Tommy here from Lauren systems and some security researchers found an interesting attack vector It is now labeled CVE two oh two two three one eight one four And it was found in versions of pf blocker two point one point four four six and earlier The pf blocker three series is not affected by this and there's already a patch for it So as long as you're up to date if you have any running the old version of pf blocker, you're good Now the first thing I want to start with is the conditions that you have to have met in order for this attack to work First pf blocker old version installed second enable DNS block list so this has to be turned on then from there the DNS block page has to be Accessible from someone on the network. This is not an external attack Someone has to be on the network now you can have your pf sense web interface and as you should lock down So make guest networks and limited number of computers are able to get to it Lockdown to management, but this is something normally It's not locked down because you'd like to be able to know that this website was blocked by your network administrator And that's where someone and someone being these security researchers Decided to poke at it a little bit and try to determine where the problem might be with this and it turned out There's an input sanitization problem, and you're probably thinking there's no input on this page Oh, but there is and that's what they had really focused on was going through the code is they undertook an independent security Assessment of pf sense and pf blocker plug-in the two series and identify the unauthenticated remote execution as route and The reason it runs as route is because once any of these plugins are running that you have to run at a high level of privilege So if you exploit one of these plugins and can get the same privilege level as them You now will have root on that system now that Reason there's input even though you don't see an input box essentially is because they're able to pass extra data around there So query the alias for domain list and it looks through the characters that are going across there because It actually goes through and tries to figure out what web page is blocked So it doesn't normally say this web pages block and give me the 10 address It gives me the site that was blocked. Well with some input sanitization problems You have the potential to and this is what they discovered here was Basically put the server ht post element past the above code is a user controlled input because you just pass the parameter strictly to the bhp. So by doing that in Dealing with restricted characters. So there's at least some input sanitization But they found flaws around it basically they go through step by step and develop a payload and a simple proof of concept to inject This information in there and eventually and they have all their proof of context code and as I said, this will be linked down below There's a full working exploit code where you can test this out and it actually gets the ability to write files And then well do what you want to a pf sent system now They do have a disclosure timeline of notifying security at netgate and BB can one seven seven is actually the person That had to fix this because they're the maintainer of the package pf blockers not maintained by netgate the people who do maintain pf sense but specifically is for Maintaining the pf blocker plug-in. So nonetheless the hatches have been released and things are fixed now I thought the response to this was adequate the law was found Reported netgate being the maintainers of pf sense said well, it's the plug-in So BB cam was the one who fixed it not netgate directly But this is always a concern when you have plugins that you are adding complexity and adding more threat surface This is one of the reasons why whenever people ask me about siloing some project onto a pf sense Do so with that in mind that you are increasing the complexity and therefore the potential for more problems on there And hopefully if you side load something onto your pf sense You are properly vetting and maintaining it and testing its security to make sure it did not compromise The security of the base operating system, which essentially was unaffected But would have been affected with this particular plug-in because while the exploit could run wild in pf sense at the same permission level now Input sanitization is not a new problem It is still a growing and big problem And I like to see more of these security researchers poking at the edges because well There's always more to be found look how long it took us to find the input validation problem That was with log for j probably the largest cyber security widespread incident we've had in recent times and Hopefully we don't have another one, but there could be another log for j out there where someone didn't validate input So thank you to the security research team that was doing this also as a reminder Please lock down your admin interfaces I have videos on that topic down below for pf sense of how to set up the rules how to lock in Admin interfaces and that does include for things such as Entop PNG which I have done a video on and that has its own admin interface So always think about when you add anything on even if it is an official package that those extra interfaces if there's any potential Flaws or problems with them you want to make sure your guest network doesn't have access to it So nonetheless get patching. This is a great response great read I'll go ahead and read the hole right up there And if you want to play around with it or look around this is a good thing to do This is why we have so many people out there testing It's way better to have security researchers testing this than it is to have threat actors testing it and then Exploiting it ultimately leave your comments down below or head over to the forum for a more in-depth discussion And thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video If you've enjoyed the content, please give us a thumbs up if you would like to see more content from this channel Hit the subscribe button and the bell icon if you like to hire a short project head over to Lawrence systems calm and Click the hires button right at the top to help this channel out in other ways There's a join button here for YouTube and a patreon page where your support is greatly appreciated for deals discounts and offers check out our Affiliate links in the description of all of our videos including a link to our shirt store Where we have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and designs come out? Well randomly so check back frequently and finally our forums forums dot Lawrence systems comm is where you can have a More in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics covered on this channel Thanks again for watching and look forward to hearing from you


Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Google Cloud Next 2018. Brought to you by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners. Hello, welcome everyone back to theCUBE's live coverage. This is day three of Google Cloud Cube coverage here. Google Next 2018, hashtag Google Next 18. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Jeff Frick. Our next two guests, kicking off day three is Ed Enoff, the director of product management at Google Cloud, part of the Apigee acquisition, really part of the APIs.  And Chuck Knossman, vice president of IT and T-Mobile. Customer, Ed, thanks for coming on. Chuck, thanks for coming on. So Apigee, big part of the story at Google Next is, you know, the role of APIs and services is huge. And I won't say nuance. I mean, certainly Istio is a new to a lot of people. Kubernetes, superbly very important piece of this new cloud service platform as well as just running workloads, multi-cloud, et cetera. What's the focus? What's going on for you guys at the event? Take a minute to explain the announcements and what you guys did here at the show. Sure. So, you know, APIs are how software talks to software. And what we announced this week at the show with Kubernetes and Istio are new ways for people to build software and deploy it in new distributed fashions. And so that's creating new ways for tying your software together, microservices. A lot of people are talking about now are a key part of this. And so from an Apigee perspective, you know, we're looking at facilitating how to make that communications happen, how to make it secure, how to make it efficient, how to monitor it. And so what we announced was that Apigee is making it now possible for you to have all the tools that we've given you for managing your APIs for, you know, getting your mobile apps to talk to your cloud services and all of that. Now is also going to apply to these new microservices that you're building. And so we think it's a pretty exciting thing. A lot of our customers have been asking for this and obviously Chuck being one of them. And so, you know, that's what it's been all about for us this week. Chuck, obviously APIs, key part of DevOps. You know, it's first started with slinging some APIs around stitching together. Developers voted with their code. Clearly APIs is the way that its software's working. Microservices takes us to a whole other level. Now, operationalizing APIs seems easy, but it's you got to start managing things differently. How are you guys taking that API and this new service management piece of it and kind of operationalizing APIs into T-Mobile? Yeah, we've been using Apigee for about four years now. And so over the time, I think we were have 200 plus internal APIs. So we've, over that time, we've kind of learned how to operationalize that piece of it. Over the last couple of years, we've really been focused on the microservice layers. Riding cloud-native applications essentially in that layer. And now with the Apigee hook into Istio, we're going to have a much better way to manage it. And it's really nice to see the platform starting to grow and mature along with us. So that's really great. I can only imagine how complicated it is to run real-time, cloud-native and have also legacy. And I think one of the things I'd like to get your thoughts on is containers have become a nice piece of not ripping and replacing to bringing the new.  And now with containers, Kubernetes and microservices and Istio, you have an ability to kind of do both. Talk about how you guys do it. Because this is not a perfect storm in a good way for enterprises. Well yeah, it's really good timing for us as well. We're just now starting our Kubernetes journey on-premise, if you will. So we're a big cloud foundry shop. We're starting to put our legacy applications into Docker containers and we'll be moving them onto Kubernetes. And so you can see the whole, the containerization shift as we go through time. And it's really, for us, like I said, it's fortuitous at this timing because now with Istio coming in and being able to control all that, that's a great thing for us.  This is normal, APIs, this lingua franca has been around for a while. You've had a lot of experience in that. But a lot of the enterprises that we talk to are like, there's a lot of pressure in IT to do more now with Cloud Native and now with the new services that are out there, it kind of takes the pressure off IT because the pressure of, I got to have a sunset that app where I don't know when to kill that workload. I know I want to maybe transform it, but I don't want to have to disrupt all this stuff. So talk about the importance of non-disruption because this seems to be a conversation that's talked a lot in the hallways. Yeah, that's exactly right. So what you see within enterprises is that there's a need to deliver a whole set of new applications and a lot of these are connected to digital experiences, basically everything that you experience on your mobile apps, every new form of engaging with your customer. That's where a lot of the business growth is that's bringing a lot of the funding for these new initiatives. But a lot of the core data of the enterprise is locked up within systems that have been operating very efficiently but siloed for many years. And so that's the part that we see the most, which is folks within IT come to us and say, look, I've been building these legacy systems for many years now and I know that if I can just take the data that's locked up in these and bring these into these new ways of doing business, that it's going to have a huge impact on my business. And that's where the question sits. And then the follow-up on that is, hey, we want to make our businesses more like the way you guys are doing it in Silicon Valley and we see what you're doing with containers and we see things like Kubernetes and Cloud Native and we know that's the right way to build things, but there has to be a way for us to bring all of these other assets that we've been building for the last 30 years along for the ride. And in fact, for most of these businesses, our response is, hey, it's not just a question of building along for the ride, that's your core. That's your, that has been what you built your business on. So don't even just think about it as this thing that you somehow have to drag along. Think about how you actually can amplify it because it's been the source of your business for so long. Well, yeah, I would add to that is that it gives us scale and operation, a much better operational platform to work with. For us, we've grown tremendously, or our growth has been tremendous over the last five years. We've gone from, I think, 30 million customers to 73 million customers. And frankly, to scale those systems up, containerization is probably the only way we can go with it. And with, from an operational standpoint, having one platform like Kubernetes to operate for all of this stuff just helps us out tremendously. And we hear that all the time. I think that's the biggest story around container, outside of, you know, geeking out on the benefits of it, is that it really allows a nice bridge to the future. You don't have to burn the boats as they say in Silicon Valley, you know. And you can pick your, you can pick on the applications you want to keep around, right? Then you refactor them to be cloud native on the ones you don't, you don't have to go all the way, right? And so you can make it a much better that way. Chuck, I'm curious to get your take on the changing competitive environment. Because before, you know, you had these big, complex systems and you wanted to keep them running. Now the pressure for more innovation, more applications, quicker applications to leverage not only your inside stuff, but outside stuff in how some of these technologies are helping you deliver that to your customers, your internal development teams. Yeah, scale is one aspect of it. Performance is another. And the ability to move those workloads close to the customer, just like Google's trying to do with moving closer to the customer, we do the same thing, right? And so that the hybrid cloud is real for us. We run in almost all the clouds right now and on-premise, we treat that as a cloud as well. But being able to do that can only happen when we containerize stuff and utilize similar platforms on all these places. Right, and then you'll have this huge transformational shift over the next several years with 5G, right, that's coming in. Yeah, we've been at it for a couple years now. For a couple years, so this is going to be another huge wave of change inside your infrastructure. Yeah, yes, and it's fantastic. What attracted you to Google Cloud? Sheriff, take a minute to explain what was the interest in Google Cloud? Why Google Cloud for you guys? Well, we're just getting started with it, but it's really, it's the partnership we've had with Apigee that's helped us kind of understand what's going on with Google Cloud, but then the open source nature of it as well as the focus on AI and ML. That's why we're really taking a hard look at what's going on with Google Cloud and the attitude towards enterprises is great as well. The culture's a good fit there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people are attracted by some of the speed. I mean, we've been hearing here at the show, Google obviously built their business on being fast. Yeah, and having your own network is massive as well, right? And now you've got the API. And what's the future look like for APIs and Apigee inside Google? Give us a little taste of what you guys are working on, some of the projects you guys are passionate about, and some of the successes you've had are any anecdotal use case studies. So definitely, so APIs carry our customers the most important data. And data is the basis for machine learning and AI. And so you're going to see a lot of product innovation for us about bringing AI to the point of these data conduits that are what APIs are all about. It's the natural place to couple it with every business process. So that's a big deal for us. I think that the security aspect, you heard a lot about security in the keynotes. Again, APIs are the conduit in many cases for, again, the enterprise is most important data to get outside of the perimeter of the enterprise. It has to be done in a secure way. And then finally, being able to go and leverage the sort of collaborative nature, the stuff you see within open source, the community around all of this, again, most APIs are about bringing a lot more developers to build more applications in less time around these APIs. And that is, that collaboration component is something that we see a ton of opportunities in terms of leveraging Google's unique know-how in terms of advancing and pushing the state of the art in APM management. So I think you're going to see a lot of that from us. Chuck, I'd love to get your thoughts on how you and IT, obviously, IT is transforming. We talk about it all the time. How you keep track of what's good, right? It used to be in the old days, the stack was pretty not that complex.  But some of the best cloud providers don't even show up on a magic quad because it's horizontally scalable. APIs changes the stack a little bit of new modern middlewares emerging with Istio and new sets of business models and services are emerging. So a lot of people are like trying, I mean, how do you determine who's good in IT? Because you want to move the needle, you want to transform, you got a lot of buildup. How do you kind of evaluate, is there any new ways or is it gut instinct or specific things that you look at? Really good question. We try to adopt the open source stuff first, but from the company standpoint, we also look at the company themselves and who's really vested in what's going on with it. Like Apigee four years ago was really the only ones that were really only doing APIs, right? And their knowledge and the depth and their roadmap, that's what we really kind of look for. But to your point, things are changing so rapidly that you kind of have to go with the watch the open source community, where all the pull requests coming from or what platforms are they going after and then track that. And that's what we try to do. And so when we see Kubernetes and the explosion that's happening on that, the tooling that's coming around that, we know that's going to be good for enterprises going forward. So we're going to be heavily invested in that. It's interesting, we always talk about developers, but what's interesting that's coming out of the show that we're observing is, it's always about developers doing building apps, that's why. But the role of an operator inside IT, used to be an operator would maybe provision some storage and some servers. Now the role of what an operator, used to be network ops guys, now it's kind of more of a holistic view. Your thoughts on this, I know it's super early, but the emergence of these two personas in IT is super critical. We look at it a lot, it's automation, right? That's where it all comes to play. So if you've got a platform like a Kubernetes where you can have all this automation built around it and you let the developers just do their thing and focus on the business logic, that's huge. So there is kind of two personalities and the caring and feeding of that platform is just as important as the guys right in the applications across the top. Yeah, it's a really great environment. Final question for you guys, observations on the show, Google Next, what's your observation?  Thoughts and commentary on what's happening here? You know, I think the scale of it has been amazing, you know, and we became part of Google two years ago. We were here at the show last year, looking at it this year and the level of growth, the activity, attendees, the number of announcements, it's just been amazing. It's been very exciting for us to be part of. Chuck, your thoughts? Super impressed, this is our first one, really, that we've come to. We were even participating on stage on the Knative, we wrote some applications to work with Knative. But it's a very diverse crowd, which is awesome. I think you really need that. Some of the others, I don't see as much. So I think what Google is doing, and again, their approaches to enterprise, looking more at solutions, vertical solutions, are very impressed with what's going on here. It's a really great time. Congratulations on all your success with the APIs. You guys have done the work. And open source, it's where your employees want to work, they want to meet other people, and this is where the co-creation, that's where the assessments of the vendors happen. Opensource.t-mobile.com, that's where we want to be. All right, great, thank you, Chuck. And thanks so much for coming. Thank you. I really appreciate the time. It's theCUBE live coverage here in San Francisco, covering Google Cloud's conference next 18. We'll be right back with more day three coverage. Stay with us, we'll be right back.


In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote, we're left me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government. I should not hesitate for a moment for the latter, but I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. With these words, Jefferson captured the inextricable connection of a free press and public education. More than two centuries later, with the current attacks on both of these institutions, we need to reexamine and reinforce the value of their synergy. Without a free press, the stories told by any entity with power and wealth, yet government, industry, or individual, can and will become de facto our history. In this era of fake news and authoritarian leadership, we see the power of those forces misshape public perception and manipulate public opinion. Over the years, these stories will form an education of our youth. If students are fed lies and distortions and the guise of fact, they'll be unable to grow up as the kind of citizens our democracy requires. In the words of the Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness. Only a free press, empowered question and prioritize and ensure that we all get the honest information we need to make the evidenced based decisions that enable us to perform our civic duties. Likewise, a free press depends on citizens that insist the press do its duty. A free press and educated citizens are key partners in preserving our democracy. Our exponentially increasing sources of information make it difficult to determine if information is accurate, unbiased, and complete. In social media, a cacophony of voices, many claiming facts or contradicting facts claimed by others, vie for our attention. Many people shut out voices that conflict with their own views and hear only those that confirm their own perspectives. In this environment, the need for a trustworthy free press, skeptical, observant, and scrupulously honest is greater than ever before, as is the need for public seek and protect such a press. Our president is at war with the press and any journalist who criticizes him. Market see changes have been undermining the viability of the press for years. Newspaper circulation has declined by half since 1990. At the same time, how a funding for public education is declining. More than half of the states now receive less for education than they did a decade ago. Angry protest and polarization of our schools, our schools undermine civic engagement, which is so critical to education and learning. These factors do not bode well for our citizens or our democracy. I am fortunate enough to host live stream talk shows, including likeable science on Think Tech Hawaii, a Hawaii nonprofit that promotes constructive civic engagement. Funded by the generosity of community minded supporters, it has developed a new high tech media model for content production through citizen journalism. The value of citizen journalism is that the people involved become more actively engaged, and a thoughtful examination of the world around them. In so doing, they bring their friends and associates into the process. These friends then in turn become more actively engaged. This experience broadens our perspectives and better connects us with each other for a more perfect union. To that end, we should all engage in this Jeffersonian exchange of ideas. By that interaction, we can build a more dynamic productive community dialogue, and we can become more aware and better informed. We can better separate the wheat from the chaff, the truth from the fiction, and the priorities from the distractions, raising the clarity of our collective thinking, and thus the prospects for our community, our society, and our nation. The Lord knows we need that clarity in these difficult devices at a very interesting time.


Hey stampers, welcome to another week of Watch It Weekly Wednesday. I'm Aubrey, part of the Stampin' Jill Creative team, and today I'm excited to share with you a stamp set and bundle that is in the annual catalog. It's this one here. It's on page 116 of the annual catalog. It's called Art in Bloom. Such a pretty stamp set, and it coordinates and bundles with this die set, but also an embossing folder. It's called a hybrid embossing folder, and they all coordinate together. And I want to show you how to use them with the stamp set and the die set and the embossing folder all together. Just give you a few tips on that. So let me pull in here the stamp set. This is it. The Art in Bloom. It has these super cute floral flowers and leaves and cute things. This stamp here is actually one stamp. It has three flowers all attached on it. You can see here, and that makes it really easy to use the embossing folder, this embossing folder, as well as the die set that comes with it. So I want to show you how to use this all together. So I'm going to start by stamping on basic white.  And then I'm going to take petal pink, and I'm going to use this, it's kind of like a coloring in image for the flower. So there's one for each of the flowers. This one is for this one down here. And I'm just going to do that one just to kind of show you how to use it. So just like that.   So it just fits right around that image, just like that. Just kind of sets right in there.  So just move that around, let's see, and then just move the image until it fits right in there, okay?  This is the Stampin' Cut and Emboss Machine. And I'm just going to run that through. Okay, and then we're going to grab that out and see just like that, okay? And you can see this embossed as well onto the white, but I'm not going to use this piece. I'll show you on another card what it looks like with the embossing folder. But you can see on this flower it not only cut it out, but it also embossed that image there. So cute. Here's the one we're going to use for our card. So cute. So I'm not going to finish this entire card, but I'll show you the finished product here. Here. Never not loving you. So cute. So there's our flower. I added some leaves and some accessories. So, so fun. Love it. Here's a few other ideas I've made creating or using this bundle of products. So we have this one I didn't stamp first. I just ran it through and cut it out. So it's kind of more of a monochrome look there. And then here, this is the one I used the embossing folder on the back. You can see so cute.  So you can see the kind of the difference that that makes, but still super cute and very fun. Love it. Okay, so Stampin' Up has come out with one other stamp set bundle that has this hybrid embossing folder in it. So I wanted to show you that one as well. It's in the mini catalog that's for the holiday season. It has this cute one here, Marriest Moments. So fun. This is what the embossing folder looks like, hopefully you can see that there. It has this cute frame and then it has all this greenery and stuff around it. It's super duper cute. And then the dies that coordinate, okay. So on this one, it's this fun frame that can cut out along with the embossing folder. And it has this other little frame in here too, and this one's stitched. So cute. So let me show you, I haven't had a ton of time to play with this one, but I want to show you just the one card that I've come up with using this set. So fun. You can see here that that got cut out and then it has the embossing on it too. So cute. So fun. I have loved playing with this idea, this new hybrid embossing folder. Super fun. Really easy to use and it's just really cute. So if you have any questions, make sure to let us know. If you want to share any of your ideas with us, make sure to tag us at stampinjill. And make sure to visit our website at stampinjill.com. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next week for another Watch It Weekly Wednesday.


My name is Sanvatny, I am the author of Malignan self-love, Narcissism Revisible. In the film The Beaver, the character played by Mel Gibson suffers from depression. He latches on to a tattered puppet in the shape of a beaver, and communicates exclusively through it. The beaver is everything its ostensible master is not. The beaver is daring, exuberant, omnipotent and omniscient, gregarious, resourceful, charismatic and charming. A good father, good chief executive officer, and good company all around. In short, the beaver is the reunification of the protagonist's force self. When his wife, played by Jodie Foster, confronts him, having exposed his confabulations and the need to let go of the contraption, the beaver rages at him and asserts his superiority, invincibility and brilliance. The depressive water, the true self, is derided by the beaver as a dysfunctional wreck, utterly dependent on the beaver's administrations and the interference the beaver runs on its behalf. The film ends unrealistically, with Walter mutilating his body, literally, in order to rid himself of the domineering and all-pervasive appendage. I say unrealistically, because narcissists never succeed in resuscitating the dilapidated and crushed true self. Narcissist is his force self. So in reality, water should have been devoured and consumed by the beaver. But then we would not have had a typical syrupy happy ending, would we? Back to reality. Both the true self and the false self depend on the gaze of others. The false self relies on adulation and attention, narcissistic supply, for the maintenance of the precarious, confabulated, fantastic, grandiose and counterfactual narrative that is the narcissist persona his public face. Without the constant flow of such high quality input and feedback, without the adulating gaze, the narcissist crumbles like a house of ephemeral cards and resorts to a variety of dysfunctional, self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors and psychological defense mechanisms. Similarly, and equally, the true self needs a loving gaze to sustain itself. Another person's love serves two purposes. It confirms the existence of the true self as a lovable object, and thus lays the groundwork and facilitates the necessary and sufficient conditions for self-love. Additionally, another person's loving gaze allows the true self to perceive the existence of a safe, loving and holding other. Such insight is the very foundation of empathy. Do the false and true self ever duel it out? Do they fight it out? Is there a David versus Goliath, good versus evil, the beaver versus water thing in reality? Alas, they never do. The false self is co-cooked by the narcissist to fend off an ameliorated hurt and pain. The false self is perfect, impenetrable, impermeable, false self is a shield, a cocoon. It rewards the narcissist by flooding him with warm, fuzzy, exhilarating feelings, and it sustains the narcissist's delusions and fantasies. The false self is the narcissist's dreams come true. In other words, as far as the narcissist is concerned, the false self is adopted and functional, a good thing. The narcissist is emotionally invested in the false self, and he actually despises the true self for having failed to cope with the exigencies and vicissitudes of the narcissist's life.


Good evening aspirants. I have an important announcement for you. The much-abided pre-storming batch 6 is about to start. There are 25 tests in this series and the first test is about to commence on 5th March 2023. All the tests will be conducted in both online and offline mode. See, this series has been specifically designed to help experienced aspirants because there is no sectional test in this series. All the tests will be subject-wise full test. There will be 22 subject-wise full test and 3 mock tests at the end. So aspirants looking to challenge themselves, please opt for this series. It will be very useful for your lips examination. With this news, let us get into the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar A.S academy for the date 27th of February 2023. Displayed here are the list of news articles we will be going through Now, without wasting much time, let's take up the first article for our discussion. Have a look at this article taken from the yesterday's newspaper. It is regarding the linkage of India's UPI and Singapore's PENO. As you all already know, UPI-based digital payment ecosystem of India helps in real-time fund transfer from one bank account to another. This real-time fund transfer system has now been extended to the country of Singapore through the linking up with the Singapore's digital payment system called PENO. The article given here talks about the benefits of this recent linkage of the two countries' digital payment system. This is what is given in this article. So in our discussion today, let us see the important points discussed in this article. First, let us learn about the term real-time payments. Real-time payments are payments where money transfer is settled as soon as the transfer is initiated. Generally, real-time payments are available 24 bar 7. Take the case of UPI. It allows for uninterrupted digital transfer of money from one bank account to another round the clock. UPI is an example of real-time payment system. Real-time payment system helps to simplify the process of fund transfer as well as ease the communication between the payer and the payee. This is all about real-time payments. Now let us move on to see about the new agreement between India and Singapore for the use of UPI for cross-country payments. Last month, the National Payment Corporation of India allowed international phone numbers to be able to transact using UPI. This announcement followed by the new agreement between India and Singapore has now enabled the usage of UPI outside India. This would benefit the Indian migrant workers and students who are living in Singapore to transfer money back and forth from Singapore to India and vice versa. Now let us see about the working of this cross-border payment system. This cross-border payment system involves banks located in both the countries. Some particular banks are selected in both the countries where this new system will be operationalized. For users within India, the State Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, Indian Bank and ICICI Bank will facilitate both inward and outward remittances. These are local Indian banks who are going to be part of the wider transnational UPI ecosystem. Now coming to the banks of Singapore. In Singapore, DBS Singapore and Liquid Group which is a FinTech company will facilitate the service for users in Singapore. This is how the cross-border payment system will work. Here note that account holders of listed banks can transfer funds to and fro from India and Singapore using their UPI ID, mobile number or virtual payment address. Also know that Indian government is planning to allow UPI remittances from other countries like the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia This is being done keeping in mind that these countries host a large number of Indian migrant workers. Moving forward, let us see the benefits associated with cross-border UPI payments. The benefit includes swiftness, fastness, less transaction charges and no requirement for special intermediaries like Western Union. Other than these benefits, internationalization of UPI ecosystem shows the world that high level of innovation that is taking place in India regarding the field of financial technology. That's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we came to know about the term real-time payments, the recent agreement allowing cross-border UPI payments between India and Singapore and finally we ended our discussion by seeing the benefits associated with cross-border UPI payments. Now let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this article. It appeared on the science page in yesterday's newspaper. It talks about neutrinos. In order to understand that, you must first understand a little bit about the standard model theory. So in this discussion, we will understand the basics of the standard model theory. Then we will see about neutrinos in detail. Fine, look at this image. It gives a broad understanding about the standard model theory. So this standard model theory talks about the basic building blocks of matter and how they are governed by the three fundamental forces of nature. Basically, the elementary particles occur in two basic types called quarks and leptons. Each of these consist of six particles. There is a group of six quarks and six leptons. The six quarks are paired in three generations. In the first generation, we have up quark and down quark. In the second generation, we have charm quark and strange quark. And in the third generation, we have top quark and bottom or beauty quark. Similarly, leptons are arranged in three generations. They are the electrons and the electron neutrino, the muons and the muon neutrino and finally tau and tau neutrino. Here note that these three that is electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino are three different types of neutrinos. Each of the particles here that is leptons and quarks have its own antiparticle. See, an antiparticle is something which has the same mass as the particle, but it has an opposite charge. For example, an antiparticle for electron is positron. And here positron has equal mass as the electron, but it has opposite charge. That is positron is positively charged. So, the standard model contains 12 quarks and 12 leptons. Here, the electron, muon and tau all have an electric charge and a sizable mass. But the neutrinos are electrically neutral and they have very little mass. This particular article is talking about this factor only. See, I told you antiparticles differ from the particle only in term of the charge, but neutrinos are not electrically charged. So, the scientific community has this question. Could neutrino be its own antiparticle? No, we will set this question as said because it is not much relevant for our exam. But we will see a little more on neutrinos. Neutrinos are the second most abundant particle in the universe. So, their properties have an important influence on the structure of the universe. These particles travel at near light speed. Now, how are they formed? They are formed from violent astrophysical events like exploding stars and gamma ray bursts. One interesting character of neutrinos is that they can pass through anything and everything. They can even pass through lid. If you hold your hand towards the sunlight for one second, about a billion neutrinos from the sun will pass through your hand. They have very little interaction with matter. So, this makes them incredibly difficult to detect. In order to detect neutrinos, we need very large and very sensitive detectors. Now comes the question. Why should we study neutrinos? See, I told you neutrinos interact very little with the matter around them, which means they can travel long distances without much interruptions. So, this character of neutrinos can be used in astronomy to study the different constituents of the universe. India also has a plan for a neutrino observatory in line. After this discussion, kindly search for India's quest for neutrino observatory. So, that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we cover the basics about neutrinos. Now, let us conclude this and take up the next news article. Look at this article. This question corner from science page of yesterday's newspaper attempts to answer the question, why do some people attract more mosquitoes than others? The answer to this question lies in the specialized receptors on the insects' noses. These receptors on mosquitoes' neurons have an important role in the insect's ability to identify people who present an attractive source of blood milk. Actually, mosquitoes detect order through their antenna. But detecting ability is fine-tuned by these receptors. So, variations in order, heat, humidity and CO2 are factors in attracting mosquitoes to some individuals more than others. For example, three different types of receptors namely, odorant, gustary and ionotropic receptors are found in the surface of the neurons in anaphylus gambia organs that detect order. Here, these anaphylus gambia is a mosquito which causes malaria. This is about the news article. So, in this context, let us quickly go through some of the important facts about malaria, its causes, its symptoms, the vaccine available and the steps taken by India to control the menace of malaria. Before getting into the discussion, I have highlighted the syllabus regarding this discussion. You can go through it. Now, let's start our discussion. See, malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by a various species of protozoic microorganism called plasmodium. Malaria is a disease caused by protozoan and protozoan are unicellular eukaryotic heterotropic organisms. Here, eukaryotes are organisms whose cells contain nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles. And heterotropism is an organism that cannot produce its own food. They eat other plants and animals for energy and nutrition. So, basically malaria is caused by a parasitic protozoan called plasmodium. There are four types of malaria parasite that infect humans. They are plasmodium falciparum, plasmodium vivax, plasmodium ovale and plasmodium malaria. Of these, the most common type of malaria is caused by plasmodium falciparum and it is also the most serious and the fatal kind of malaria. Now, let us quickly go through the lifestyle of the plasmodium parasite. The plasmodium enters the human body as sporoside through the bite of the infected female anaphyllus mosquito. Here, sporosides are nothing but a form of the parasite during which the parasites are infectious in nature. After entering the body, the parasites initially multiply within our liver cells. After that, they attack the red blood cells, resulting in the rupture or breaking down of the red blood cells. The rupture of the RBCs is associated with the release of a toxic substance called hemozoin. These hemozoins are only responsible for the chills and high fever that reoccurs every two to three days when you are affected by malaria. Now, how do these parasites transfer from one human to another? When the female anaphyllus mosquito bites an infected human, the parasite enters the mosquito's body along with the human blood that it is drinking. It is inside the mosquito's body the actual development and maturing of the parasite happens. The parasite produced in the human body reaches the intestine of the mosquito where the female and the male cell fertilize each other leading to the formation of sporozoite. On maturing, the sporozoite breaks out of the mosquito's intestine and migrate to the salivary gland of the mosquito. Once they reach the salivary gland of the mosquito, they wait till the mosquito bites another uninfected human and the process of infection and RBCs begin all over again. It is interesting to note that the malaria parasite requires two hosts that is humans and mosquitoes to complete its life cycle. The female anaphyllus mosquito is the vector for the transmission of the plasmodium parasite. There is an unanswerable question that goes like this. Which came first? Chickens or eggs? Like this question, there is no proper answer to the question which came first? An infected person or an infected mosquito? But the cycle goes on.  This is about the transmission of malaria. Moving on, let us see about the causes of malaria. There are many factors that cause malaria. The first and the most common cause is the one we just saw that is getting bitten by the malaria vector that is female anaphyllus mosquito. Other than these most common cause, there are other causes to malaria as well. They are use of shad and infected syringes, organ transplantation from an infected person, blood transfusion from an infected person, malaria transferring from an infected mother to her baby during childbirth. Here, you must note one thing. Malaria cannot be sexually transmitted and also malaria cannot transfer from one human to another like flu or cold through sputum or air particles. They can only transfer from mosquito bites or the other things that we just discussed. This is about the transmission of malaria. Moving on, let us see the symptoms of malaria. The symptoms of malaria are exhibited within 7 to 18 days of being infected.  And in severe case, malaria can be devastating because it can lead to seizure, coma and eventually death. Now, how to prevent this malaria? Actually, there are two ways to deal with malaria. First is to prevent the mosquito bite from happening, which is the preventive step or we can attack the parasites once they have infected the body. In the first method, people are advised to use mosquito nets and mosquito replants. This is to prevent infected vector that is the female anaphylosmosquito from biting a human. In the second method, that is the treatment method, there are two ways of treating malaria. One is natural way and other one is the use of vaccine. The natural way includes a chemical called quinine. Quinine is present in the bark of the chinkona tree. It is a form of drug called chloroquine has proven effective against malaria even though it is not a vaccine. And in case of vaccine, the most common one is the muscurix. Muscurix is an injectable vaccine targeting plasmodium falciparum. This vaccine was developed by GSK and it is the first and the only vaccine to show partial protection against malaria in young children. The active substance in muscurix is made up of proteins found on the surface of the plasmodium falciparum parasite. The vaccine aims to trigger the human immune system to defend against the first stages of malaria when the plasmodium falciparum parasite enters the human's bloodstream through a mosquito bite. It also helps protect against infection of liver that is hepatitis B virus. Other than the muscurix vaccine, the other vaccine that is being developed is the R21 or matrix M vaccine. This is about the prevention of malaria. See you have to know that India has a high incidence of malaria and it is committed to eliminate malaria by 2030. So India to reduce its disease burden has taken various steps to counter malaria. Now let us see the steps taken by India to counter malaria. The first one is the National Vector-Bond Disease Control Program. It was launched in 2003 by merging the National Anti-malaria Control Program, National Filaria Control Program and the KALASR control programs. Under the program, malaria control was integrated with other vector-bound disease as all these disease share common control strategies. After this, we initiated the National Strategic Plan for Malaria Elimination. The plan period was 2017 to 2020. Under the plan, the country has been stratified into four categories based on the malaria burden. The categories are 0, 1, 2, 1, 3. Each category has been given different targets to eradicate the disease. After that, in 2016, we formed the National Framework for Malaria Elimination. Under this framework, India plans to eliminate malaria by 2030. By eliminating malaria nationally, India is aiming to improve health, quality of life and address poverty in the country. The last one is the Malaria Elimination Research Alliance India, that is MIRA India. It is launched by Indian Council for Medical Research. It is a conglomeration of partners working on malaria control. The aim of this alliance is to harness and reinforce research in a coordinated way in order to achieve the impact of malaria elimination. So, these are the four important steps taken by India to eliminate the menace of malaria. And like I already said, India plans to eliminate malaria by 2030. So, that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw holistically about malaria. We covered everything. We covered from its types. We saw how we transfer from one human to another. We saw the symptoms. We saw the causes. We even saw the vaccines that are in development. And finally, we saw the steps taken by India to counter it. So, I hope this discussion was useful. So, with this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Have a look at these two articles displayed here. Here, the first article is taken from the editorial page, whereas the second article is taken from the text and context page. Both these articles are talking about the menstrual leave policies. These articles came in the backdrop of Supreme Court's direction to a petitioner who earlier filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court. The petition had sought the Supreme Court's direction to the government to frame rules for granting menstrual pain leaves for students and working women. The Supreme Court said that providing menstrual leaves falls under the policy matter of the government. So, the Supreme Court directed the petitioner to approach the Union Ministry of Human and Child Development to frame a policy on menstrual pain leave. This is the reason these two articles about menstrual leave policies made news today. Now, what we are going to do is this. We will first understand in brief about the points given in this editorial. Then, we will see in detail about the points provided in the text and context article. Now, we will first take the editorial article. The author of this editorial says that many barriers on the road to gender equality has been removed, but still there are many roadblocks. See, in India, the maternity benefit act was enacted by the parliament in 1961. This act has been abandoned from time to time to give women better benefits. For instance, paid maternity leave has been extended from 12 weeks to 26 weeks. This was a positive move. But when it comes to menstrual leave, there is no clear-cut policies or laws that are available in India. The author says that this is one of the roadblocks to gender inequality. Because of this issue only, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court now directed the petitioner to approach the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development to frame a policy on menstrual pain leave. Apart from the menstrual leave, there are some other problems that are acting as roadblocks to women empowerment. This includes lack of sanitation facility in schools and workplaces, mainly in the informal sector. Some studies found that the girls are dropping out from school mainly because there is no toilets in the schools. And according to the World Bank data, between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of working women dropped from 26 percentage to 19 percentage. So, the lack of basic sanitation facility is also another major problem that hinders the progress of women. So, the author says that the wider society and the government should take responsibility to ensure that all constraints on the road to gender equality must be removed. This is all about the editorial given here. Now, moving on, we will see about the points provided in the text and context article. Before that, the syllabus relevant to this topic is provided here. You can go through it. First, let us understand about the term menstrual leave. Menstrual leave refers to a set of policies that allow women employees or girls students to take leave when they are experiencing menstrual pain. If you take the workplace, menstrual leave refers to policies that allow working women for both paid and unpaid leave or time for rest. Now, moving on, let us see the data related to menstrual pain leave. Some studies are saying that more than half of women who menstruate experience pain for a couple of days in a month. But for some women, the pain is more than enough to hamper daily activities and productivity. In 2017, a survey was conducted among 32,000 women in Netherlands by the British Medical Council. The study found that 14% of the surveyed women had taken time off from work or school during their menstrual periods. Apart from this, some researchers estimated that women employees lost around 8.9 days worth of productivity every year due to menstrual cycle related issues. These data show the importance of granting menstrual leave to the women employees. Now, moving on, let us see the issues associated with menstrual leave. See, not every menstruating woman is in favor of menstrual leave. Some women are thinking that the menstrual leave will lead to employer discriminating against women. For example, earlier a petition was filed by a law student in the Supreme Court. This petition highlighted the potential issues with the menstrual leave. The law student said that if employers are compelled to grant menstrual pain leave, it may act as a disincentive for employers to engage women in their establishment. For this petition, the Supreme Court observed that this issue has a policy dimension and the Supreme Court left it to the government to decide on this issue. So, the discrimination by the employer against women is the major issue associated with menstrual leave. Now, moving on, let us see some of the global menstrual leave policies. On February 16th, Spain granted paid menstrual leave to workers. So, Spain became the first European country to do such action. The women workers in Spain now have the right to three days of paid menstrual leave in a month. And the leave may be extended to five days. Now, coming to Asia. In 1947, Japan introduced menstrual leave as part of their labor law. Then, Indonesia is also having menstrual leave policy. The policy states that women workers who are experiencing menstrual pain are not obligated to work on the first two days of their menstrual cycle. Apart from Indonesia, Philippines also granted two days of menstrual leave in a month to women. Now, coming to the African countries. In Africa, Zambia introduced one day of leave in a month to the menstruating women. The women workers also need not state the reason or to produce medical certificate for claiming the leave. This is all about the global menstrual leave policies. Now, what is the case in India? In India, the states such as Bihar and Kerala are the only two that have introduced menstrual leave policies for women. In 1992, the Bihar government has introduced its menstrual leave policy. This policy allows women employees to avail two days of paid menstrual leave every month. And recently, Kerala announced that it will grant menstrual and maternity leaves for students in universities. Apart from this, there are no major initiative for menstrual leave in our country. To conclude, the Indian government should frame nationwide policies to grant menstrual leave to girls, students and women employees. This will help to bring more women to the workforce and thereby increasing gender equality in our country. That is all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw in detail about the menstrual leave policy and the issues associated with it. With this, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this news article. It says that Google LLC has refused to share crucial details to track the creators of Wonderloan mobile app. This app was available on Google Play Store and it cheated its users by threatening to share their private moments on social media. In this context, let us learn about digital lending, its significance and the issues associated with it. So, what is this digital lending? Digital lending is the process of giving and recovering loans through web platforms or mobile apps. India's digital lending market has seen a significant rise over the years. Believe me or not, the digital lending value increased from 33 billion US dollars in financial year 2015 to 150 billion US dollars in financial year 2020. This is a rapid growth, right? Even banks which were involved in traditional lending has launched their own digital lending platform so that they can tap the digital lending market. Now, what are the significance of digital lending? First is obviously financial inclusion. Digital lending helps in meeting the huge credit need that to particularly in the micro enterprises and for the low-income consumer segment in India. Secondly, it will reduce borrowing from informal channels and it also simplifies the process of borrowing. Thirdly, it is very time-saving. It decreases the time spent on filing loan applications in banks. So, digital lending platform could cut the overhead cost significantly. All sounds good but there are some issues with this kind of platforms. These platforms charge excessive rates of interest and besides this there are additional hidden charges as well. Then, they adopt unacceptable and high-handed recovery methods. For example, certain lending apps are collecting our phone contacts, media and gallery etc. and they use this to harass borrowers in case of delay in repayment. There are also data privacy issues as reported in this news article. See, while accepting the terms and conditions of these platforms, we as customers are generally not conscious of the fact that we are signing away our privacy rights. These companies collect many private data including our financial records. Some digital lenders also misuse agreements signed by the users. They make use of the nuanced details of the agreement to cheat the customers. These are some of the issues associated with digital lending process. So, that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw what is digital lending, the significance of digital lending and the issues associated with digital lending. Now, let us conclude this and take up the next news article. Take a look at this text and context article. It reports about the recent heat waves which has been recorded over Delhi this month. It further deals with the relation between El Nino and La Nina with the heat waves developing in India. The article distinguishes the heat waves occurring in India in two types, one occurring over the northern and the northwestern part of our country and the other occurring in the peninsular part of the country. This is about the article given here. In this context, let us see the points discussed in this article in detail. The syllabus regarding this discussion is highlighted here for your reference. You can go through it. Before seeing the contents present in the article, let us first learn about the term heat waves. The heat wave is a period of abnormally high temperature which lasts over three days in a particular region. According to the Indian Metallurgical Department, a region is said to be under a heat wave if its ambient temperature deviates by at least 4.62 6.4 degrees Celsius from its long term average. Here note that heat waves can be declared if the maximum temperature of the particular region crosses 45 degrees Celsius for plains and 37 degrees Celsius for hills. This is about the term heat waves. The article divides heat waves occurring in India into two types. One is the heat waves occurring in the northern and the northwestern part of India. While the second type is the heat waves occurring over the peninsula part of India. This distinction is primarily based on the differences in the causes and the effects of the heat waves occurring in both these regions. Note that heat waves can be caused as a result of two major conditions. One is due to the flow of warm air from elsewhere while the other condition is due to local climate induced warming of the area. This is how heat waves can occur in a specified region. In India, heat waves are predominantly reported as a result of warm air masses moving into it from adjacent areas. Now we will specifically look at the heat waves affecting the northern and northwestern part of our country. The air masses causing heat waves in northern and northwestern part of India is generally due to air masses that originate far away from India. The north and northwestern heat waves are typically formed as a result of air masses that come from 800 to 1600 kilometer away. On the way, these air masses cover West Asia and the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan which result in the air masses becoming drier and warmer. The Arabian Sea due to its relatively high temperature when compared to other seas present in the same latitude also contribute to the increase in temperature of the incoming air masses. This is how severe heat waves are formed in the northern and northwestern regions of our country. This mainly occurs during the time of March, April and May. Now let us see about the heat waves of Peninsular India. The heat waves over Peninsular India on the other hand arrive from the seas which are closer. These air masses travel only about 200 to 400 kilometers. As a result of this, the heat waves of Peninsular India are less intense when compared to the northern heat waves. This is all about the heat waves that occur over Peninsular India. Now before concluding our discussion, let us see about the relation between El Nino, La Nina and the heat waves of India. One important point to note here is that during the years of El Nino, heat waves are generally limited to the northern and northwestern part of our country. Peninsular heat waves are uncommon during the El Nino years. Also note that heat waves which occur during El Nino years is generally harsher when compared to the heat waves that occur during the La Nina years. This is how El Nino and La Nina differently impact the intensity of heat waves that occur in India. With this, we have come to the end of the discussion. Through this discussion, we came to know about heat waves. What are the two types of heat waves affecting India? And finally, we ended our discussion by seeing how El Nino and La Nina differently impact the intensity of heat waves that occur in India. Now let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this article. Yesterday, in his 98th episode of Monkey Path, our Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that experiments like the Esanjivani application had ensured medical services to people living in remote areas of our country. So, what is this Esanjivani application? Let us know more about them in the news article discussion. Esanjivani is the first-ever online outpatient consultation service offered by the Government of India to the citizens. According to the Government, this is the first time the Government of any country is offering a service of this kind to its citizens. The scheme was started in November 2019. It is run by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The service is also called the National Dairy Concentration Service. Its aim is to provide healthcare services to patients in their home itself. So, using this portal, people can consult doctors only. This is a completely web-based system from patient registration to downloading of e-prescription. This is a completely free service launched by the Government and the doctors of the portal are impaneled from the state services by each state Government. This telemedicine system is being deployed nationally under Aishman Bharat scheme of Government. The Esanjivani OPD, that is outpatient portal in the system, are developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, which is located in Mughali. A few states like Jharkhand, Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu have started offering specialized doctor consultation service also. This service is also available on the mobile application. The process of consultation is given here for your reference. You can go through it. See, the success of Esanjivani lies very apparent because the application has crossed more than 8 crore teleconsultations. So, that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw some of the important facts about the Esanjivani portal. Now, let us conclude this discussion and take up the next news article. Look at this article. It says that the Supreme Court has directed the government to submit a report on the steps taken to end manual scavenging. So, in this discussion, we will try to understand about the practice of manual scavenging in India and we will also try to understand about the judgment given by the court in the Safaikarmachari Andolan and others versus Union of India case. See, manual scavenging is the practice of removing human excreta by hand from severs and septic tanks. This is an inhuman sanitary practice. India has banned this practice under the prohibition of employment as manual scavengers and their rehabilitation act 2013. This act bans the use of any individual from manual cleaning, carrying, disposing and handling human excreta. However, due to lack of enforcement of the act and exploitation of unskilled laborers, the practice is still prevalent in India. An important judgment with respect to manual scavenging in India is the Safaikarmachari Andolan and others versus Union of India case. In this case, a red petition was filed by the petitioner as a public interest litigation. It asked for the writ of madamers to be issued to the Union of India, Union territories and the state governments. The petitioners asked for a strict enforcement and implementation of the employment of manual scavengers and construction of dry electorates prohibition act 1993. So, the court directed the government to rehabilitate manual scavengers mentioned under the act in a timely manner. Further, the court directed the government to add some provision with regard to rehabilitation of manual scavengers. Here, first with respect to sewer deaths, the court said that entering sewer lines without safety gear should be made a crime even in emergency situations. If such death occur, compensation of 10 lakh should be given to the family of the deceased. Then with respect to railways, the court said that railways should take time bound strategy to end manual scavenging on the tracks. This is because Indian railways is the largest employer of manual scavenger in the country. Then the court also said that the persons released from manual scavenging should not face hurdles to receive their legitimate due under the law. Then Safaikarmacha human should be provided with support for dignified livelihood in accordance with their choice of livelihood schemes. Then the court also held the compensation given by the government must include one-time cash assistance, scholarship to their children's for education purposes, residential plot with financial assistance for construction of houses, job training under monthly stipend, subsidy and loan to one family member for taking alternative job on sustainable basis, compensation of 10 lakhs to scavengers that have died during sewer work, rehabilitation based on principle of natural justice. So, these are the conditions for compensation given by the Supreme Court in the Safaikarmachary and others with union of India case judgment. The court also directed the government of the states and union territories to ensure compliance of the provisions of the act. So, that's all regarding this discussion. In this discussion, we saw about the Safaikarmachary versus union of India case judgment given by the Supreme Court. With this, we have come to the end of the news article discussion session. Now, let us take up the practice problems questions. We have six practice problems questions today. Let us see them one by one. Let us take up the first question. This is a previous year question. It appeared in the 2019 UPSC problems paper. It is a three statement questions. We have to find the correct statement. The question is about maternity benefit amendment act 2017. Let us take up the first statement. Pregnant women are entitled for three months of pre-delivery and three months of post-delivery paid leave. This statement is incorrect because the maternity benefit amendment act 2017 provides for 26 weeks that is six months of paid maternity leave for women employees. The maternity leave can be availed eight weeks or two months before the expected date of delivery. It is not three months before delivery. So, statement one is wrong. Moving on to the second statement. Enterprises with crutches must allow the mother minimum six crutch visits daily. This statement is also incorrect. The act mandates for establishing crutch facility at organizations that employ 50 or more employees. As per the act, women employees are permitted to visit the crutches four times during the day. It is not six times. So, statement two is also incorrect. Moving on to the third statement. Women with two children get reduced entitlements. This statement is correct. Women who are expecting delivery after having two children can avail only 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. But up to two children, the woman can avail 26 weeks of paid maternity leave. So, statement one is incorrect. Statement two is incorrect and statement three is correct. So, the correct answer here is option C three only. Moving on to the second question. This is also a three statement question. Three statements about NBFC is given. We have to find the correct statement. Look at the first statement. NBFCs are incorporated under banking regulation act 1949. This statement is wrong because NBFCs are incorporated under the Companies Act 1956. So, statement one is incorrect. Look at the second statement. NBFCs doesn't need a bank license to operate. This statement is correct. And look at the third statement. NBFCs cannot issue demand draft. This statement is also correct. NBFCs cannot issue demand draft. They cannot have savings account and also they cannot issue checks or debit cards. So, statement three is also correct. So, the correct answer here is option D two and three only. Moving on to the third question. This is a two statement question about UPI light. Let us take up the first statement. Users can transact in offline mode through this service. This statement is correct. This is the primary objective behind the introduction of UPI light. Using UPI light, users can transact in offline mode. Moving on to the second statement. Under this new mechanism, UPI transaction of up to rupees 1000 can be made by users without entering the pin. This statement is incorrect. The option for paying without a pin has been introduced for payments which are within rupees 200 only, not 1000. So, statement two is incorrect. So, the correct answer here is option A one only. See, there was also another new type of payment service introduced by UPI called UPI 123. Now, your job is to search the internet and find out what is this new service that is UPI 123 all about. Okay. Now, moving on to the next question. This is a two statement question about E Sanjeevani OPD. Let us take up the first statement. It is a doctor to doctor telemedicine system offered nationally by health and wellness centers from medical colleges and district hospitals. This statement is incorrect. Actually, E Sanjeevani platforms support two types of telemedicine. That is E Sanjeevani which is doctor to doctor and E Sanjeevani OPD which is patient to doctor. Here the question is about E Sanjeevani OPD which is patient to doctor and not doctor to doctor as provided in this statement. So, statement one is incorrect. Moving on to the second statement. E Sanjeevani OPD is an initiative of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare under Ayushman Bharat scheme. From our discussion, we know that this statement is incorrect. E Sanjeevani OPD is an initiative of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. So, statement one is incorrect and statement two is correct. So, the correct answer is two only. Moving on to the next question. Let me read out the question. Swach Bharat mission urban was launched by which of the following. This is a very easy question. The correct answer here is Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Moving on to the last question. This question is based on our neutrinos discussion. This is a quiz question for you today. Interested aspirants can post the answer for this question in the comment section. The main questions based on today's discussion are displayed here. Interested aspirants can write the answers and post them in the comment section. If you like today's video, like, comment and share it with your friends. For more updates regarding UPSC preparation, subscribe to Shankar IS Academy's YouTube channel. And thank you for listening.


OK. Good morning everyone. Welcome to another day in Davos. My name is Dominic Warray. I am the head of public private partnerships here at the World Economic Forum and we have a little kind of media briefing for you on climate change. You'll have noticed in the program for Davos in 2017 in our global risk reports and in other products we've created in and around the annual meeting this year that climate change and action on climate change is a key theme. We have a changing political context in the international sphere so there are some very interesting rhythms that are going on in the global decision making process and I'm delighted with the panel that we have for you here today to perhaps discuss their reflections on some of these issues, the importance of climate change action, and to look to the year ahead and see what might be the most important trends and things to focus on. We are joined this morning by Patricia Espinosa, who is the Executive Secretary of the United Framework Convention on Climate Change, and if you're looking for anybody who's at the apex of everything that's going on internationally on this topic, Patricia is your person. We're also joined by Lord Nicola Stern, the President of the British Academy. Mae'r gwrthodau cyforfod yw'r amser maen nhw'n gweld eich dweud y dyfodol o'r reportau ddiwedd y 2007, ac mae'n 10 oed bwysig. Gweld eich dweud, mae'r reisio'r unrhyw ymddangos o'r ffordd mwyn i'n gweithio i gael eu cyfnod, ac mae'n gweithio i'n gweithio i gael ei ffordd. And then also by Jennifer Morgan, the Executive Director of Greenpeace International, who as an organisation probably need no introduction one of the foremost campaigners on climate justice, climate action that we have on this planet. So a great spread of public sector, civil society and leading intellectual, academic and scientific thought for you. So with no further ado, let's jump into the conversation and we'll start maybe with you. Some people might say given some of the changes politically that we've seen recently that maybe there's a weakening of political interest globally on climate change that Paris has solved the problem back in 2015 and we're all moving on to other issues. Do you sense that there's a lessening of momentum on climate change amongst the countries and governments you're dealing with or is in fact momentum growing on this topic? Thank you. Thank you Dominic and thank you all and it's great to have the opportunity to speak about this very important issue that as we all know has been given a very predominant role in this session of the World Economic Forum and I think it has, they have done so and it's happening like that for the very good reason that we continue to be affected by the effects of climate change and climate change produces loss of lives, loss of livelihoods really a lot of suffering by mostly the most vulnerable people. So fortunately actually what we are seeing after Paris is not only momentum has been maintained but I would say there is a lot more enthusiasm and there is clear tendencies that are coming up not only from the side of governments which by the way they have made a record in international politics by managing to get the Paris Agreement entering into force in less than one year. It's a very complicated and very complex agreement and it was ratified in a record time as of today over 125 countries have ratified it. So that's a very clear signal that momentum has been kept. In international politics also there have been some significant agreements reached at ICOE on hydrofluorocarbons as well. So I would say that in that regard it's very clear the momentum and the spirit of Paris has been maintained not only on the side of governments but also on the side of business and civil society in Marrakech and probably against the expectations or the fears. We did manage to get a lot of enthusiasm. We managed to get the Marrakech partnership for global action being launched with an incredible number of initiatives and commitments being announced by business and even groups of individuals. So I would say Dominic that fortunately we are in a situation where people are realizing that climate change is about the well-being of people. Businesses are realizing also that climate change is about competitiveness. It's about opportunities and at the political level we have a scenario where there is really broad agreement that we need to continue to be working on this agenda. That's fantastic. Well we see certainly at the World Economic Forum more interest than ever before from business leaders, investors, technologists and governments to discuss the issue and get into some detail on the topic. If I may, what's the agenda for the year ahead for you at the UNFCCC? There must be a lot of work to do. There is a lot of work to do. We will have the next conference in Bonn. Bonn not as Germany as a venue but Bonn as a venue of the UNFCCC secretariat and it's going to be presided over by Fiji. So this is already a very special feature, very novel development, a small island country presiding over this huge conference where the secretariat of course will provide all of the support it is required. What do we need to do there? We need to continue working on what we call the rule book of the Paris Agreement which is the manual. What do we need to make the Paris Agreement operational? What are going to be the methodologies that we will use in order to make measurements? How are we going to ensure transparency? What are going to be the provisions, the prerequisites for providing support in terms of financing, in terms of technology to developing countries? So all of that needs to be done. At the same time we need to keep a movement and by movement I would say we need to get the action agenda continuing and getting all the different stakeholders engaged because this is an agenda where governments alone cannot deliver. We need really the participation of business of civil society, of individuals, of scientists, of everybody in the world. Thank you. Lord Stern, if I can turn to you, you're well-renowned as one of the leading economists in this space and you've done some amazing work recently with the new climate economy on the infrastructure opportunity that the climate change challenge offers. But I guess also you've seen in the World Economic Forum meeting these past few days there's a lot of other discussions around economics as well on the challenge of growth and inclusivity. I wonder what your reflections are on these various strands of the agenda. Thank you. Thank you Dominic and Nick will do. The story of climate and sustainability, inclusivity and growth is one story. They are intertwined, mutually supportive. If you look at what's involved in climate action sustainability, tremendous amount of it is around efficiency and that's good for growth and living standards. A tremendous amount is about cities that function well, cities where you can move and breathe and be productive. Sustainable infrastructure is at the heart of the story of sustainability over time. We will more than double our infrastructure in the next 20 years in the world, more than double. Is that infrastructure going to look like the old one or is it going to be very different? If it looks like the old one we're in deep trouble because we will not then reduce emissions at the pace we have to. To be well below two degrees which was our Paris target and very sensibly so because if we're two degrees and above the world becomes a dangerous place. So if you look at the bits of the story of what's involved in a much more sustainable climate friendly world you can see the reasons I've described that this is the growth story. This is a story of rising living standards of well-being more generally but also a productivity even in a sort of rather conventional and not very imaginative sense of productivity that we have when we sometimes think about growth. This is the growth story of the future. Infrastructure investment will give you the extra demand we desperately need now and of course you would want that done in a way that is investing in the growth story of the future. In the medium term you drive innovation, creativity, discovery of the classic Schumpeterian kind. That's the medium term growth story and there is no high carbon long term growth story and the attempt at that would self destruct on the awful environment it would create. This is the growth story in the shorter term, the medium term and the only one in the longer term. So if you talk about sustainability, climate friendliness, climate responsibility and growth I hope what I've said makes it very clear that these are mutually intertwined, supportive. Actually you can't have one without the other. What about inclusivity? Well cities that function well where you can move around are very important for poor people. They usually travel further for their work than richer people. If you look at rural areas, there are, depends how you measure it, probably a billion or more people without access to power in the world. If we can do that in a way that gets them very quickly, for example decentralized solar energy, they are much more able to participate in the economy. The children are much more likely to be educated as they can study in the evening. That particularly affects girls and women who are usually tasked with finding the fuel if there is no other form of energy. So the inclusivity story, I've just given a couple of examples, one city and one more rural, but it's much more beyond that. Solar panels need to be put somewhere, somebody's got to do that. That's quite labour intensive activity, maybe quite capital intensive to make them, but the job of putting them in the right places involves labour as well, much more than you find in fossil fuels. So wherever you look, you see that intertwining of growth, inclusivity and sustainability or a climate responsibility and that's absolutely fundamental because all these three things matter and the fact that they're self supporting, in fact you can't have in any long term way or medium term way one without the other, is a fundamental importance and we have to speak of them together because that's the way the world comes to us and that's the way we can make the world. That's fascinating that really kind of turns on its head this perhaps rather old fashioned idea that anybody who wants to tackle climate change is putting a break on the economic growth and innovation. What you're saying is quite the reverse, there's inclusivity, there's innovation, there's new technologies, there's access to energy, there's jobs. We're not talking about forever, we're talking about the next 30, 40, 50 years where we have to break the link between economic activity on the one hand and emissions on the other and that period of the next 40 or 50 years which will shape the future of the planet is a story of very exciting growth and change and inclusivity. I'm not telling you that growth goes on for hundreds of years, I don't know, but we do know that if we are not responsible about the climate it gets stopped pretty quickly. I have to ask Nick, are you hopeful, do you feel more optimistic than when you produced the report 10 or 11 years ago? I'm enormously optimistic about what we can do. If you see how the world has changed in the last 10 years or so, who would have thought that the cost of a solar panel would have come down by a factor of around 10, divided by 10 roughly speaking, maybe more in that time period. Who would have thought that the major car manufacturers of the world would be making plug-in hybrids or electric cars? The advances we've seen in buildings and insulation and what we're starting to see in energy storage and so on. That has been an amazing place of technical progress and it shows that if you move something up the social and economic priorities the creativity of people is quite remarkable. I mean, HIV aids moved up because it forced itself on us and there was a very powerful, turned out to be a very difficult problem actually but in terms of the medical side of it. There was a tremendous response. If we move the issues up, things happen. I've been astonished by the way in which technical progress has moved. We have Bertrand Picard here. Who would have thought he'd be flying around the world on a solar aeroplane? He would have thought that 10 years ago but I'm not sure the rest of us would have thought that 10 years ago. It is amazing what's possible and we're only beginning. That I think has been very exciting. The climate side is more worrying than it was 10 years ago. Many of the things that we knew were happening are happening quicker than we thought and that is really worrying. The temperature story has gone on being a bit more powerful. Technology better than we thought. The climate science is still more worrying than we thought and the political will, it's varied. But what we, it's been slower than I'd hoped, but what we saw at Paris in December 2015 was quite remarkable. Let me bring in Jennifer Morgan if I can as the head of Greenpeace. The climate story is worrying, Nick Stern says, so perhaps there's some illustrations of where we seem to be at in terms of how worried we should be. This idea of the movement that one needs to make it happen, your perspectives on where we are on that from civil society and the great campaigns that are led to really force this into the agenda and make people not only take it seriously but unlock the innovation and the opportunity that has been described by our other panellists. Absolutely, it's great to be here and be on the panel and share some of the thoughts of the supporters that all stand behind me as the head of Greenpeace. I think one trend to note and then where we are, I think climate change is starting to get to the point where it needs to be, which is front and center of every conversation. And if I think about before Paris, it was kind of an environmental issue over there, I feel that Paris helped it become part of the core that everyone needs to look at. If I think about, I was here two years ago in the climate change conversation, which was I think an attempt on the other side and now as you noted and I have noted that climate change is a discussion that is in many of the conversations here. So it really is though about the pace and the scale of the change and perhaps next year we can have the whole thing be about climate change because I think it is so intrinsic to everything and the risk that were pointed out in the report as being top risk on the implementation of mitigation and adaptation. So can we get there? Okay, we get that this is a massive problem and opportunity, but what are we doing? I think people get it more than ever because it's impacting their daily lives. And I see it both on the level of urgency. For example, you have right now people, whether it be students in Oregon, whether it be I'm meeting tomorrow with the Swiss grannies. The Swiss grannies is an amazing group of elderly women who are taking their government court for their lack of implementation, lack of action on climate change. They're here tomorrow, I'm going outside to meet them. You have Filipino who suffered from the typhoon who have gone to the Human Rights Commission in the Philippines. That commission has now written to all of the carbon majors asking them for their plans on climate change. They are continuing that work. You also, though, see our ship, the Rainbow Warrior, was on its way to Marrakesh, a Sun Unitsus tour. Tremendous hope, tremendous action of people all the way started in Beirut in a part of the world when wouldn't necessarily think that solar is real. And mayors and schools and moms and dads are all working to make that possible because they see it. It's affordable. It's moving forward. And I think the other thing about the job side of things and the movement is, as Nick said, the jobs are real and there are a lot of jobs in the solar industry. They have to keep moving forward on bringing them in and they're very job intensive. But also I think what we're working on is to find a just transition for the jobs that need to transition away. And I think that's a very important thing and Greenpeace is very committed to that, working with the labor unions to make that part of the justice story real. That level of deep determination in the public along with things like showing up in the streets around certain things, pushing for this and that. But I think the level of creativity that I see of our supporters and many, many others is important and I would even go to say that the movement is every all of us. Because if I look at the 630 companies and investors that signed a letter to the new Trump administration saying keep climate front and center, if I look at the mayors that came together at the C40 conference who are moving forward, they get cities. This is real. This is our air. This is the way people get to work. This is our children's health. So I think that if you combine that then with President Xi Jinping's speech yesterday, no one's mentioned that. But I think that was quite a remarkable moment and a very clear statement from the Chinese president that China is moving forward. This is what they see at the center of their economic development and they see a responsibility on the Paris agreement. So it's not fast enough or big enough yet and that's what we're after. We have to peak emissions. They're going in a decent way but by 2020 and have a rapid decline after that there's opportunity in that disruption and in that change. But everyone here needs to have internalized that and go back home and think how am I going to make that possible in my life and in the corporation or the government where I'm working. I just want to pick up on the point which Jennifer underlined just at the end there. The issue isn't any longer about the direction of change. That argument I think now is an argument that people understand and they embrace and with enthusiasm it's not just a fear which is well founded about what happens with unmanaged climate change. It's also the opportunity of developing, growing, doing things in a different way that's so attractive. That I think is increasingly shared around the world and it's reflected in the kinds of examples we've given. That's the direction of change. What's worrying is the pace and the pace of change is simply not fast enough. As I said a little earlier, if we get in the next 20 years our infrastructure investment wrong, that will be more, we're putting down more than the infrastructure that we have already in that time. If we get that wrong then any chance of two degrees is lost. To get infrastructure investment moving strongly and in the right direction in the next 20 years means moving quickly now. It takes time to build these things. Those decisions have to be taken now. The concern for infrastructure around the world and its centrality is growing. When, for example, President Trump said he's very keen on infrastructure investment, that's surely a good thing. I hope that that infrastructure investment will be modern, clean, smart and resilient. Would you want it to be outdated, dirty, not so smart and fragile? That wouldn't seem to make much sense. How we do this infrastructure investment, which is increasingly accepted as a strong way forward, how we do it is absolutely critical. Thank you, and I saw in terms of the pace issue, and President, you are nodding vigorously. We'll come back to you in a second. Is there any kind of questions or ideas from the briefing? Just let us know who you are for the purpose of the... Javier Blas from Bloomberg News. I thought it was very interesting that it has taken about 24 minutes of the briefing to talk about Trump. If you think about Paris, the US administration was one of the leading forces in getting the Paris Agreement done. Now you have a much different administration with President-elect, soon to be President, that has so much agreement about the issue of climate change, believing that it's not real. Secretary of State is coming from the oil industry, head of the Environmental Protection Agency who wants to dismantle more or less everything that has been done over the last eight years. Ahead of the Department of Energy, who comes from oil producing estate. Patricia, were you telling us that the momentum is there and nothing has changed? I use with all of this. I find it difficult to believe that the political momentum has not suffered at all. Where are you getting this optimism? If I may also for Jennifer, more or less the same question. How do you see now the political momentum? Can the pace of change that we have achieved over the last few years on climate change continue if you have a US administration that is not playing a leading role as it was in the past? Thank you. Yes, I would say that really stating and firmly believing that the momentum has been maintained does not mean that we don't recognize that there are challenges ahead. And where do I get this optimism? Well, I think that the signals have been very clear. Not only the agreement entered into force, so it's not a legal obligation for all of us, for us in the secretariat, of course in terms of helping countries to comply with their commitments. But it has continued to gather ratifications by countries. So even every week we are getting new countries that are ratifying. So that now we have over 125 ratifications. Just a little over one year after the agreement was signed. It's really a record. So that's to me a very clear signal. We recognize the many challenges that lie ahead. And we, of course, like Nick is saying, we really firmly believe that the process of transformation, the movement has started. Yes, we need this movement to be going at a much faster pace than it has happened until now. We need much more financing to be mobilized in order to allow countries to be able to comply with the commitments that they have made and are willing to fulfill. And we need to be much more efficient in getting the different entities together that can help each other and support each other. But I did want to emphasize, and going back to Nick's and Jenny's first point, that one opportunity that I also see that makes me optimistic about what we can do is the fact that we not only have the Paris Agreement and the NDCs, the goals that are in the Paris Agreement, we also have the sustainable development goals. So, and I believe those have to be seen and addressed together. It's just one agenda on the real, on the ground, in the real world, there is only one development agenda that has to incorporate fully the climate change element.  Thank you. Running a little bit out of time, but I guess that was the question of the moment from the floor, Jennifer, so maybe the last word is yours on picking up on that. Sure. So, of course, we recognize that the fossil fuel industry is being proposed to come into the U.S. Cabinet. In fact, it was a Greenpeace young supporter who stood up at the Tillerson hearing and asked other senators to be brave and to reject his nomination. So, and I, but I think two quick things that have happened since the election that give me the hope that you're asking me about. And on the governmental level, what I have seen, number one is yesterday's speech by Xi Jinping, very clear signal. Number two, Chancellor Merkel's G20 agenda has climate change and sustainability front and center. Number three, the climate vulnerable forum at Marrakesh, which is a group of 49 countries most vulnerable to climate change, has said they are moving forward 100% renewables, which is the infrastructure we need for that. And they're ready to do more in knowing full well who the next president of the United States is going to be. And domestically, it's just important to know that it doesn't happen from one day to the next that a president comes in and changes these things. The Clean Air Act has been in place since Richard Nixon's time. Environmental organizations are ready to sue if they are not implemented. And there is so much support around the country for action from all of these communities, the business community, mayors, et cetera. So, yes, we are ready and but I think also we are working united with people from all over the country in the world who are ready to move forward.  Thank you. So that doesn't sound like a cop out to me at all, which was the rather provocative title of this media briefing. Thank you, panellists, for that discussion. I'm sure there will be some follow up afterwards. And thank you for watching and listening through the social media. That's the end of our media briefing on climate change at the World Economic Forum annual meeting 2017. Thank you.