So we're gonna start by sharing our screens real quick just to make sure that the system's working and that you know that you are on the right session. We're gonna be speaking about hyper ledger indie in areas and the spatial web for nested accounting, nested climate accounting. So if this is a presentation you're after, then you are in the right room. And while we wait for people to come into the presentation, I'll perhaps we start by doing a quick introduction of myself and David. My name is Martin Weinstein. I am the founder and executive director of the Open Earth Foundation. We are a nonprofit dedicated to the intersection of emerging digital technology and open source and open digital infrastructure, but with a very ambitious goal of working and thinking through planetary scale solutions to our most existential environmental challenges, climate being of course a very per vertical on that, but little by little also focusing on biodiversity. I'm also the founder and director of the Open Innovation Lab at Yale University. Both Open Earth Foundation and Yale Open Lab are members of the hyper ledger community. And if you don't know about it, there's the hyper ledger climate action and accounting special interest group, which I also found it last year. And now it's led by some extremely active and coordinated chairs. So I definitely engaged that if you're interested in the intersection of hyper ledger and climate that you check out the special interest group. And with that, I'll pass it on to David for his introduction. Everyone, my name is David Thompson. I'm the director of integration at versus versus.io. We have developed a core technology in the networking, a computer networking space called the hyper spatial transaction protocol, along with the hyper spatial modeling language that we've partnered with the IEEE to standardize that we will be formally launching in July. And one of the key applications and use cases that we've been supporting and driving is working very closely with Martine, collaborating around nested climate accounting. So I'm very, very excited to be here. And thank you all so much. Great. So I'll thank you, David. I'll kick it off by giving also some introduction for the run of show today. I'll give a quick introduction to a project that we've been incubating both at Yale and the open earth foundation called open climate. Highly ambitious vision to create an integrated climate accounting system, give some background knowledge on climate accounting for everyone to drop their head around it. And then David, I'll pass it on to David to talk a bit about the spatial web and some backgrounds on how the ideas of our power credentials fall into that. And we'll talk a bit about a prototype and pile that we did it last year and even mentioned some of the exciting ongoing opportunities for this year. But really we're interested in creating a Q and A as we're always looking for establishing communities of collaboration. And I'll start by showing a bit of the level of complexity when we started creating a framework for an integrated accounting system now framed as open climate. And there's obviously a lot of moving parts but the vision is to be able to have digital agreements and consensus in the flow of information between the state of the planet, earth system state that can relate specifically to the carbon budget, how much CO2 we can still put in the atmosphere before 1.5 degree warming happens. What's the state of the world system registry? So how much are countries, sub-national actors, non-state actors emitting and what's the pledge that they make to do? How to certify climate actions, whether that's emissions and in a context as often referred as MRV, modern reporting and verification, huge important opportunity for the digitization of that and automation of that through IoT data and smart contracts. And when one verifies emissions or mitigations or adaptation actions, that gets ascertained properly under this protocol and that asset, let's say a tokenized data information can also be moved and traded. So it moves into climate markets and all of that information needs to trickle into climate finance by 2030, we should be pouring $4 trillion of capital to be able to decarbonize our economy. So it's very important that we do this in a way that it's going to work because the stakes are so high that if we don't proper set up our digital systems to align with us, we won't meet our climate goals. So what is nested climate accounting in many ways is of course, what it sounds, but when I was talking about these assets of data, whether it's an emission or a mitigation could be units, it's very relevant to think about the architecture of how non-state actors and let's say such as corporations and sub-national governments, they're the way that they manage their carbon inventory could roll up to the national inventory. This would simplify, but also help a connection between the non-state actors and state actors to be part of the Paris Agreement. At the international level, that's a big part of what happens is the Paris Agreement is between countries and the UN, but where do corporations and sub-national governments fit in? So by creating jurisdictional boundaries, this is one of the things that we've been wanting to explore and this has been a wicked problem for many years. So what we present here is a bit of exploration last year and a lot of work ongoing to continue those efforts this year. The second part about open climate is the search for technology that helps us create interoperable climate units, a common language on how we talk about climate. Again, the climate unit could be either positive carbon, negative carbon, but there needs to be a methodology of how that was defined and even a certification of quality so that that could end up being as we know in accounting either credits or debits. And when we talk about net zero, let's say you know of a company that has a net zero goal, well, essentially that is an accounting statement, right? Credits and debits must balance themselves. And this has been a lot of the work that we've been looking at how to create that level of interoperability and trusted interactions to make these visions possible. The third, finally important architecture piece of the research is then when we have interoperability, when we have jurisdictional context to this, can this help integrate climate markets? Because the assets that I mentioned can be moved around, it could be traded. And this is of course a hugely booming area. The voluntary carbon market world has grown a lot in the last couple of years so that emission reductions can happen in-house within our organization, but also could be sourced elsewhere. So hopefully that obviously there's a lot there to unpack, but it's to give you a vision of open climate. And if you probably need a primer, a bit of where this sits within the broader climate accounting world, I'll just explain that what we will talk about today is mostly around carbon accounting, which means emissions and mitigation, but that's not all of accounting. Adaptation measures, how organizations, individuals and countries prepare for a global world. How do we account for pledges and to create accountability towards those pledges? And then how much money we move around in the system? Those are very important climate relative accounting that don't relate to carbon. In the market space, we have the voluntary carbon market. If you've ever tried to offset your flight, that's normally where that lies. You are totally doing it on a voluntary basis, but there are compliance mechanisms that subnational actors have, such as renewable energy certificates for utilities, national level and international. The most important international climate market has been the Kyoto Protocol and the clean development mechanism within it. But how does markets fit into the Paris Agreement? That also becomes very important. One of the things that we were looking at from a research standpoint is how do we draft the negotiations for climate markets in the context of Paris? How can technologies like hyper ledger, particularly the use of decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials and trusted ledgers can help in the mechanism of preventing double counting in climate markets? And that is still under negotiation. So it's very important that from the technology, open source technology world, we get to the United Nations, the conference of the parties to inform the capabilities that we have. So one of the demos that we'll prototype that we will showcase at the end of this and we'll point to a video that we'll talk through is actually to look at the North America as a blueprint of how we could address some of these issues globally. And let's just say something as simple as a renewable energy project that produces of course clean megawatt hours. That gets straight translated into a renewable energy certificate, an asset that says one megawatt hour of clean energy was produced. And that's a sign to someone, but you can have buyers. In fact, there's regulation to require certain utilities that have to have a certain amount of racks. Now, what happens within a North American context of markets, how they are laid out when you've got buyers and sellers in different markets? So what we'll showcase in terms of nested accounting is that by creating robust assetization of a unit, let's say a renewable energy certificate and also the associated carbon attached to a geofence region, let's say a subnational region, it could allow that if you move between one market to the other, then you would have to create what are called the corresponding adjustments at the inventory of each jurisdiction. And it could help between states within the US or regions within the North American market, but it also, the same architecture would work internationally. So hopefully that's a good background explanation of what we are exploring and the different applications. And so because I talked about jurisdictions and geofence regions, I'm gonna pass it on to David to give an introduction of the spatial web. I'll stop sharing and maybe David, you have more agency to do it on your end. Yes, all right. Feel free as we're doing that, that if you have questions or thoughts, go into the session tab, put Q and A and you can drop thoughts in there and we can address them as we go or pick them up at the end. Beautiful, thank you, Martine. So I'm just gonna give a little bit of high level framing on the spatial web, web 3.0 if you will. And just provide a little bit of background context on these core standards that we're working with the IEEE on and then we'll bring that back to how we can apply these standards, hopefully to address our planetary civilizational level challenge of climate change. So there are three core standard specifications that we're working with the IEEE on. One is for hyperspatial domains, which is key to the jurisdictional nested accounting and understanding of various different boundaries related to markets and regions inside of particular territory that's accounting, the hyperspatial transaction protocol and the hyperspatial modeling language that I'll speak about just for some high level framing. So really quickly, the point of what we're trying to accomplish with the spatial web, it's really in fact a hyperspatial web. And what we mean by that is it's connecting spatial, semantic and societal data contexts and mapping the relationships between them so that we get a coherent view of context for every interaction in the real world. It's really about creating a cybernetic feedback loop between the digital and the physical realities. This is very quickly the hyperspatial modeling language. This is also part of the IEEE standards work. And this is not a canonical data format or model as much as it is an activity modeling language that allows you to mathematically color data, data streams for AI particularly to be able to infer from data streams context at a much higher degree of precision. So we say some user, some actor by virtue of some authority within some hyperspatial domain has a right based on credentials which are in the form of, in our case, in implementing with hyperspatial, sorry, hyperledger Indian areas to perform a claim on an activity. And all of the transaction streams which is an activity state change are then stored in a graph structure. Which we refer to as a context graph. In case of these context elements and by virtue of storing every transaction, every activity state change with this very rich coloring language we can be able to trust data across contexts and be able to transfer workflows and accounting methodologies across contexts much more efficiently. So once the data is in that graph format we can now query with the hyperspatial transaction protocol in any dimension or across dimensions by range. So temperature over time, air particulate count, soil conditions, every asset gets registered and we're constantly enriching context around that asset by creating essentially smart contracts but that can extend to other dimensions. So you can have either a prescriptive or restrictive contract related to orchestrating real-world interactions. And to define clean air it means XYZ as far as the content of that air that then is reinforced by all the sensoria that are then assigning verifiable credential transactions. So finally all this goes into essentially a volumetric extension of a hyperdimensional extension multi-dimensional extension, sorry, of the concept of a virtual domain. So now you can say for this plot of land who can plant, who can collect, who can sequester, who can act. So we've been working very closely with the Open Earth Foundation and the Yale Open Innovation Lab to apply these technologies first and foremost to this critical challenge that we have in front of us. And so we've done a number of prototypes of both verifiable credentials as well as something we call dynamic adaptable schemas related to interoperability of all these data that are used for climate accounting. So there's a hour and a half long video if you run out of Nyquil someday of the full demo that we did a few months ago as a result of a year plus of R&D work. So I encourage anyone to check that out. But we'll go through a little bit of that at a high level here today as well. So in this prototype, we're using graph database. These are just reference implementations, hyperledger indian areas for all the DID and credential issuances and simple document storage. We're using DID and verifiable credentials, DIDs really throughout for everything. Every asset gets a DID, every basic identity is a DID in the system. In the graph, it's just a C of DIDs in essence in the context graph. But one of the things we're doing is we take schemas and we deconstruct them into a series of connected nodes in the graph so that you can link any data and any schema to every single interaction in the real world and transaction in the real world. And that basically ensures that you don't lose context. As I was saying, every actor domain and asset has a decentralized identifier. And all of these are representatives verifiable credentials that then are used in proofs and spatial contracts related to is it okay, for example, to transfer this wreck from one area to another, we evaluate that as a hyperspatial transaction using the hyperspatial model language. As I said before, all the schemas are linked and I'll go into that a little bit more in terms of the power of that. But really this kind of speaks to the fact that we have many different registries with lots of different data schemas for representing the same type of information. And we need to be able to normalize those together in an extremely efficient manner so that when we're doing the Paris Global Stock Take, starting in 2023, ultimately we want this to be a real time accounting where the national inventories are rolled up in real time from all the sub-domains that they reference rather than a long multi-year process of combining spreadsheets together. All of the conditions of the contract get inherited and this is where it allows you to express policy in a spatial manner. We're also working with the European Commission to develop the drone standards for the EU, including all the monitoring reporting and verification actions related to any drone. So this is an example of where you can extend hyperspatial contracts beyond just the accounting into the actual monitoring. So it's Martín who can speak to some of the functional aspects of the demo that we delivered and the relevancy. Go ahead. Great, thank you, David. I hope everyone's still sort of falling along. I put the URL of the YouTube where you could also watch later in-depth in the demo. That was done in the context of another event and we thought it was very important to be able to share it here in the Hyperledge Global Forum. So, and then you can also see the slides as we go if you wanna check them out later. So the first sort of demo that happened a couple of years ago or one year ago is, okay, when I talk about renewable energy certificates acidizing that certificate is very relevant. So if you have, for example, a solar farm and you want to prove that an electric vehicle charger is charged through renewable energy, otherwise why would you have an EV that's using coal-based electricity? That is a challenge in and of itself because the certification of renewable often comes in aliquots of one megawatt hour. So one rec is one megawatt hour, but what you're going to be using is gonna be at the kilowatt hour level. So we have to fractionalize that certification and you also need to be able to have a traceability of that where it came from, when, how it was purchased and in some sense the EV then has to have a wallet of all those, not just electrons, but the history of data packages of where that come from. And so with that, we worked very closely with the organization called ClearTrace. They specifically do that use IOT integration and create immutable data records based on that so that it can establish rich attributes. So almost every reading of a smart meter, smart meter at the renewable energy site but also smart meter at the, let's say Tesla Supercharger are also recorded and reconciled so that we can get to what's called in the renewable energy space a load following matching. And if we think about that from the semantics, a lot of what David was chatting about here is a bit of how to create a very rich spatial context and leveraging DIDs and verified credentials and amazingly exciting space but the semantic parts are very important. So who, what, where, when, how becomes very important? The contract between an electric vehicle that says I want a source renewable energy, well, has to be able to create a fully semantically logical context for that. So this is a good example. In this case, the power utility is Avingrid in Connecticut produces a solar energy that was financed by XYZ that has a device that at a certain point in time produces electricity that's verified that it is indeed renewable or that it was produced, that it displaced carbon that gets associated to a certificate that also is approved by normally the registry, the regional registry that manages electricity and then you've got your Tesla charge station which is a different domain. So this might be in a totally different space than this and in fact, that might be very relevant if you are, let's say in California trying to buy electrons that were put into the system in North Dakota, the offsetting capability of that might be lower than the ones that are regional and why, because you really want to account the right as a consumer to do that. So that's the example of that semantics and then we go even into higher levels of complexity. So if we read that semantics from the left, Avingrid which is the utility by authorization of the asset manager and the sustainability director of the company but also the ministry of the environment of North Dakota transfers, this is in the case of a wind farm within one, a wind farm that's owned by this company Avingrid that is within this spatial domain North Dakota. So this is very much then diagrams that are also nested all within earth. And so these are the type of semantics applied to the type of credential, users, authorities, assets. So transfers mitigation outcomes to Tesla motor from California who receives these assets and are also approved by ministry of environment. Why, let's follow this real quick to understand why a ministry of environment comes important. So now we have an asset which is wind, it creates as an activity, electricity gets converted into renewable energy certificate, mitigation outcome has to be verified by, for example, clear trace or switch. It says, yes, this was indeed created. That gets moved into a registry. It's authorized, for example, by a ministry of environment of North Dakota that that asset can leave the territory. If a ministry of environment does not allow that and different jurisdictions, it could be different entities, does not allow that, then that should not be able to move. So a buyer should not be able to buy it. But what does it mean that it allows it? Because once you move that asset from one territory to another, what it needs to happen is that the inventory of North Dakota has to lose that mitigation outcome and move it into the inventory of the recipient. So essentially it's not just a transaction between Avingrid and Tesla, it's a transaction between North Dakota and California needs to be properly represented in their inventories. From the United States standpoint, which is the broader box here, nothing happened, right? All these assets still move within the US, let's say management, which often in the inventory is managed by the environmental protection agency. And again, obviously all is within Earth and who is the authority dealing with climate accounting, ideally is UNFCC and Paris agreement. So these are the type of situations that we set out to try to do, highly complex, but then it's the next 30 years are going to see a lot of this happening. So we got to explore what are the different components from a technological standpoint that can help us do that. So again, you'll be able to see this in the video that I posted, feel free as we move along to post some Q and As. And let me just show you a little bit of what this looked like. We demoed in each jurisdiction a level of a carbon balance, white being a zero balance and blue a little bit of a positive balance so that mitigation in red. And so we started playing around with this so that we really test that an asset, which is like, let's say a power plant in Georgia, affects the carbon rating of that state. These are examples of how these conversions occur from one wreck to a climate action asset. I hope that we have time, David, can talk a bit about how you create homogenizable assets. These get registered so that you'd be able to follow a bit of what I showed before, what price the certificate has. Then you've got the purchaser. The purchaser has a wallet of credentials and these get moved along. And once it's retired, it means that it cannot be traded anymore. And so that should be also a contract in and of itself often with tokenized carbon offsets in the normal. So the Ethereum world, these are burnt so that they can't be traded again. So I'd really encourage, oh, this is a different sort of YouTube video that I'll also put the content there. And there's some exciting points. Maybe David, you can just unmute yourself and talk a little bit through it. I'm gonna read one of the Q&As and as you're walking through it, then we'll be able to address the Q&A. But let me see if, this is probably a slide that you can talk a little bit too. Sure. Yeah, the question from Will Abramson was how many RA's agents are used and what do they represent? Can you go? Yes. How are these, the ID's assigned and who controls the keys? So at the highest level today, at the very least every authority that is responsible for specific domains would have, presumably have its own agent as well as ultimately every actor that participates. So if you basically have, you need, at the end of the day, I think what will eventually happen, we hope is that every single citizen in the world being a stakeholder in this would ultimately get their own identity with respect to how they are participating in various different ways that they roll up their activities, whether they're a part of a company or a city or otherwise they're ultimately citizens. So today it's really individual authorities in their own execution context would be the issuers of these credentials and signers of the transactions. And yeah. And it really depends, it's not like a single point. So we won't expect that, let's say the United States issues a climate credential to California, California can issue that credential to Tesla. Within let's say Avigrid, they have to also issue the asset but that needs to be verified by others. And this is where this kind of interfaces with government technology, it's where it becomes really exciting because you've got private actors issuing the IDs in the very few credentials and you've got government issuing those to companies. We probably have ideally some folks in the room from British Columbia, they're definitely the leaders in the space. But it's a lot of that relationship between not just one single issuer but the relationship. And maybe David, if you wanna talk a bit about the and I have to listen to you, otherwise we have some interesting sort of. Yeah, I'll just get through it. I'll just say a couple of things at a very high level. I know there's some work also going on in the trust IP foundation around schema management and this is extremely important for climate accounting and the instance here, we have three different registries, kind of the primary registries. And these are really representing the same types of projects wind projects, land-based mitigation projects but they have different field names and things like that. And on the one hand, they're just simple in some cases, field mapping but on the other, it creates inordinate amounts of uncertainty and risk and data transfer and cleanliness issues. So we're working very hard on being able to anchor specific projects in their spatial and semantic context. And so over time, we sort of start to develop neural pathways almost with respect to how to translate between different data schemas so that as we onboard new projects and environmental projects, we can leverage that. So let me see if we have a couple of questions. I realize we just ran out of time. This is, sorry we got carried away. There are some really important Q and A's here. So I would encourage people to write us. I'm gonna put our emails here so that we can continue the conversation if you are interested in learning more about this and some of the exciting projects coming along. Thank you, James, for facilitating. I hope that was enlightening. There's a lot to unpack there. So it's fine that there's a couple of things that we didn't go a little bit deeper into, but we'd be very, very excited to reach out to anyone with further questions. And David is, David. Yeah, I can, you know, I don't know if we're supposed to hard stop. I can try to answer a couple of the questions. Yeah, assets are represented as verifiable credentials. Ultimately, every data stream can be converted as we imagine every transaction can be converted into a verifiable credential and reused to prove some context. So issuing a renewable green electrons in one context becomes a credential that then can be used when it's converted into a mitigation outcome and then eventually retired. So this looks pretty complicated, a lot of change. Yeah, I mean, climate accounting is not a simple subject to begin with, but it's so critically important and the key here of what we're trying to do is we're trying to meet the world where it is with respect to the state of the art in climate accounting, but we're really trying to get it much closer as I mentioned to real time or speed of light as close as we can get. And we need, we're one human family, we have one budget for our carbon that we can emit and that we have to sequester and we don't really have a quick books to track all of this. And at a higher level when the initially when the financial markets had all these reporting, public reporting requirements, we thought that this was just outrageous. How can these companies report on all their revenue it's gonna cause all kinds of extraordinary complications and so much change. And there was, but now we just accept this as a required part of doing business. And I would say, I would go so far as to suggest that ultimately environmental accounting and financial accounting really need to start to merge. We need to do accounting the way that nature accounts for things which is really at a molecular level. And we need to have our policies that are really informed by are we actually doing good? Are these actions really being impactful? And if we will have another 10 years really to go through a bunch of hand waving and people comparing apples to oranges so to speak. And to answer one of the questions, I know we have two more minutes that are a little bit of extra time implemented in practice. So the leveraging DITs and credentials are already implemented in practice in different cases. And the case of for example, British Columbia that's already in practice and our role is to collaborate as much possible with BC to be able to take a lot of these lessons learned and try to think about how this would be rolled out also since you already kind of have some infrastructure and DITs and BCs. And then there's a lot of moving parts actually great question of how many areas agents were deployed in that. I think we would have to go back and count them but there was definitely more than more than one. And it's just a question of like structuring architecture in a way that you can have a lot but it probably starts making no sense for a human but it starts making more sense for AI. With that unless there's anything else thank you so much for joining. Hopefully it's helpful that we put the YouTube to learn more the depth that we just showed and our email for any follow-ups.


He then joined the Kenya Polytechnic and completed his training in the year 2011 where he qualified by being conferred with a diploma in food production. The report says that thereafter, and again this was critical for this court, he moved to Dubai where he received training in tactical military at Dubai Police Academy and by a group known as Ogara Group. A bit of time in our understanding of what the accused person said because he is the one on trial. I will not summarize too much his mitigation and also for the parties to appreciate that I have taken it into consideration in totality. The accused says that he is aware that nothing he says at this stage will relieve the pain of the deceased family and he says the lesser he says the better. He says that he expresses his sadness that such a tragic loss of life on extreme circumstances bordering and this caught my attention. He says that he expresses his sadness that such a tragic and callous loss of life on extreme circumstances bordering on an act of absolute madness that is beyond understanding even to him as he stands there convicted. He says that it is his prayer that the deceased family will find peace and that her soul will rest in internal peace. He says that he understands the terrible fear and pain that the deceased must have and that went in the hands of the perpetrator and he cannot even perceive the same. He joins the victim's family by saying that he does appreciate that monetary compensation cannot relieve the pain of the loss of our loved one. The court has been invited by the accused person to note that by the Supreme Court declaring the mandatory nature of this sentence to be unconstitutional then it opened room and gave this court the discretion to meet out a sentence that is not necessarily death. And the accused then says that in that case and again this was very important to the court and for reading because I come back to it. He says that in that case it is his prayer that the court can meet out a custodial sentence. He says that although the victim's family in their submissions are calling for a death sentence but the father of the victim Bishop Paul Garama was publicly had saying that he will not take vengeance and so the court should consider his views. Finally the accused person invited the court to consider that he is a first offender that he was convicted purely on circumstantial evidence and the period he has spent in custody. That in my considered opinion was the additional evidence given to this court in form of submissions by the parties at the cross of the formal trial. In looking at the goals of punishment and in considering the objectives I made reference to inclusivity and I said that before sentence is meted out the views of the victim at the community are extremely important and so at this stage I want to speak to the pre-sentence report that this court was given. Now I must thank the probation department because they gave me an extremely detailed pre-sentence report. What comes out of that report is this. That the accused person before this court is 33 years old. His parents are alive, he has three siblings who from the report are also alive. It speaks to their permanent place of abode at Guta estate which is just adjacent to NET's Merited Barracks within Nakuru County. It indicates that this accused person completed his secondary school education in the year 2010 and then joined the Kenya Polytechnic and completed his training in the year 2011 where he qualified by being conferred with a diploma in food production. The report says that thereafter and again this was critical for this court he moved to Dubai where he received training in tactical military at Dubai police academy and by a group known as Ogara Group which he says that Ogara Group is a security firm with presence in Dubai, United Kingdom and several European countries and eventually after that training he was licensed to offer private security. The report indicates that at the time he was arrested he was providing security in Kenya mostly to persons in political sector and he was at an advanced stage of registering his own security firm. Outside his training and daily work the report indicates that he is a staunch Christian he has sung, produced several music videos and he was actively involved in charge activities. It is further indicated that when this offence was committed he was in a relationship with one Jacqueline Maribel who was his co-accused and they were planning to formalize their relationship. At the time of the offence they were both residing at Royal Park estate in Langata and they had resided together for over one year. Medical condition the report indicates that he suffers from asthma since childhood and that is usually triggered by colds and dust but is on medication. It is indicated that he has developed now problems and that arose out of a gun incident which we spoke to in the judgment and in this matter but it said that the same is treated by painkillers which gives him relief. On the offence the report says that the accused person maintains his innocence and that he was shocked and depressed to be linked with the murder of the deceased. That he denies knowing the deceased but acknowledges that he knows his brother and it says that he grieves for the family of the deceased for losing her in a good manner. The report indicates that he has good relationship with his family. The sister stood by him throughout the trial they describe him that is his family and again this is important as a social overly generous respectful to authority committed Christian and he believes in innocence although he has he believes in


A very good evening to all of our friends and welcome to the Hindu News Analysis of Shankar IAAS Academy for the date 3rd November 2020. The list of the news articles along with the page numbers of 5 different editions is given here for your reference. Also the handwritten notes in the PDF format and time stampings for all the news articles taken up for today's discussion is given in the description box and also in the comments section for the best interest of the viewers. Let us now begin our news analysis. Now let us take up this op-ed article which is with reference to the poor nutrition status of school going children especially in the COVID-19 period. In this context let us try to understand how school going children are affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic and we will also see the important points mentioned in this op-ed. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. So far we have talked about how COVID-19 affected the learning outcomes and how digital divide has played a decisive role in the education system. And in the last week we have discussed about the annual status of education report which was released by an NGO called Pratham and we saw how rural children are most affected due to this digital divide. So today we will be seeing how COVID-19 has been affecting the nutritional status of children. Yes we are talking about the mid-day meals scheme or MDMS through which the school going children are provided hot meals in their schools. See it is the largest school feeding program in the world and it played an extremely significant role in increasing the nutrition and learning outcomes among the school going children. But the school closures due to the COVID-19 has impacted the MDMS program. See a mid-day meal provides 450 kilo calories of energy and approximately one-third of the nutritional requirements to all school going children from class 1 to class 8 in government and government-aided schools. However, many research reports and even the joint review mission of MDMS 2015-16 noted that many children reach schools with an empty stomach that is without breakfast making this school's mid-day meal a major source of nutrition for children particularly those from the vulnerable communities. So this was the case until the arrival of COVID-19 pandemic. But after the arrival of the pandemic, schools were the first institutions which were closed in order to protect children. And in March and April 2020, in order to provide meals to children the government has announced that the usual hot-cooked mid-day meal or an equivalent dry ration or grains would be provided to all eligible school going children even during vacation. And this is to ensure that the immunity and nutrition is not compromised. But even after many months, states are still struggling to implement this. Now according to the Food Corporation of India's Food Grain Bulletin the off-take of grains under MDMS from FCI during April and May 2020 was just 22% and this was lower than the corresponding off-take during the previous year that is April and May 2019. Around 23 states and union territories reported a decline in the grain off-take from FCI in April and May 2020 compared to the corresponding months in 2019. And to the extreme, Bihar haven't taken any food grain for MDMS during these two months in 2020. So this shows the poor implementation of MDMS during the COVID-19 and data and media reports indicate that dry ration distributions in place of school meals are irregular. Then the other wording angle is that there are reports of children engaging in labour in order to supplement the fall in family incomes in vulnerable households. In July this year, the Madras High Court also took cognizance of this issue and asked the Tamil Nadu government to respond on how the nutritional needs of children were being fulfilled with schools closed. See, serving hot meals at the children's home or even at the centre may have challenges in the present scenario. Even states like Tamil Nadu with a relatively good infrastructure for MDMS are unable to serve the mandated hot cook meals during the lockdown. So what can be done to provide nutrition to school-going children in current situation? See, the experts suggest the involvement of local small-holder farmers in school feeding. It is a livelihood model which links local small-holder farmers with the mid-day meals system for the supply of cereals, vegetables and eggs while meeting protein and hidden hunger needs. And this could diversify the production of farming systems, transform the rural livelihoods and the local economy. And it also fulfills the atmanirbhar portion that is the nutritional self-sufficiency agenda. The COVID-19 crisis has also brought home the need for such decentralized models and local supply chains. There are also new initiatives such as the school nutrition kitchen garden which is under the mid-day meals scheme in order to provide fresh vegetables for mid-day meals. Besides ensuring that these are functional, hot meals can also be provided to eligible children with a plan to prepare and distribute the meal in the school mid-day meal center. And this is similar to the free urban canteens or community kitchens for elderly or others in distress in states like Odisha. Here, the author also stresses on the poor performance of our country in global hunger and nutrition reports. In the Global Hunger Index 2020, India ranked 94 out of 107 countries and we were in the category serious behind our neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The index is a combination of indicators of under-nutrition in population and wasting, stunting and mortality in children below five years of age. So we are already far out in terms of achieving the zero hunger goal and in the absence of urgent measures to address the hunger problem, the situation will only worsen. See, the Global Hunger Index is jointly published by Concerned Worldwide and Wealth Hunger Life. And even the report of the state of food security and nutrition in the world 2020 painted a worrying picture. A real-time monitoring tool estimated that as of April 2020, during the peak of school closures, 369 children globally were loosing out on school meals and a bulk of them were from India. See, the SOFFI 2020 report has been jointly prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization, then International Fund for Agricultural Development, the UNICEF, World Food Program and the World Health Organization. So the author says that across the country and the world, innovative learning methods are being adopted to ensure children's education outcomes. And with continuing uncertainty regarding the reopening of the schools, innovation is similarly required to ensure that not just food, but nutrition is delivered regularly to millions of children of our nation. So this is all about this op-ed article. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Let us take up this editorial, which is written by the former director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training or simply NCERT. In the editorial, the author focuses on some of the important issues associated with the national education policy 2020. So let us discuss the important points given in this editorial. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. So we all know that the center had replaced the national education policy of 1986 with the national education policy 2020. And to know more about the silent features of the national education policy 2020, refer to our third August Hindu news analysis. Now coming to the editorial, the author is concerned with the federal courtesy or attitude which was observed by the center in the national education policy 2020. Now let us see why. See the draft national education policy of 2019 had provided for regulatory structure at both center and the state levels. And at the state level, it envisaged a state school regulatory authority. But the national education policy of 2020 provides only for a state school standards authority and not a regulatory authority at the state level. And this move was criticized as centralization of regulatory powers and the intrusion of center into the state sphere. The author says that both the 1986 and 2020 policies failed to completely acknowledge the variety prevailing in provincial educational practices. Here the author is not in favor of assuming that the national system will evolve and iron out the provincial variations. So how did the education system evolve in the provinces? Know that the government of India Act of 1919 decided to make education mainly a provincial and transferred subject and to limit the control of the central government over a minimum. And accordingly, a central advisory board of education was set up in 1920 to serve as a discussion forum for coordinating regional responses to common issues. But things changed after the independence. Unlike some federal countries, India has a ministry of education at the center and education including technical education, medical education and universities comes under the concurrent list. So ministry of education's role is not just coordination among states but to articulate aims and standards to pave the road to national building and development. So we can say that post-independence center played a substantial role in education. Now coming to the 1986 policy, it emphasized on national perspective without specifically referring to diverging provincial practices. And during this period, the private sector began to push both public policy and popular perceptions of education. And the rapid expansion of urban middle class who could buy education prioritized private over public. Thus education traditionally a public responsibility started to get privatized. And at present, India has three systems. The first is the central system with an exam board that has an all India reach through affiliation with English medium private schools. The author feels that they mainly serve the regional elites. The system also includes advanced professional institutes and universities. They have more access to greater per capita funding than those run by the states. And the second system is the state system. It also includes provincial secondary boards affiliating schools teaching in state languages. And the third system is purely based on private investment. This includes internationally accredited school boards and globally connected private universities. And according to the author, the coordination among the three systems has proved unmanageable. The author says that the new policy underestimates the problem of reconciling the three systems. It envisages functional uniformity that is nationally codified and administered measures to transform educational institutions across India. But such a monolithic regulatory architecture or one size fits all approach is unlikely to succeed. So what is the way forward? See the need of the hour is a reliable mechanism to reconcile the standards of different boards and universities. That is to iron out the issues and reconcile the three systems. We all know that with overall prosperity and economic growth, social inequalities have become sharper. So our education system must evolve to mediate between different social strata divided on the lines of caste and economic status. So the best way is to minimize the difference in quality provided by the public and private institutions. In long term, this will also help us to achieve the aim set by right to education. And finally, we should have an education policy that has a systemic vision, both for recovery from institutional decay and for a better future of our nation. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now, this editorial talks about the Sero Survey and the issues and misinterpretations associated with it. Let us discuss them in detail. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. Please go through it. First, we need to understand about the Sero Survey. See, Sero Survey is the collection and testing of serum specimen or proxy fluids which are alternative sample types. Serum is the clear yellowish liquid part of the blood that remains after the clotting of blood. And alternative sample types used in the Sero Survey include oral fluid, breast milk, and blood collected from umbilical cords. Now, in a Sero Survey, the specimens from a defined population over a specified period of time is collected and tested. And this is to estimate the prevalence of antibodies against a specific infectious pathogen. See, an antibody is a protein produced by the body's immune system when it detects harmful substances called antigens. Antigens include microorganisms like bacteria and virus, etc. Each type of antibody is unique and it defends the body against one specific type of antigen. And in our case, it is the SARS-CoV-2. Thus, antibodies are an indicator of immunity to a specific antigen. And the Sero Survey estimates its prevalence. Also, a well-designed Sero Survey can provide information on the proportion of population which has Sero Protection. And it can also provide information on the proportion of population which is susceptible. That is, the proportion of population which is non-immune. Here, Sero Protection means the detection of antibody above a postulated immune protective threshold, which simply means that they have immunity to that pathogen or that particular proportion of population was already infected, which is identified through the survey. So, Sero Surveys can be used to monitor immunity of the population over the time and also verify that whether infection elimination is sustained. Particularly in India, ICMR conducted the Sero Survey and its objective was to estimate the infection's national prevalence and also its spread in hotspots. But according to the author, we should be cautious while interpreting the results obtained through Sero Surveys. First is because of the problems with the antibody tests. As we know, antibodies present in the blood serum confirms past infection. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus carries several antigens and our body responds to all of them. Here, the main issue is that an antibody against each antigen has its own time of appearance and it has its own duration in the blood and on rate of decay over the time. So according to a study, these antibodies levels decline over time in people with asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infections. This decline reduces to 50% of the initial levels of infection by about 36 days and it also becomes undetectable by 60 days after proven infection. Additionally, another issue is that the detection of antibodies does not correlate well with the protective virus neutralizing function of the immunity. Just producing antibody to the pathogen is not enough. Rather, it has to neutralize the pathogen or antigen. So according to the authors, in certain cases, the simple presence of antibodies did not mean that the virus has been neutralized. Hence, to confirm this, the virus neutralizing antibodies has to be tested. But it cannot be done as handling it is a risky job. Here, another study found that if two antibodies are detected, then the results correlate better with the neutralizing function. This leads to the third issue, that is the available test kits use only one antigen. Next issue is that the inter-survey comparison is not possible with respect to India. It is because so far, the ICMR has conducted two serosurveys and each time the antigen used for the survey were different. Second is the underestimation of prevalence of infection. The reason is the latent period between the infection and the appearance of a detectable antibody. See the latent period for COVID-19 is about four weeks. So, the results of the serosurvey pertain to a part of the study period only. For example, ICMR's first two survey was conducted from May 11 to June 4. But the results pertain predominantly to the antibody status of people from April 13 to May 7 only. And this was because the appearance of the detectable antibody takes four weeks to occur. So, those who got infected after May 7 would have been blocked in the study and especially the period of peak of infections may not have been covered in the survey due to this four weeks gap. Thus, it could have led to errors of gross underestimation of the prevalence of infection. Now, to rectify this error, the author suggests to include correction factors in the results. See, correction factor is a factor that is multiplied with the result of an equation in order to correct a non-amount of systematic error. So, what is the consequence of this misinterpretation of results? See, the consequence is that understanding the epidemic profile will be difficult. So, do we need to fear in case of India? See, the authors note that India has attained half of the required herd immunity level to end the pandemic by mid of September itself. Here, note that herd immunity is the indirect protection from a contagious infectious disease that happens when a population is immune. So, now we just need to follow the required norms to stop the spread of infection. For example, we know that the festival season is coming up. So, we have to celebrate the festivals by following strict norms. So, this is all about this editorial. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now, have a look at this question. It is based on this news article which says that the Rajasthan government's order banning the use of firecrackers and also the notice issued by the National Green Tribunal asking the center to consider banning the crackers in the national capital region is not good for the fireworks hub located in the state of Tamil Nadu. In this context, let us try to understand the chemistry behind fireworks. See, to produce the colorful patterns and shapes, fireworks utilize a precise chemical mixture that's going to burn at the right temperature and at the right time. And this requires four main chemical ingredients, which include an oxidizer, a fuel, a colorant and a binder. And as we know, fireworks need a plenty of oxygen to facilitate the burn. And this is where the oxidizers come in. An oxidizer is pretty much what it sounds like that is a chemical rich in oxygen. See, oxidizer release excess oxygen to make a better explosion. The most commonly used oxidizers are nitrates, chlorides and perchlorides. The next one is the fuel. See, the fuel source in fireworks is typically a charcoal-based black powder or sulfur. The fuel combines with the oxygen released by the oxidizer, setting the stage for an explosion when fire is added. And these chemicals used for the fuel and the oxidizer are almost the same ones found in the standard gunpowder. And know that the fuse used to light the tiny rocket is made from very fine gunpowder. The burning fuse then lights much larger granulations of the gunpowder at the bottom of the firework. And that explosion carries the rocket into the sky. Finally, pellets of gunpowder are packed in the firework's body. These capsules are what ultimately force the firework to burst apart. And these pellets have colorant and the binder within them. See, the colorant chemicals help determine the different colors we see. The binder, often a type of starch called dextrin, binds the fuel, oxidizer and the colorant together within the pellets. When the packets explode, the chemical elements emit light and the colorant produces very specific wavelengths that can be seen by the naked eyes. So it is very clear that fireworks emit large quantity of chemicals in the atmosphere and it damages health and environment alike. For example, extensive burning of firecrackers during festivals such as Diwali is a significant source of aerosols, black carbon, nitrogen and sulfur dioxide and various other gases. And this results in short-term anthropogenic pollution which causes serious health hazards. For example, barium salts are used in the firecrackers in order to get green color. But they emit poisonous gas which causes respiratory problem and also long-term exposure results in other health complications. So in 2018, the Supreme Court banned the use of barium salts. So what is the solution? See, a solution to this problem is green crackers also called as improved firecrackers. See, they have reduced shell size compared to the conventional firecrackers and they also eliminate the use of ash and also their use is believed to reduce emissions of particulate matter such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. Now, see this question. Consider the following statements. Nitrates, chlorates and perchlorates are the commonly used oxidizers in conventional firecrackers because of their ability to produce oxygen. Yes, this statement is correct. And the second statement reads green crackers eliminates ash usage, uses dust suppressants and reduces the particulate matter emission by at least 30%. Yes, this statement is also correct. So both statement 1 and 2 are correct. Here we are supposed to identify the correct statement or statements. So the correct answer is option C, both 1 and 2. With this, we'll move on to the next news. Now, have a look at this question. It is based on this news article which says that the Atoni General declined consent to initiate contempt proceedings against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy. But however, the Atoni General said that the timing itself for the Chief Minister's letter to the Chief Justice of India containing allegations against the Supreme Court Judge Envi Ramana and the subsequent public release of the document could certainly said to be suspect. So in this context, let us have a brief discussion on Atoni General. See the article 76 of Indian Constitution mentions Atoni General, his appointment, his duties, etc. As you can see, the Atoni General is appointed by the President of India and he should be qualified to be appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court. Here, know that a person to be appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court, first, he or she should be a citizen of India and has been a High Court Judge for five years or an advocate in the High Court for at least 10 years or a distinguished jurist in the opinion of the President. And article 76 further states that the Atoni General has to give advice to the Government of India upon such legal matters and to perform such other duties of a legal character as may from time to time be referred to him by the President of India. And also to discharge the functions conferred on him under the Constitution or any other law for the time being in force. And in performance of these duties, the Atoni General will have right of audience in all courts in India. In addition, article 76 also mentions that the Atoni General shall hold office during the pleasure of the President and he or she shall receive such remuneration as determined by the President. It means the Constitution does not guarantee security of tenure to the Atoni General and can be removed from the office according to the whims and fancies of the President. In addition, according to article 88 of Indian Constitution, the Atoni General has the right to speak in and to take part in the proceedings of either House of the Parliament or in any joint sitting of the Houses. The Atoni General can also take part in any committee of the Parliament of which he is named as a member. Importantly, know that here Atoni General will not enjoy the right to vote when he takes part in any parliamentary proceedings including in any parliamentary committee. And according to the law officer's rules 1987, the term of a law officer is three years and is eligible for reappointment as well. Here, law officers include the Atoni General, Solicitor General and Assistant Solicitor General. Now, coming to the duties of a law officer, they are to give advice to the Government of India in legal matters to appear in the Supreme Court or in any High Court on the behalf of the government in cases in which the government is a party or is interested. Then finally, to represent the Government of India in any reference made by the President to the Supreme Court under article 143 of the Indian Constitution. And these rules also impose certain restrictions on the law officers like they should not defend an accused person in a criminal prosecution without the permission of the Government of India. And they should not accept appointment to any office in any company or corporation without the permission of the Government of India. And finally, they should not advise or hold a brief against the Government of India. So, this is all about Atoni General. Now, see this question. Consider the following statements with reference to Atoni General of India. The first statement reads, the tenure of Atoni General is three years as defined by the Constitution of India. See, this statement is wrong. Know that the Constitution does not guarantee security of tenure to Atoni General and he can be removed whenever the President wishes. And the term of a law officer is three years according to the law officer rules of 1987. So, the first statement is incorrect. Now, the second statement reads, Atoni General has the right to speak in and to take part in the proceedings of either House of the Parliament. Yes, this statement is correct. But remember, he or she does not have the right to vote. So, the second statement is correct. And we have to identify the incorrect statement or statements from these given statements. So, the correct answer is option A, one only. With this, we'll move on to the practice questions discussion section based on today's news analysis. Now, see this question. Consider the following statements with reference to herd immunity. The first statement is wrong. A herd immunity is the indirect protection from a contagious infectious disease that happens when a population is immune. The immunity could be achieved either through vaccination or it can be developed through previous infection that is natural herd immunity. So, statement one is incorrect because it is an indirect protection and it states that only through vaccination the protection could be achieved. This statement is incorrect. So, this means that even people who are not vaccinated or in whom the vaccine doesn't trigger immunity are protected because people around them who are immune can act as buffers between them and an infected person. So, the concept of herd immunity is generally used for calculating how many people will need to be vaccinated in a population in order to protect those who are not vaccinated. Now, the second statement reads, A disease can eventually be eliminated if once herd immunity has been established for a while along with curbing the ability of the disease to spread. Yes, this statement is correct. Now that once herd immunity has been established for a while along with curbing the ability of the disease to spread then the disease can be eventually eliminated. For example, this is how the word eradicated the disease called smallpox. So, statement two is correct and statement one is incorrect. We have to identify the correct statement or statements. So, the correct answer is option B, two only. Now, have a look at these main practice questions. Please write your answers and post it in the comments section. Our feedback will be given in a reasonable time frame. So friends, with this we have come to the end of analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the discussion of practice questions. If you like this video, please press the like button, comment, share and do subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service preparation.


Welcome folks, we have the down industrial straightened down 22, NASDAQ off 172, S&Ps down 27, gold, gold contract up $12, straightened at 2036 an ounce, get silverback 40 cents, $23.07 an ounce, light sweet crew down a buck, $78.18 a barrel, notes and bonds. You get the 10-year note trading up 66, 109.30, the 30-year up 4 at 118.11 and the 10-year right now is at 4.273 and will you take a look at this last three months folks, the highest 4.4, the lowest 3.7 in Kingdala. Kingdala down 211 ticks, 104.080 euros at 108, the ends at 150 British pounds at 126 to 1 US dollar. You don't even take a look at the spy and you're backing down, you're backing down with light volume folks, so it's going to get interesting here to see how this whole baby shakes out. You don't only get 44 million shares traded, you know last time we were down out here it was 113 million, so you're going to need a lot more volume than that to break this market. We're going to the NDX 100, we take a look at the NDX, the NDX right now, the three chews, they're down 420, 39 million shares, now that's the difference, it's not holding price and that does want to get down to this lower end, so it's going to be kind of cool watching this thing shake out. You know, you're down 429, you're 426 and video is coming out with numbers tomorrow and it's had the option market folks, they're figuring right now basically a 10% move. I suspect it's going to end up, well 10% move is 69 bucks either way, you know, right now you've got Nvidia's down 34 bucks, trading is 691, if we get over to the dollar, what the dollar did again today is that it rejected lower price once again, you know, it was giving it up on price, it did not get into this lower range, man, that's, we're going down to 103, 596, it's 103, 500, that's where the lower range starts and it rejected it. Bottom line, higher price, it's going to be a lot harder to basically, you know, get a higher print but you can see out here today that this market was, is weak because we had the dollar down and yet the market still couldn't perform, might take this S&P, bottom line wants to get down to that high volume low, stay right there folks, come right back.


Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. I'm here today outside a restaurant called Bruno's. This place is located on Emakur Fahim, which for those who aren't familiar with Jerusalem, Emakur Fahim is like the main commercial street in the German colony. It's called in Hebrew, Hamoshavat, and Geremonies. The German colony is commonly thought of as maybe the most bourgeois neighborhood in Jerusalem, the most middle-class, very, very nice neighborhood, and Emakur Fahim is its commercial thoroughfare. So Bruno's used to be located in Bakka, which is the South Jerusalem neighborhood. I lived in, they moved over here. While it is, it's a sandwich bar, but it's kind of a bit more high-end. They have some really, really nice ingredients here, and I was here last year with the famous Jerusalem food reviewer, Shemshon Sam Lashinsky. I've ordered today my favorite, which is their chicken sandwich, and this place is priced according to its quality, so it's more somewhere you can sit outside, have a glass of wine, have a beer. It's like Subway until you look at kind of the quality of the food here. They have a variety of options. You can get meat-based salads. You can also get a chicken sandwich or a beef sandwich, and they have different, more unusual meats as well. Sometimes you'll even see like goose on the menu. So we've been coming to this place for a year. I think it's really, really good. And if you're looking for a good meat sandwich, of course, it's kosher. So a kosher meat sandwich place, and you're in Emakur Fahim, definitely recommend checking out Bruno. I'll put the exact address and link in the description. I've gone for my long-standing favorite, which is the Khazi O, which means chicken sandwich, and they serve it like this. On the one hand, it looks a bit like a Subway roll, but when you get into it, you notice it's on a completely different level of quality. This is the Miss Tokyo steak, and you can see it's a salad. Lots of greenery and excellent beef on top. Hi everybody, this is Rabbi Mike here with the Metrodella Moment. It's a pleasure to be collaborating with my good friend, Daniel Rosil. Daniel and I are sitting here at Bruno, a sandwich restaurant on Emakur Fahim in the German colony Jerusalem. And it's interesting to just think about the history of this neighborhood. It's called the German colony because it was actually originally established by German Templar settlers in the late second half of the 19th century. So the Templar influence is here in the architecture and in the history. There aren't many Templars left, and there's good reason for that. I'm very proud to call myself a Jerusalemite by choice in a city that's attracted so many visitors. Hi, I'm Joanna, I've been working at Bruno for three years now. We're here in the German colony Emakur Fahim. Most importantly, we're making sandwiches with butter. Most importantly, we're getting the butter from a good machine, so we're making it into a sandwich. We're also going to make salads and salads. You can enjoy the fun of opening a restaurant and enjoying all kinds of butter you want, especially on a special day. And that's all we're doing here. We really like to work here. And that's it, you're invited to come. And we're going to eat. Bye-bye.