Friday Factly 11 December 2020

General Studies-1

Children:

• Between September 2019 and January 2020, 25,000 instances of child pornography being uploaded online
• In 2017, a staggering 68% of 1.04 million deaths of children under five years in India was attributable to malnutrition, reckoned a Lancet study last year.

Climate Change

• Greenhouse Gas emissions reached a new high last year, putting the world on track for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius as per a UN report

Environment (Council on Energy, Environment and Water’s data)

• Over 75% districts in India (home to 63.8 crore people) are hotspots of extreme climatic events like cyclone, drought, flood, heat and cold waves.
• While 250 such extreme events between 1970 and 2005, it has been more than 350 15 years since 2005.
• Frequency of flood events increased by 8 times in last 50 years.

Poverty

• According to UN estimate in 2019 number of poor in 2019 stand at 364 million (28%).

Education

• According to a UNICEF report, closure of 1.5 million schools means that 247 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary education as well as 28 million children who are attending pre-school education in Anganwadis (day-care) centres are affected.

General Studies -2

• About 60 per cent of known infectious diseases in humans and 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, according to a new report published recently by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

IR

• The U.S. arms industry accounted for 61% of sales by the world’s “Top 25” manufacturers last year, ahead of China’s 15.7%, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

 General Studies -3

• A recent report by Accenture estimated that in India transactions worth $270.7 billion are expected to shift from cash to cards and digital payments by 2023 and to $856.6 billion by 2030.
• Value of transactions through UPI increased 89 per cent between April and November this year, while amount transacted through Bharat Bill Pay was 90 per cent higher.
• Over 320 million learners have been affected and more than 5 million young people are likely to have lost their jobs.
• According to National Sample Survey data for 2019, only 20% of urban women in the age group of 15-59 years spend time in “employment and related activities” on an average day.
• Data from the terrorism monitoring portal, satp.org, show that there were 382 incidents related to terrorism and 302 fatalities in 2020 so far in J&K compared to 369 and 283 in 2019, respectively.
• According to Department of Telecommunication the use of internet increased by 13% after lockdown was announced.
• NASSCOM says that data and AI will contribute $450 billion-$500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, which is around 10% of the government’s aspiration of a $5 trillion economy.
• Data from the terrorism monitoring portal, satp.org, show that there were 382 incidents related to terrorism and 302 fatalities in 2020 so far in J&K compared to 369 and 283 in 2019, respectively.
• India ranked 9th in the Climate Change Performance Index released in Madrid. The top position was bagged by Sweden while China ranked 30th.