Junior Digest

Panaji (Goa) , June 16,2023 : Audit institutions of countries have a crucial role to play in the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) for good governance, transparency and accountability, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India Girish Chandra Murmu said on Thursday.
CAG Murmu also inaugurated the Supreme Audit Institutions-20 (SAI20) engagement group meeting in Goa as part of India’s G20 presidency.
Speaking to ANI, CAG Murmu said, “Today, digital platform and digital infrastructure is used globally. So the IT application is already being used by the supreme audit institutions. Governments are adopting the technology. We will see how to carry out audits on digital platforms and how to make capacity building in our organisations. That is the concern for all the participations of SAI and we have been working on this technology.”
He further said that during the SAI20 meeting, the experts provided various new dimensions on the subject.
“We celebrated comprehensively on experience sharing. The experts did give us various aspects on this subject with a new dimension. In due course of time, the Supreme audit institutions will collaborate, share their knowledge and will come out with some standard guide,” he said.
The CAG said that they are planning to introduce computer education courses in recruitment to cope with technological development.
“Our officers are very competent. Mostly, they are from the engineering background and we are exposing them to various training, and capacity building. We are also planning to introduce some kind of priority Computer Education in the cutting as recruitment because in future more and more technology will be used. So, our auditor cutting edge is should be aware of this technology so that they can appreciate all the new development appropriately,” he added.

Greece,June14,2023: At least 59 people have died and more than 100 were rescued after a fishing boat carrying refugees and migrants capsized and sank off the southern coast of Greece.

The Greek coastguard said on Wednesday the vessel sank in international waters southwest of Pylos, off the Peloponnese coast.

The accident prompted an extensive rescue operation complicated by strong winds, the coastguard said in a statement, adding that about 100 people had been rescued.

Four of the survivors were hospitalised in the city of Kalamata with symptoms of hypothermia. None of those rescued had safety equipment such as life jackets, the coastguard said.

Six coastguard vessels, a navy frigate, a military transport and an air force helicopter, as well as several private vessels, were taking part in the search for those missing.

The Italy-bound boat is believed to have sailed from the Tobruk area in eastern Libya.

Greek authorities did not immediately confirm its port of departure but the shipping ministry official said most of those on board were from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan.
On Sunday, 90 migrants and refugees on a United States-flagged yacht were rescued in the area after they made a distress call.

Separately on Wednesday, a yacht with more than 70 people on board was towed to a port on the south coast of the island of Crete after authorities received a distress call.

Rescue operations are common, but last month the Greek government came under international pressure over video footage reportedly showing the forceful expulsion of migrants and refugees who were set adrift at sea.

Last year, nearly 3,800 people died on migration routes within and from the Middle East and North Africa, the highest number recorded there since 2017, according to data published on Tuesday by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The IOM’s Missing Migrants Project recorded 3,789 deaths in 2022 along sea and land routes in the region, including crossings of the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea.

KHERSON, Ukraine, June 7,2023: A torrent of water burst through a massive dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, flooding a swathe of the war zone, forcing villagers to flee and prompting finger-pointing from both sides.

Ukraine said Russia had committed a deliberate war crime in blowing up the Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam, which powered a hydroelectric station. The Kremlin blamed Ukraine, saying it was trying to distract from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering.

Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had collapsed on its own, while Washington said it was uncertain who was responsible. But Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood told reporters it would not make sense for Ukraine to destroy the dam.

Neither side offered immediate public evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions ban targeting dams in war because of the danger to civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address that his prosecutors had already approached the International Criminal Court about the dam incident. Earlier, he claimed on Telegram that Russian forces blew up the power plant from inside.

Buses, trains and private vehicles were marshalled to carry people to safety while some people waded in knee-deep water, carrying pets and luggage.

“Residents are sitting on the roofs of their homes waiting to be rescued…. This is a Russian crime against people, nature and life itself,” Oleksiy Kuleba, a senior official on Zelenskiy’s staff, said on Telegram.

Ukrainian officials reported well over 1,000 people rescued from Kherson city along with residents evacuated from flooded towns and villages.

A Russian-installed official said some 22,000 people in the Kherson region were at risk, RIA news agency said. Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram that 80 settlements were in the flood zone.

“More and more water is coming every hour. It’s very dirty,” Yevheniya, a woman in Nova Kakhovka on the Russian-controlled bank of the Dnipro, said by telephone.

It was not immediately clear if anyone died but U.S. spokesman John Kirby said it had probably caused “many deaths”.

“Our local school and stadium downtown were flooded,” Lidia Zubova, 67, told Reuters as she waited for a train out of Ukrainian-controlled Kherson city after abandoning her inundated village of Antonivka. “The road was completely flooded, our bus got stuck.”

Ukrainian police released video of an officer carrying an elderly woman to safety and others rescuing dogs in villages being evacuated as the waters rose. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko accused Russia of shelling areas where people were being evacuated and said two police officers were wounded.

The flooding caused waters to rise by 3.5 meters (11-1/2 feet), Ukrainian official Kuleba said. Flooding would crest on Wednesday then levels would start to fall within three to four days, Ihor Syrota, head of Ukraine’s hydroelectric power authority, told the U.S-funded radio station Donbas Realii.

Residents in Russian-controlled Nova Kakhovka told Reuters that some had decided to stay despite being ordered out.

United Nations, June 16,2023: With staggering levels of violence in Haiti exacerbating hunger and malnutrition, a UN spokesman said on Thursday that almost 3 million children, the highest on record, need humanitarian support.

“Boys and girls in the country face staggering levels of violence that have exacerbated hunger and malnutrition in a country already mired in poverty and a resurgence of cholera,” said Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Dujarric said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported the number of children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition has shot up by 30 percent since last year, and nearly one in four children across the country suffer from chronic malnutrition.

“Being a child in Haiti today is harsher and more dangerous than it ever has been in living memory,” said UNICEF Haiti representative Bruno Maes. “The threats and hardships children face are simply unimaginable. They desperately need protection and support.”

UNICEF said in a release that children find themselves in the crossfire or directly targeted as armed groups terrorize the population in their fight for territory and control, mainly in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and increasingly in the neighboring Artibonite region.

The agency said children are killed or injured on their way to school. Women and girls face extreme sexual violence. Kidnappings for ransom, including of students, teachers, and health workers, have skyrocketed, as have attacks on schools. The violence has displaced tens of thousands.

“Many children and young people in metropolitan Port-au-Prince say they are being forced to join armed groups for protection or because it means food and income for the family,” UNICEF said.

The release said that in addition to the violence, hunger and disease such as cholera, Haiti faces the constant threat of violent storms and earthquakes. Early this month, heavy rains caused destructive and deadly flooding. Days later the deluge was followed by an earthquake centered in Grand Anse, a region still scarred by a 2021 earthquake.

Despite limited funding, the agency said it is scaling up its operations and expanding its presence in the field. However, Haiti’s 246 million U.S. dollar funding requirement is less than 15 percent funded this year.

New Delhi, June 10,2023: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the first-ever National Training Conclave at the International Exhibition and Convention Centre Pragati Maidan, New Delhi on June 11.

The Prime Minister will also address the gathering on the occasion, said the statement issued by the Prime Minister’s office on Saturday.

The Prime Minister has been a proponent of improving the governance process and policy implementation in the country through capacity building of civil service. Guided by this vision, the National Program for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB) – ‘Mission Karmayogi’ was launched to prepare a future-ready civil service with the right attitude, skills and knowledge. This Conclave is yet another step in this direction.

The National Training Conclave is being hosted by Capacity Building Commission with an objective to foster collaboration among civil services training institutes and strengthen the training infrastructure for civil servants across the country.

More than 1500 representatives from training institutes, including Central Training Institutes, State Administrative Training Institutes, Regional and Zonal Training Institutes, and Research institutes will participate in the conclave.

Civil Servants from central government departments, state governments, local governments, as well as experts from the private sector will take part in the deliberations.

This diverse gathering will foster the exchange of ideas, identify the challenges being faced and opportunities available, and generate actionable solutions and comprehensive strategies for capacity building.

The conclave will have eight panel discussions, each focusing on key concerns pertinent to Civil services training institutes such as faculty development, training impact assessment and content digitisation, among others.

June 16,2023: Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.

Scientists say these model embryos, which resemble those in the earliest stages of human development, could provide a crucial window on the impact of genetic disorders and the biological causes of recurrent miscarriage.

However, the work also raises serious ethical and legal issues as the lab-grown entities fall outside current legislation in the UK and most other countries.

The structures do not have a beating heart or the beginnings of a brain, but include cells that would typically go on to form the placenta, yolk sac and the embryo itself.

Prof Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, of the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, described the work in a plenary address on Wednesday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston.

“We can create human embryo-like models by the reprogramming of [embryonic stem] cells,” she told the meeting.

There is no near-term prospect of the synthetic embryos being used clinically. It would be illegal to implant them into a patient’s womb, and it is not yet clear whether these structures have the potential to continue maturing beyond the earliest stages of development.

The motivation for the work is for scientists to understand the “black box” period of development that is so called because scientists are only allowed to cultivate embryos in the lab up to a legal limit of 14 days. They then pick up the course of development much further along by looking at pregnancy scans and embryos donated for research.

Robin Lovell-Badge, the head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “The idea is that if you really model normal human embryonic development using stem cells, you can gain an awful lot of information about how we begin development, what can go wrong, without having to use early embryos for research.”

Previously, Żernicka-Goetz’s team and a rival group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel showed that stem cells from mice could be encouraged to self-assemble into early embryo-like structures with an intestinal tract, the beginnings of a brain and a beating heart. Since then, a race has been under way to translate this work into human models, and several teams have been able to replicate the very earliest stages of development.

The full details of the latest work, from the Cambridge-Caltech lab, are yet to be published in a journal paper. But, speaking at the conference, Żernicka-Goetz described cultivating the embryos to a stage just beyond the equivalent of 14 days of development for a natural embryo.

The model structures, each grown from a single embryonic stem cell, reached the beginning of a developmental milestone known as gastrulation, when the embryo transforms from being a continuous sheet of cells to forming distinct cell lines and setting up the basic axes of the body. At this stage, the embryo does not yet have a beating heart, gut or beginnings of a brain, but the model showed the presence of primordial cells that are the precursor cells of egg and sperm.

“Our human model is the first three-lineage human embryo model that specifies amnion and germ cells, precursor cells of egg and sperm,” Żernicka-Goetz told the Guardian before the talk. “It’s beautiful and created entirely from embryonic stem cells.”

The development highlights how rapidly the science in this field has outpaced the law, and scientists in the UK and elsewhere are already moving to draw up voluntary guidelines to govern work on synthetic embryos. “If the whole intention is that these models are very much like normal embryos, then in a way they should be treated the same,” Lovell-Badge said. “Currently in legislation they’re not. People are worried about this.”

There is also a significant unanswered question on whether these structures, in theory, have the potential to grow into a living creature. The synthetic embryos grown from mouse cells were reported to appear almost identical to natural embryos. But when they were implanted into the wombs of female mice, they did not develop into live animals. In April, researchers in China created synthetic embryos from monkey cells and implanted them into the wombs of adult monkeys, a few of which showed the initial signs of pregnancy but none of which continued to develop beyond a few days. Scientists say it is not clear whether the barrier to more advanced development is merely technical or has a more fundamental biological cause.

“That’s very difficult to answer. It’s going to be hard to tell whether there’s an intrinsic problem with them or whether it’s just technical,” Lovell-Badge said. This unknown potential made the need for stronger legislation pressing, he said.

Mumbai, June 13,2023: Reliance Industries Limited, India’s largest corporate by revenues, profits and market value, continued to top the Indian corporates in the 2023 edition of ‘The Global 2000’ published by Forbes.
Reliance Industries was placed at 45 in the overall ranking of 2000 global corporates ahead of well-known names like Germany’s BMW Group, Switzerland’s Nestle, China’s Alibaba Group, US’s Procter and Gamble, and Japan’s Sony.
Notably, Reliance Industries improved its ranking in the prestigious listing of global corporates from 53 in 2022 to 45 in 2023.
Behind Reliance, the other prominent Indian names in the 2023 rankings are State Bank of India at 77, HDFC Bank at 128 and ICICI Bank at 163.
The JPMorgan Chase of the US topped the ranking table.
‘The Global 2000’ ranks the largest companies in the world using four metrics — sales, profits, assets and market value. Forbes used the latest 12 months of financial data available as of May 5, 2023, to calculate the factors used for this ranking.
Reliance Industries had also ranked as India’s best employer and was in the top 20 worldwide in 2022. These rankings are based on a large-scale survey, where employees rate their employers on numerous points.

Colombia, June 10,2023:Four children have been found alive in the Colombian jungle more than five weeks after the plane they were travelling in crashed in the thick jungle, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said.
Colombia’s military found the four children aged 13, 9 , 4, and 12-month-old, who survived a plane crash on May 1.

The children from an Indigenous community were rescued on Friday by the military near the border between Colombia’s Caqueta and Guaviare provinces, close to where the small plane had crashed.

The plane – a Cessna 206 – was carrying seven people on a route between Araracuara, in Amazonas province, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, when it issued a Mayday alert due to engine failure in the early hours of May 1.

Three adults, including the pilot and the children’s mother, died as a result of the crash and their bodies were found inside the plane.

The four children, aged 13, 9 and 4, as well as a now 12-month-old baby, survived the impact. They arrived in the capital Bogota early on Saturday for medical treatment.

Narcizo Mucutuy, the grandfather of the three girls and one boy, told reporters he was delighted at the news of their rescue.

“As the grandfather to my grandchildren who disappeared in the jungles of the Yari, at this moment I am very happy,” he said.

The children are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the older siblings had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.

Photos shared by Colombia’s military showed a group of soldiers with the four children in the middle of the jungle.

“A joy for the whole country! The four children who were lost … in the Colombian jungle appeared alive,” Petro said in a message via Twitter.

Minsk, June 14,2023: Belarus will get involved in the conflict in Ukraine if aggression is used against Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday.

“We will take a strong stand if aggression is committed against us. We already have enough power to answer,” Lukashenko told the Rossiya 1 TV channel.

United Nations, June 13,2023: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday expressed support for establishing an AI watchdog body akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“It’s my intention to create a high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence to seriously prepare the different kinds of initiatives that we will be able to take.

I would be favorable to the idea that we could have an artificial intelligence, an agency, which I would say is inspired by what the International Agency of Atomic Energy is today,” the top UN official said at a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York.

Guterres stressed the need to address the significant harm caused by digital platforms filled with misinformation alongside the concerns over advancements in artificial intelligence, proposing an international code of conduct as a solution.

While acknowledging that the alarm bells over AI were “deafening,” the UN chief emphasized that they should not divert attention from the existing damage inflicted by digital technology.

“They must not distract us from the damage digital technology is already doing to our world,” he said.

Guterres highlighted the grave global harm caused by the proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space, noting that “the proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space is causing grave global harm now.”

He further underscored that “it is fueling conflict, death and destruction now.

It is threatening democracy and human rights now.”

Looking ahead, Guterres revealed that a United Nations Code of Conduct for information integrity on digital platforms was being developed in preparation for the UN’s upcoming “Summit of the Future” scheduled for next year.

The secretary-general put forth several proposals, including calling for a commitment by governments, tech companies and other stakeholders to refrain from using, supporting, or amplifying disinformation and hate speech for any purpose; the consistent application of policies and resources by digital platforms around the world, to eliminate double standards that allow hate speech and disinformation to flourish in some languages and countries; a commitment from digital platforms to make sure all products take account of safety, privacy and transparency.

“Advertisers — who are deeply implicated in monetizing and spreading damaging content — should take responsibility for the impact of their spending,” Guterres noted.

The UN chief further stressed that “disinformation and hate should not generate maximum exposure and massive profits.”

New Delhi , June 13,2023: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday announced three major schemes for disaster management worth over Rs 8,000 crore.
Shah chaired a meeting with the disaster management departments of States and Union Territories at Vigyan Bhawan.
“A total of Rs 5,000 crore project to expand and modernize fire services in states, Rs 2,500 crore project for the seven most populous metros – Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune – to reduce the risk of urban flooding, and Rs 825 crore National Landslide Risk Mitigation Scheme in 17 states and union territories for landslide mitigation,” said the Home Minister.
After the meeting of Disaster Management ministers of States and UTs, Shah said that in the last nine years, the central government has achieved a lot in this area.
“In the last nine years, the Central Govt and States have achieved a lot in this area. Nobody can deny it. But we can’t stay content because disasters have changed their form and their frequency and intensity have increased. We will have to do more extensive planning…,” said Amit Shah.
“The States where nuclear power stations are being set up has been given a strict protocol to be followed in the case of any emergency situation,” he added.

Paris, June 12,2023: The city administration of the French capital of Paris has set up a working group on “coexistence” with rats to identify ways to improve the living conditions of citizens despite the widespread presence of rodents, French media reported on Sunday, citing vice-mayor of Paris for health, Anne Souyris.

The group is tasked with developing an “ambitious plan to combat the spread of rats,” the CNEWS broadcaster reported, adding that it is planned to purchase thousands of new dumpsters, as well as install poison traps “in cases where it is necessary.”

The group will also propose measures against city residents who litter on the streets, the report noted.

Souyris said that rats “do not pose a public health problem,” despite the fact that they are carriers of leptospirosis, the report added. However, the disease poses a threat mainly to garbage collectors, who can be vaccinated against it, Souyris noted.

The decision of the city administration was welcomed by animal welfare NGOs, which had previously advocated “non-lethal” methods to control the city’s rodents.

The Paris authorities have been trying for years to deal with the millions of rats that live in the French capital. In 2017, a 1.5 million euro project was launched to reduce the number of rodents in the city. It included such measures as more frequent garbage collection and the placement of poison traps. However, these measures did not have the desired effect and six years later, rodents in the French capital are still numerous.

Riyadh [Saudi Arabia], June 5,2023: The group of oil-producing countries resolved on Sunday to extend oil production curbs through 2024 as petrol prices remained stable, according to The Hill.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, known as OPEC Plus, met on Sunday and resolved to prolong the oil output cutbacks under the leadership of Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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OPEC described the move as aiming to “achieve and sustain a stable oil market, and to provide long-term guidance for the market, and in line with the successful approach of being precautious, proactive and preemptive”, The Hill reported.

In April, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other OPEC+ oil producers declared their intention to reduce production by 1.16 million barrels per day. The countries that produce oil had previously agreed to reduce their output by 2 million barrels per day through the end of the year.
When the decision was made, the National Security Council criticised it, stating that the administration did not consider cuts “advisable at this time given market uncertainty.”
President Biden had also threatened that there would be “consequences” for Saudi Arabia, after the country announced the production cut last October of about 2 million barrels per day, The Hill reported.
This move is not expected to affect gas prices in the United States, as pump prices have remained flat even after Memorial Day weekend travel. As of Sunday, the national average of gas prices was USD 3.55 per gallon, according to AAA.