‘Voluntary Code of Ethics’ for social media platforms.

Voluntary Code of Ethics (CoE):

The CoE was introduced in 2019 by social media platforms (SMPs) and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to encourage free and ethical electoral processes on social media.

Features of CoE:

• Transparency in paid political ads is a crucial focus, ensuring that the content is openly acknowledged.
• Pre-certification requires political ads to be reviewed and certified by the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee before they''re published on social media.

Origins and Implementation of CoE:

• As social media''s role in politics increased, the Election Commission of India (ECI) created a committee, led by Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha, to examine its impact on elections.
• The committee recommended changes to the Representation of People Act, 1951, addressing social media activity in the critical 48 hours before polling.
• IAMAI and social media platforms developed the Voluntary Code of Ethics for General Election 2019, which was implemented immediately and applies to all following elections.

Commitments Under CoE:

• Rapid Response: Social media platforms must acknowledge and process ECI''s notifications of possible violations within three hours.
• Prohibition Period: The CoE emphasizes compliance with Section 126 of the Representation of People Act, which restricts displaying electoral content during the 48-hour period before polling ends.
• Dedicated Reporting Mechanism: SMPs have a high-priority channel for ECI to quickly report and act on violations.
• Grievance Redressal: Social media platforms have a dedicated grievance redressal channel to handle reported violations promptly.

Nestlé’s baby food sold in Asian, African countries had added sugars: Why is sugar harmful?

• Nestlé''s baby food products contain added sugars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In contrast, their products in Europe typically don''t have added sugars.
• A report by the Swiss organization Public Eye, titled ''How Nestlé gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries'', criticizes Nestlé for varying nutritional standards based on different countries.

Findings from the Report:

• Cerelac, a popular baby cereal, has different sugar content in various countries.
• In Germany and the UK, there are no added sugars.
• However, in India, it contains nearly 3 grams per serving, over 5 grams in Ethiopia, and 6 grams in Thailand.
• Nestlé holds a 20% share of the $70 billion global baby food market.
• However, sugar content isn''t always clearly labelled on the packaging.
• Although added sugars in baby foods are legal in some countries, they conflict with WHO guidelines, which suggest reducing free sugar intake to less than 10% of total energy, ideally under 5%.
• Nestlé India has reduced added sugars by up to 30% in its infant cereals over the last five years, which aligns with WHO recommendations.

What Are Added Sugars?

• Added sugars are sugars introduced during food processing or preparation.
• These can be natural sugars like white sugar, brown sugar, and honey, or chemically manufactured sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup.

Why Are Added Sugars Harmful?

• Nutritional Imbalance: Consuming added sugars leads to higher calorie intake without essential nutrients, which promotes unhealthy diets.
• Health Risks: It increases the risk of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
• Impact on Children: Added sugars in baby food can be addictive, especially for babies and young children. The WHO advises against added sugars for children under two years old.

Ethical and Social Concerns:

• Consumer Trust: Selling high-sugar products can breach consumer trust, especially in developing regions.
• Unfair Practices: There is evidence of quality differentiation between products sold in wealthy versus poorer countries.
• Transparency Issues: Companies often fail to disclose the full health impacts of their products.

Global Trends:

• Growing economies are experiencing increased consumption of products with added sugars due to the expansion of global brands.
• UNICEF-Supported Study in Southeast Asia revealed that nearly half of the children''s foods contained added sugars.

Great Nicobar’s particularly vulnerable tribal group, Shompen, cast their vote for the first time.

Shompen Tribe:

• Shompen Tribe Belongs the indigenous people of the interior of Great Nicobar Island.
• They are designated as a PVTG within the list of Scheduled Tribes.

Characteristics:

• Shompen Tribe are one of the most isolated tribes.
• They are semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers.
• Their main sources of livelihood are hunting, gathering, fishing, and a little bit of horticultural activities in a rudimentary form.
• Population: The estimated population of Shompen Tribe was 229 as per the 2011 Census data.
• Language Known: They speak their own language, which has many dialects. Members of one band do not understand the dialect of the other.
• Social structure: The family is controlled by the eldest male member, who controls all activities of the women and kids.
• Monogamy is the general rule, although polygamy is allowed too.

The Shompen habitat is also an important biological hotspot and there are two National Parks and one Biosphere Reserve namely:

• Campbell Bay National Park
• Galathea National Park and
• Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs):

• About: These groups are among the most vulnerable sections of India as they are few in numbers.
• 75 such groups have been identified and categorised as PVTGs.
• Among the 75 listed PVTG’s the highest number are found in Odisha.

Characteristics:

There are certain tribal communities who have:

• Declining or stagnant population
• Low level of literacy
• Pre-agricultural level of technology
• Economically backward
• In 1973, the Dhebar Commission created Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) as a separate category, which are less developed among the tribal groups.
• In 2006, the Government of India renamed the PTGs as PVTGs.

Fossils of massive prehistoric snake found in lignite mine in Gujarat.

Vasuki Indicus

• The fossils of Vasuki indicus were found in Kutch, Gujarat.
• Vasuki refers to the mythical snake often depicted around the neck of the Hindu god Shiva.
• The fossilized Remains:  A 27 pieces of a “partial, well preserved” vertebral column were found in Gujarat’s Panandhro Lignite Mine in Kutch.
• It lived in the Middle Eocene period (roughly 47 million years ago) in India.
• The organism lived at a time when temperatures were relatively warm, at roughly 28 °C.
• It belonged to the now-extinct Madtsoiidae snake family but represents a unique lineage from India.
• Madtsoiidae are Gondwanan terrestrial snakes that lived between the Upper Cretaceous (100.5 million to 66 million years ago) and the Late Pleistocene (0.126 million years ago to 0.012 million years ago).
• These snakes spread from India through southern Eurasia and into north Africa after the Indian subcontinent collided with Eurasia about 50 million years ago.

Features:

• It reached lengths between 10 and 15 metres long and 1 tonne in weight.
• It likely had a broad and cylindrical body, hinting at a robust and powerful build, and was as big as Titanoboa, a massive snake that once roamed the earth and is reportedly the longest ever known.
• Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction, like anacondas and pythons.

Three new archaeological sites discovered in Telangana.

• The site was discovered by a team comprising K.P. Rao, history professor of the University of Hyderabad, and Ch Praveen Raju, research scholar from Yogi Vemana University, Andhra Pradesh.

Unique Features:

• Dolmenoid Cists Shaped by Cap-Stones: The side slabs are arranged with slabs following the shape of the cap-stone. Hence, each ‘dolmenoid cist’ has a unique shape as dictated by the cap-stone.
• In Europe, such monuments are known as Passage Chambers.
• This site has new types of monuments, which have not come to light so far anywhere in other regions of India.
• Usually in this region, a type of megalithic monument known as ‘Dolmenoid Cists’ is found.
• Most of the monuments in this region have squarish or rectangular shapes.
• Two New Rock Art Sites: The team also discovered two new rock art sites at Damaratogu in Gundala mandal of Bhadradri Kothagudem district.
• One of the sites, known as ‘Devarlabanda Mula’, has only depictions of animals and no humans.
• Since no weapons or domestic animals are shown, it is believed that the paintings may go back to the mesolithic age, anywhere between 8000 – 3000 BCE.

Iron Age:

• Chronology of the Iron Age in Peninsular India: In peninsular India, the Iron Age roughly covers the period from 1000 BC to 100 A.D.
• This is also a period for which textual evidence is available. Hence, scholars differ in their approach by working only with the archaeological evidence or incorporating the available textual evidence.
• Prominence of Megaliths: In peninsular India, the Iron Age primarily encompasses megalithic structures, often linked with habitation sites, within the region.
• Iron Age in North India: It is archaeologically represented by assemblages that mainly contain particular pottery types such as Painted Grey Ware (PGW) and Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW).

Megaliths:

• About: In prehistoric art, a megalith is a large, often undressed stone that has been used in the construction of various types of Neolithic, Chalcolithic or Bronze Age monuments, during the period 4500-1000 BCE.
• Megalithic Monuments: The megalithic monuments of peninsular India, believed to have been erected in the Iron Age (1500 BC – 200 AD).
• Though megalithic sites are found all across India,they are concentrated mostly in peninsular India.

The NASA welcomed Sweden as the 38th country to sign the Artemis Accords.

Artemis Accords:

• The Artemis Accords are a non-binding set of principles established in 2020 by the US State Department and NASA, with Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• This US-led alliance seeks to facilitate international collaboration in planetary exploration and research.
• It relates to activities in orbit, on the surface, and in the subsurface of the moon, Mars, comets, and asteroids.
• It also covers the stable orbital points known as the Lagrangian points for the Earth-moon system).

Artemis Accords Members:

• The Accords have been signed by 39 countries till now.
• On June 21,2023 India became the 27th country to sign the Artemis Accords.
• China and Russia are not part of this initiative.

1. They are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967, which is a multilateral pact under the United Nations serving as the foundation for international space law.
2. The OST emphasizes that space is a shared resource for humanity, prohibits national appropriation, and encourages the peaceful use of space.

The Outer Space Treaty:

• It was adopted by the United Nations in 1967.
• It primarily addresses the
• Peaceful use of outer space and prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons in space.
• Provisions related to space debris and the return of space objects to Earth.
• Damage caused by space objects to other space assets.
• It also applies to damage caused by falling objects on earth.

Rescue and Return Agreement 1968

• Earlier known as ‘Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space’(ARRA).
• It outlines the responsibilities of the states to assist & rescue astronauts in distress and promptly return them to the launching State.
• Also, for the Recovering of space objects.

The Liability Convention, 1972: (Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects)

• Most space-faring countries are signatories to this Convention.
• This convention is one of the several international agreements that complement the Outer Space Treaty, the overarching framework guiding the behavior of countries in space.

Registration Convention,1975 (Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space)

• To provide means and procedures to assist in the identification of objects launched into outer space(space objects) and to make provisions for their registration

Commitments under the Accords:

• Peaceful Purposes: The signatories commit to conduct space activities for peaceful purposes and in accordance with international law.
• Broad Dissemination: There is a commitment to broadly disseminate national space policies and scientific information resulting from activities.
• Common Infrastructure: They recognize the importance of developing interoperable and common exploration infrastructure, such as communication systems and landing structures, to enhance scientific discovery and commercial utilization.
• Registration and Data Sharing: Signatories agree that space objects should be registered and that scientific data is to be openly shared on time. Private sectors are exempt unless they act on behalf of a signatory.
• Preservation of Heritage: There is a commitment to preserve outer space heritage, including historic landing sites and evidence of activity on celestial bodies.
• Utilization of Space Resources: The utilization of space resources must support safe and sustainable activities and must not interfere with the activities of other signatories. Information on location and nature of resources must be shared to prevent interference.
• Mitigation of Debris: Signatories plan for the safe and timely disposal of spacecraft and commit to limiting the generation of harmful debris.