 180 days, and has to be verified within this
period by ED-appointed Adjudicating Authority, otherwise
property is released
TECHNOLOGY
Black Hole
✤ Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

✤ predicted about black holes — they can be completely

defined by 3 features : mass, charge and spin

✤ Stephan Hawings : Black holes also have temperature

and because hot objects lose heat into space, the ultimate
fate of a black hole is to evaporate out of existence

✤ Contention : Rules of the quantum world demand that

information is never lost. So what happens to all the
information contained in an object when it enters into a
black hole
✤ In the latest paper

✤ If an object enters black hole, its temperature

changes and so will its entropy (measure of object’s
internal disorder, which rises as object gets hotter)

✤ Entropy can be recorded by photons that surround

the black hole at the point at which light cannot
escape the intense gravitation pull. These photons
are called ‘soft hair’
QUICK BITES
Fast Radio Burst

✤ High-energy astrophysical phenomenon of unknown

origin manifested as transient radio pulse lasting a
few milliseconds on average

✤ Their source is the topic of much discussion and

debate. For example, some researchers have suggested
that FRBs could be generated by advanced alien
civilizations, though most astronomers favor natural
explanations, such as fast-spinning neutron stars.
Egyptian Blue

✤ Derived from Calcium Copper Silicate, is a colour

developed by Egyptians thousands of years ago

✤ Can boost energy efficiency by cooling roof-tops and

walls and can also enable solar generation of
electricity

✤ Studies show that when it absorbs visible light, it then

emits light in near infrared range