Syllabus

• Prelims – Science

Context: Two Kerala government-controlled temple boards, which together manage 2,500-odd temples in the state, have banned use of oleander flowers (locally known as arali) in temple offerings after a 24-year old woman died after accidentally chewing some oleander leaves.

Background:-

• Oleander’s toxicity has been recognised across the world.

About Oleander

• Nerium oleander, commonly known as oleander or rosebay, is a plant cultivated worldwide in tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions.
• Known for its drought tolerance, the shrub is often used for ornamental and landscaping purposes.
• In Kerala, the plant is known by the names of arali and kanaveeram and is grown along highways and beaches as a natural, green fencing. There are different varieties of oleander, each with a flower of a different colour

References in Ayurveda :

• The Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India (API), a government document that describes the quality, purity, and strength of drugs used in Ayurveda, mentions oleander. According to API, an oil prepared from the root bark can be used to treat skin diseases.
• Charka [Charak Samhita] has prescribed the leaves of white-flowered variety externally in chronic and obstinate skin diseases of serious nature including leprosy.
• Bhavaprakasha has described Karvira [another name of the plant] as a visha (poison) and indicated it in treatment of vrana (infected wounds), kustha (skin diseases including leprosy), krimi (microbes and parasites), kandu (itching) etc
• Ingestion or inhalation of smoke from burning oleander can be intoxicating. This is due to the properties of cardiac glycosides (a type of chemical) including oleandrin, folinerin, and digitoxigenin, which are present in all parts of the plant.
• Cardiac glycosides are steroidal compounds capable of exerting pharmacological effects on cardiac muscle. The primary therapeutic value of these glycosides lies in their ability to exert profound tonic effects on the heart [stronger and faster heart contractions].
• Effects of oleander toxicity include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, rashes, confusion, dizziness, irregular heartbeat, slow heartbeat, and, in extreme cases, death.

Source:Indian Express

Syllabus

• Prelims – Current Event

Context: Google released a security update for Chrome to fix a zero-day vulnerability.

Background:

• The security vulnerability was being exploited in the wild, and could result in data leakage, code execution and crashes in the software.This is the fifth zero-day exploit Google fixed since the start of this year. Three zero-day exploits were discovered in March 2024.

Key Takeaways

• A Zero-Day Vulnerability is an undiscovered flaw in an application or operating system.
• The term “Zero day” refers to the fact that the software or device vendor has zero days to fix the flaw because malicious actors can already use it to access vulnerable systems. The unknown or unaddressed vulnerability is referred to as a zero-day vulnerability or zero-day threat.
• A Zero-Day Exploit is a cyberattack vector that takes advantage of this unknown or unaddressed security flaw. A zero-day attack is when a malicious actor uses a zero-day exploit to plant malware, steal data, or otherwise cause damage to users, organizations, or systems.
• Zero-day vulnerabilities—especially in widely-used operating systems or computing devices—are a severe security risk. They leave huge numbers of users or entire organizations wide open to cybercrime until the vendor or the cybersecurity community identifies the problem and releases a solution.
• A similar but separate concept, Zero-Day Malware, is a virus or malware for which the signature is unknown or as yet unavailable, and therefore undetectable by many antivirus software solutions or other signature-based threat detection technologies

Source: Hindu

Syllabus

• Prelims – Environment

Context: Assam’s Kaziranga National Park collects highest revenue in its 50-year history.The revenue collected by the authorities of Kaziranga National Park, from the tourists, touches ₹8.8 crore.

Background:

• Kaziranga National park is sprinkled with elephant-grass meadows, swampy lagoons, and dense forests is home to more than 2200 Indian one-horned rhinoceros, approximately 2/3rd of their total world population.

About Kaziranga National Park:

• Kaziranga National Park is a national park located in the Golaghat and Nagaon districts of the state of Assam, India. Located on the edge of the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot, the park combines high species diversity and visibility.
• The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s renowned for its population of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros, which is one of the main attractions for visitors.
• Kaziranga is also recognized as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for the conservation of avifaunal species.
• The park’s contribution in saving the Indian one-horned rhinoceros from the brink of extinction at the turn of the 20th century to harbouring the single largest population of this species is a spectacular conservation achievement.
• The park is spread over an area of 1,090 km² (420 sq mi) and is home to a large breeding population of elephants, wild water buffalo, and swamp deer.
• The Endangered Ganges dolphin is also found in some of the closed oxbow lakes.
• Over the time, the tiger population has also increased in Kaziranga, and that’s the reason why Kaziranga was declared as Tiger Reserve in 2006.
• Due to the difference in altitude between the eastern and western areas of the park, one can see mainly four types of vegetation like alluvial inundated grasslands, alluvial savanna woodlands, tropical moist mixed deciduous forests, and tropical semi-evergreen forests.
• Kumbhi, Indian gooseberry, the cotton tree, and elephant Apple are amongst the famous trees that can be seen in the park.
• It is criss-crossed by four major rivers, including the Brahmaputra.
• The park faces several challenges, including poaching, habitat loss due to human encroachment, and annual flooding from the Brahmaputra River. Efforts to mitigate these threats involve anti-poaching measures, community involvement, and habitat restoration projects.

Source: Hindu

Syllabus

• Prelims – Science

Context: Recently, a 12-year-old boy from USA, became the first person in the world with sickle cell disease to begin a commercially approved gene therapy that may cure the condition.

Background:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a gene therapy called Casgevy, which represents a significant milestone in the treatment of sickle cell disease.

About Sickle Cell Disease :

• Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited disorders that affect the hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen through the body.
• People with SCD have atypical haemoglobin molecules called haemoglobin S, which can distort RBCs into a sickle or crescent shape.
• This distortion leads to several complications, including chronic anaemia, acute painful episodes (known as sickle cell crises), organ infarction (tissue damage due to blocked blood flow), and chronic organ damage.
• Unfortunately, SCD significantly reduces life expectancy for affected individuals.

Treatment Options:

• Blood Transfusions: These helps relieve anaemia and reduce the risk of pain crises.
• Hydroxyurea: A medication that reduces the frequency of painful episodes and prevents long-term complications.
• Bone Marrow or Stem Cell Transplantation: In some cases, this approach can be used to replace the defective stem cells with healthy ones.

Government Initiatives in India:

• The National Health Mission in India supports states in preventing and managing Sickle Cell Disease (SCD).
• The government aims to eliminate Sickle Cell Anaemia by 2047.
• Technical operational guidelines have been released for prevention and control of hemoglobinopathies, including sickle cell anaemia.

Source: New York Times

Syllabus

• Prelims – Economy

Context: The Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have reached pre-GST levels, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.The monthly gross GST collections have been picking pace, recently crossing a landmark of Rs 2 lakh crore, as per the monthly data for April released on May 1 by the Finance Ministry.

Background:

• In India, GST is a successor to VAT used on the supply of goods and service. It is a comprehensive, multistage, destination-based tax. It has subsumed almost all the indirect taxes except a few state taxes. GST replaced many indirect taxes in India such as the excise duty, VAT, services tax, etc. The Goods and Service Tax Act was passed in the Parliament on 29th March 2017 and came into effect on 1st July 2017.

About Goods and Service Tax:

• GST is one indirect tax for the whole nation, which will make India one unified common market.
• GST is a single tax on the supply of goods and services, right from the manufacturer to the consumer.
• In the earlier indirect tax regime, the Centre could tax goods up to the production or manufacturing stage, while States collected taxes on the sale or distribution of goods. The right to tax services was vested with the Centre alone.
• Under the GST, both the Centre and the States can tax the entire supply chain in both goods as well as services – right from production to distribution.
• Credits of input taxes paid at each stage will be available in the subsequent stage of value addition, which makes GST essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage.
• The final consumer will thus bear only the GST charged by the last dealer in the supply chain, with set-off benefits at all the previous stages.

Benefits of GST

For business and industry

• Easy compliance: A robust and comprehensive IT system would be the foundation of the GST regime in India. Therefore, all tax payer services such as registrations, returns, payments, etc. would be available to the taxpayers online, which would make compliance easy and transparent.
• Uniformity of tax rates and structures: GST will ensure that indirect tax rates and structures are common across the country, thereby increasing certainty and ease of doing business. In other words, GST would make doing business in the country tax neutral, irrespective of the choice of place of doing business.
• Removal of cascading: A system of seamless tax-credits throughout the value-chain, and across boundaries of States, would ensure that there is minimal cascading of
  This would reduce hidden costs of doing business.
• Improved competitiveness: Reduction in transaction costs of doing business would eventually lead to an improved competitiveness for the trade (exports) and industry.

For Central and State Governments

• Simple and easy to administer: Multiple indirect taxes at the Central and State levels are being replaced by GST. Backed with a robust end-to-end IT system, GST would be simpler and easier to administer than all other indirect taxes of the Centre and State levied so far.
• Better controls on leakage: GST will result in better tax compliance due to a robust IT infrastructure. Due to the seamless transfer of input tax credit from one stage to another in the chain of value addition, there is an in-built mechanism in the design of GST that would incentivize tax compliance by traders.
• Higher revenue efficiency: GST is expected to decrease the cost of collection of tax revenues of the Government, and will therefore, lead to higher revenue efficiency.

For the consumer:

• Single and transparent tax proportionate to the value of goods and services: Due to multiple indirect taxes being levied by the Centre and State, with incomplete or no input tax credits available at progressive stages of value addition, the cost of most goods and services in the country today are laden with many hidden taxes. Under GST, there would be only one tax from the manufacturer to the consumer, leading to transparency of taxes paid to the final consumer.
• Relief in overall tax burden: Because of efficiency gains and prevention of leakages, the overall tax burden on most commodities will come down, which will benefit consumers.

Source: Indian Express

Syllabus

• Mains – GS 3

Context: India has reached out to key critical mineral producers to bring in processing technology into the country.The move comes close on the back of the government rolling out auctions of critical mineral mines.

Background:

• Talks are on with the United States (US), Australia, and United Kingdom (UK), South Korea, and Japan for processing technology. Brazil and Argentina are also positive about collaborating with India.

Critical Minerals:

• They are elements that are the building blocks of essential modern-day technologies and are at risk of supply chain disruptions.
• For example, Antimony, Beryllium, Bismuth, Cobalt, Copper, etc.
• For India, major import sources of Cobalt are China, the US, and Japan; Lithium (Chile, Russia, China); Nickel (Sweden, China), etc.
• These minerals are now used everywhere from making mobile phones, and computers to batteries, electric vehicles, and green technologies like solar panels and wind turbines.
• Based on their individual needs and strategic considerations, different countries create their own lists.

Significance of Critical Minerals for India:

• Minerals such as lithium, graphite, cobalt, titanium, etc. are essential for the advancement of high-tech electronics, telecommunications, transport, etc. Self-sufficiency in critical minerals ensures self-reliance and addresses the vulnerability in its supply chain.
• Some critical minerals are important for climate-friendly technologies like electric vehicles, solar panels wind turbines, etc.
• Critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, and silicon are vital to manufacturing technologies and materials used in the aerospace and defence sector.
• Critical minerals are necessary for India to achieve its geo-economic goals, energy security, renewable energy goals, mineral security, and commitment to electric vehicles by 2030.

Issues/Challenges/Concerns associated with Critical Minerals:

• Some critical mineral assets for the country’s manufacturing sectors (particularly green technologies) are not ready to be mined. There are also some critical minerals of which there exist no known resources within the country.
• Geographical concentration of extraction or processing in a few locations may lead to supply chain disruption or vulnerabilities. For example, three-fifths of rare earth minerals, essential for clean energy, electronics, and defence technologies, are mined in China, while more than fourth fifths are processed there.
• The supply of critical minerals is dependent on trade agreements which can be driven by domestic interests. For example, Indonesia (host to the world’s largest nickel reserves), has banned export of raw nickel ore, as they seek to develop a domestic nickel processing industry.
• India lacks periodic assessments for judging the criticality of the minerals needed. This affects the prices that are paid for such minerals and long-term risk mitigation plans.
• These minerals lack substitutes and have low end-of-life recycling rates.

Initiatives taken regarding Critical Minerals:

• India- Australia Critical Minerals Investment Partnership will build new supply chains underpinned by critical minerals processed in Australia to help India’s plans to lower emissions from its electricity network and become a global manufacturing hub, including for electric vehicles.
• India has joined the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) which is a US-led collaboration of 14 countries that aims to catalyse public and private investment in critical mineral supply chains globally.
• Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill 2021 ensures transparency in the auction process of mines and enhances domestic and foreign investment in the mining sector.
• India, Japan, and Australia unveiled Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) to enhance the resilience of supply chains in the Indo-Pacific Region and reliance on China.

Source: Economic Times

Q1.)  Which among the following flower was recently banned from being part of temple offering due to its poisonous nature :

1. Parijata or Indian Magnolia
2. Nerium Oleander
3. Safed Aak Or Crown Flower
4. Cobra saffron or Nagavriksha

Q2.)The word Zero Day Vulnerability recently seen in news is related to:

1. An imminent nuclear attack
2. Use of Chemical weapon
3. Release of Biological Weapon
4. Cybersecurity

Q3.)  Consider the following statements about kaziranga national park:

1. The park is located on the edge of the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot.
2. Species like tigers and Ganges River dolphin are part of the parks diverse Fauna.
3. It is recognized as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for conservation of avifaunal species.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

1. Only one
2. Only two
3. All three
4. None

Comment the answers to the above questions in the comment section below!!

ANSWERS FOR ’ 14th May 2024 – Daily Practice MCQs’ will be updated along with tomorrow’s Daily Current Affairs.st

Q.1) – a

Q.2) – b

Q.3) – c