Welcome to Paranormality Magazine. Each week, Paranormality Magazine explores all 40 subjects from phantoms to UFOs and every cryptid creature in between. Each week, you are treated to a collection of well-researched and investigated stories, interviews and reports on cutting-edge paranormal projects and topics they know you crave. And here in the podcast, I share stories from the magazine to give you just a taste of what you receive in every issue. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Paranormality Magazine. Religious leaders, scientists, even a hen or so it seemed, have been making predictions for the end of the world almost as long as the world has been around. They have predicted the destruction of the world through floods, fires and comets and luckily for us, none of it has come to pass. Remember the Mayan apocalypse for 2012? December 21, 2012 marked the end of the first great cycle of the Maya Long Count calendar. The world did not end. Harold Camping assumed the world would end in 1994. It didn't. So then he predicted it again for May 21, 2011. And again, it didn't end. That hen that I mentioned? In 1806, a domesticated hen in Leeds, England appeared to lay eggs inscribed with the message Christ is coming. A lot of folks reportedly visited the hen, began to despair of the coming judgment day. It didn't happen. And because the Bible calls 666 the number of the beast, many Christians in 17th-century Europe thought the world was going to end in the year 1666. If you look at your calendar, you'll see that no, it did not end in 1666. In fact, we're still here. AP Strange sent in a story entitled, Doomsday Predictions Aren't Rocket Science. On an October evening in 1899, a boy climbed a cherry tree at his family home to trim some branches. While in the tree and enjoying the New England sunset, he had a vision of traveling into space and visiting the planet Mars. He remarked in journals that, I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended for existence at last seemed very purposive. Precisely 45 years prior, a mere stone's throw away from his tree, in which a vision of space travel occurred, a man named Solomon Parsons was preparing for a prophesied ascension of a different sort. Like many around New England, he had followed the teachings of William Miller, who predicted the end of times would arrive October 22, 1844. Both Parsons, an obscure and eccentric pastor and Robert Goddard, the boy in the tree who would go on to be called the father of modern rocketry, lived their experiences on what was then called Rattlesnake Hill by the settlers of what would become the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. The Nipmuc called it Tatecet, which some sources translate as the place of the shaking stone. The hill in question, now referred to as Airport Hill, has a very notable stone courtesy of Parsons. In preparation for the end times, Solomon Parsons purchased ten acres of land there and signed the property over to God himself. The deed for this transaction was chiseled into stone on the property and can still be seen today. There, he also built a temple and a hermitage in which he lived a life in harmony with nature.  He was a vegetarian and refused to use leather for his shoes or saddle. One imagines the lifestyle would be difficult, living on a hill named after its resident poisonous snakes. Nevertheless, he stayed at the property deeded to God until his death at the age of 93. God's current legal claim to the land is unclear. To the Forty in mind, a few details here do seem significant. The name Parsons calls to mind rocket scientist and occultist John Whiteside Parsons, while the number 93 and the name Solomon hold much significance in the thelamic beliefs that he held. Jack Parsons, as he preferred to be called, was head of the Agape Lodge, the only O2O Lodge in America during the middle of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in developing rocket fuel that allowed humanity to explore the heavens beyond Earth's atmosphere. These seem like coincidences, or perhaps synchronicity, until you trace Jack's family tree backwards in time and realize that he was indeed related to Solomon. Solomon and Jack are respectively descended from Deacon Benjamin Parsons and his brother Cornet Joseph Parsons, who each came to Massachusetts in the mid-17th century. Joseph was one of the earliest settlers of what would become Springfield, Massachusetts, and it is worth mentioning that his wife Mary had several times been accused of witchcraft. Three centuries later, their descendant, Jack, would embrace the term, proclaiming in an essay, We Are the Witchcraft. Solomon of course fell more in line with his Deacon ancestor and became a man of the cloth. His father, also named Solomon, was among the founders of the first Baptist Church in the Worcester area, while his grandfather, Reverend David Parsons, was the first Puritan minister in the nearby town of Leicester. It is unsurprising then that Solomon Jr. would help found the first Methodist Episcopal Church in Worcester. His father owned a farm and was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He spent much of his life struggling with the lasting effects of injuries sustained at Monmouth, which informed young Solomon's pacifist beliefs. He believed it to be a sin to kill any living thing and even ejected a man from his temple for killing a rattlesnake. At age 40 he quit the Methodist Church and joined the Millerites. Miller, also the son of a Revolutionary War veteran, had enlisted in the army himself and served in the Battle of Plattsburgh. At some point during this time in the military he fell off a wagon and suffered a head injury. Thereafter he abandoned his Baptist faith and became a deist. Determined to be taken seriously as a theologian, he meticulously decoded what he imagined were clues in the Bible about the precise date of the end of the world. He was wrong several times, but that didn't stop people joining by the thousands to follow his preaching. By the time he settled on the date of October 22, 1844, he had followers so convinced that the end was nigh many of them gave away their land and possessions. Women shaved their heads, people donned white ascension robes and the faithful sought out rooftops, mountaintops or trees in which to sit and wait for the apocalyptic event to occur. Of course, it never did, which resulted in what is known as the Great Disappointment. Miller faded into obscurity after a helping of ridicule while his followers found their way to communities such as the Quakers. Others formed what we now know as the Adventists. Solomon carried on at his temple giving sermons for small crowds every Sunday morning. Goddard would face his own disappointments as he began his research and tests of his rocket designs. His methods were sound, and having earned a Ph.D. in physics at Clark University, one would suppose he had been taken seriously for his efforts. Such was not the case as rocketry and in particular space travel was seen as the stuff of science fiction, not science. Early rocket tests, though promising, were mocked by the press. One headline said, Moon rocket misses target by 238,799.5 miles. The same paper published an apology after the moon landing which never would have been possible without Goddard's early work. It is worth considering that Goddard had in part been inspired by science fiction, having read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds prior to his vision in the cherry tree. The prominence of Mars in his imagination holds its own irony, as he was later made to continue his work with funding based on applications in weapons of war. Parsons and his team later faced similar conflicts of conscience. Space travel was the dream, but here on Earth, the powers that were only seemed interested in pushing the doomsday clock closer to midnight. At Astra, Perespera, they say, and all the while the God of War chuckles. Is there something about the spirit of the place? Winding its way through time to inspire the young Goddard and by proxy Jack Parsons? Solomon seemed very devoted to living in harmony with nature, and Goddard's early ideas about rocket propulsion came from the study of birds in flight in the same wooded area. The natural setting of that hill holds another odd irony. For a place deeded to God, it is a rather unattractive and desolate one. Urban legends over the years tell of unverifiable suicides in those woods with a particular tree thought to be the hanging tree. Some places like this are given more demonic names like Satan's Kingdom in the western part of Massachusetts, and places like that are often more pleasant. The devil names employed come from conflating the nature Godd pan with the biblical Satan, and is it any wonder Jack Parsons would perform a hymn to pan before each rocket launch? On a hill called Tata Set, from which planes take off and land regularly now, a hopeful dream of a world ending seems to have spiraled through time and become a vision of worlds to come in the mind of a young man daydreaming in a tree at sunset. Time is a corkscrew and a rubber one at that, capable of bending and meeting itself in the form of repeated names and symbols. This is true everywhere, but these astonishing themes are occulted within the tangled mess of history. It takes some work and time to parse it out. The more you dig, the more you find. Would you believe the rights to the land on which Worcester stands were negotiated with Nipmuc leaders who, in typical colonizer fashion, were given the English names Solomon and John? It's true, and the truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. It's tantalizing to think that there exists an ineffable creative force, an imaginable muse that can inhabit the land or travel through bloodlines. Reality rhymes with itself in repeated symbols, names and themes, often not obvious, but always hard not to notice once revealed. One gets the sense by uncovering obscure historical bits in bobs like visions, daydreams, convictions and inspirations to see where they connect. The whole underlying fabric that supports what we take for granted as reality could be explained, or perhaps it simply drives us mad. Such is the struggle. To the stars, through adversity, all the while remembering to stay grounded. There are healing forces, naturally, all around us. However, there may also be healing forces above us. These same forces, or aliens, that are erasing our memories and stealing glimpses of our planet while we sleep, could also be the ones responsible for healing our fragile, complicated human bodies. Like a band of cosmic Florence Nightingales, some say aliens for centuries have been known to arrive out of nowhere and mend not only our broken bones, but everything from scratches to head injuries. Molly Briggs tells us more. Sitting on the soft, serene beach of Siesta Key in southwest Florida, I picked up a handful of white crystalline sand and let it sift through my fingers. Cool and soft in texture, it's pure white and made up of 99% quartz. We know that quartz crystal is healing. It s the most abundant natural mineral found on earth and resonates with all of your chakras or energy centers of the body. The healing crystal washed up onto the shoreline thousands of years ago, completing its journey from the Appalachian Mountains via the rivers of the Gulf of Mexico. Because our human system is made up of energy, frequency and vibration, the crystals work with our body to absorb, restore, release and regulate energy, making it one of the major healing resources on the planet. Used for centuries all over the world in different practices, it wasn t until the 1980s that crystals began to re-emerge as a healing method. Given that we were unaware of such healing capabilities that were right here at our fingertips all along, stretching over miles of the Florida coastline, should it not give us pause to consider what other healing alternatives we may be missing? For example, aliens or entities? Did I lose you? Hear me out. Stay with me. This will get interesting, I promise. What if we discovered once and for all that aliens were real and they could heal and save our human lives? For example, take Travis Walton. On November 5, 1975, Travis was working with a team of men in the Sitgreaves National Forest near Snowflake, Arizona. Driving away from their work site, they all saw an alien craft scanning the woods. Travis exited the truck and was struck by a beam of light coming from the ship. As he lay there unconscious, the rest of the men abandoned him only to return a short time later to find him missing. He reappeared five days later with no life-threatening injuries. Some speculate, as I do, that Travis merely got in the way of the beam of light, which fatally injured him. It's possible that the beings on board the craft brought him back to life and took five days to do it. This may sound like a far-out scenario, but is it? When you compare it to the theory that God took only seven days to create the entire universe, the idea doesn't seem to feel quite so unreasonable. Preston Dennett, in his book The Healing Power of UFOs, 300 True Accounts of People Healed by Extraterrestrials, he states, Given that their technology seems to be far in advance of our own, it's likely that they know more about the human body than we do. He also documented that in 1961, during the abduction of Betty Hill in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, she described having a procedure done on board a craft by way of a needle being inserted into her navel. No such procedures were being done in the medical world in that manner during that time, however today that would be a procedure closely resembling laparoscopy. This leads us to a very important question. Are these alien races far more medically advanced than us, and do they have our best intentions in mind? Unfortunately, it's difficult to know. When we go down that rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, it may be pertinent to remember that a heavy hitting topic on the list of any politician during an election year is healthcare. We should keep in mind that healthcare is one of the largest money-making businesses known to humankind. Now, my dear Watson, where would that tricky business of healthcare be financially if we understood that ETs have not only the ability to heal us of diabetes and cancer, but can also give us the option of everlasting life? Would this be a reason to create fear surrounding our galactic brothers and sisters? Too big of a stretch? A little far out of our earthly comfort zone? Maybe, but an intriguing question all the same. In Preston Dennett's book, he profiles 76 cases of injury healing by ETs. The injuries included ailments such as cuts, bruises, broken bones, burns and head injuries, all claimed to have been healed by ETs. One case in 1965 recounts two policemen driving along the highway in Damon, Texas. One of the men had a bandage on his hand covering a bite mark he'd received from his son's pet alligator. Suddenly the men saw bright lights to the right of their vehicle. Pulling off the side of the highway, they could see the lights were part of a solid mass, 200 to 300 feet long and 50 feet wide. The object moved over the vehicle and beamed a bright light into their patrol car. The man with the injured finger had his arms hanging outside the vehicle. He said, I could feel the heat from the light. Eventually, the men sped away from the stadium-sized craft only to pull off again a number of miles down the road. Noticing his finger was no longer throbbing, the deputy pulled off his bandage. The officer stated, you couldn't tell I had ever been bitten. Another case in 1952 recalls an incident involving a young German citizen named Hans Klutzbach. Hans was interviewed by UFO researcher Gordon Creighton.  Hans leapt from the moving train and landed badly, sustaining terrible injuries. Bleeding horribly and unable to walk, Klutzbach fainted. He came to aboard a craft surrounded by bright opal blue lights and recalled being addressed in German. After being informed of future events on earth, he passed out again and awoke in a grassy field just six miles from where he had jumped. Although his trousers and shoes were thickly crusted with dried blood, the injured legs were totally healed. Like most instances concerning the UFO phenomenon, evidence for such encounters is typically sparse. We are drawn into fantastical stories of flying saucers, little green men and miraculous healing without so much as a shred of evidence to prove it to be true. What we are left with is our discernment and our intuitive ability to recognize fact from fiction. Wherever these beings come from, if they do have the ability to heal the sick and dying on our planet, why not set a place for them at our cosmic table? Are we afraid of these beings because of what they have done? Or are we afraid of them because of what we think they might do? It has served me well over time to remember to think things through to the end. I have learned not to judge but to use my best judgment and to humbly take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth. There are many things about this universe that we have yet to discover, and much more that we do not yet understand. What we as a society are beginning to see through the power of social media and the internet is that, sadly, there is a small group of nefarious ones that would like nothing better than to control our money, our health care and, ultimately, our lives. This concept, I believe, would go largely undebated. Unfortunately, these folks live right here with us, openly on this planet. If it was determined that beings from outer space could instantly heal the people of this big blue marble, it would sure put a stick in the spokes of the health care industry's collective pocketbook. In the end, as I get on with life, I can see very clearly that we are a collective consciousness, and it is only through sharing our gifts wherever we are from that we will find what we are looking for. I will also concede that if anyone in the universe was willing to give freely of their ability to heal someone I loved and I had exhausted all other earthly resources, I would be more than happy to receive that blessing. Want more Paranormality? Subscribe to Paranormality magazine and each month get it delivered digitally or via mail in our print version. Paranormality magazine is a collaborative endeavor featuring works from people like you who have a passion for all things mysterious and unexplained. Our goal is the pursuit of knowledge, gathering captivating stories from our own team of writers, researchers and investigators, as well as from writers such as yourself. Each monthly issue also includes a list of paranormal, horror, UFO and cryptozoology events around the country, incredible paranormal themed artwork, articles and writing sent in from our readers, suggested books and podcasts to consume and more. Visit ParanormalityMag.com and subscribe today for as little as $3.99 a month. That's ParanormalityMag.com. ParanormalityMag.com. Feeling congested, Grace Fryer excused herself from the front office of the bank withdrawing to privacy to blow her nose. When she was safely at a range of sight and sound, she blew hard into a handkerchief that she had taken from her pocket. As Grace proceeded to remove the handkerchief from her nose to fold it in half to try again, she stopped dead in her tracks. Alarmed by the sight, Grace nearly fell backwards. Her handkerchief glowed. Grace couldn't help but think back to her time working as a dial painter at a radium factory in Orange, New Jersey. Sure, the radium glowed there. That was the point. They were told countless times that it was perfectly safe, and once again, when a question arose about the method of making sure the tip of the paintbrush was extra pointy by placing it in between their lips and wetting it with their tongues, but why here? How would she made this handkerchief glow before her? Was she infected in some way? This would be only the beginning of the oddities surrounding Grace Fryer's life. A heartbreaking reality would soon set in that affected more than just Grace, but those who shared the familiar title of dial painter. And before long, they would share a new title. The Radium Girls Dylan Wade Clark brings us the story. Marie and Pierre Curie first laid eyes on one another in 1894 at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. Pierre resided at the School of Physics and Chemistry as a professor, and Marie as a student studying physics and mathematics. The couple quickly bonded over their common interests in natural sciences and by July 1895 they would be married. In the same year, Pierre would publish his doctoral thesis on the connection between temperature and magnetism, giving birth to what we know today as Curie's Law. By 1897, the couple would share the birth of their daughter Irene. And soon after, Pierre would help secure Marie as a job in the school's laboratory. Here she would conduct further research into her husband's discoveries in magnetism, specifically into the properties of the magnetism of steel. But bound for much more, Marie would spark interest in writing her own doctoral thesis, and soon a research topic would present itself. Wilhelm Röntgen amazed the world on December 28, 1895 with his discovery of x-rays, and French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel was just as impressed. Inspired by Röntgen's revelation before him, Becquerel was inclined to find his own discovery in x-ray science by reaching for a connection between invisible radiation and phosphorescence. On February 24, 1896, Becquerel would stand before an assembly, presenting his newfound discoveries armed with evidence. He explained by example that when uranium-based crystals were exposed to sunlight, they would leave an everlasting shadow on photographic plates, even when wrapped in thick black paper. This experiment would be an important footnote in his later accidental discovery of spontaneous radiation and Marie Curie's inspiration for research. Like her husband before her, Marie sought recognition through the publication of her own doctoral thesis. Where the Leacademy de Sciences fell short in their attention with Becquerel's discovery, Marie didn't and was sat on a path of research into the strange uranium rays. Working with the tools amongst her ranks, Marie used an electrometer at her disposal. This electrometer, fabricated by her husband and brother-in-law, worked based on the piezoelectric effect providing insight into materials that gave off weak electrical currents. In her endeavor to find a chemical compound comparable to uranium, she would make multiple insightful discoveries. Firstly, she provided a prominent quality about radiation. The strength of radiation did not depend solely on the compound at hand but on the amount of uranium or thorium contained. She proposed that many chemical compounds of the same element are different in structure and chemical characteristics. Lastly, after she was triumphant in her research of all elements of the periodic table, she concluded that the ability to radiate is linked to the interior of the atom and that only uranium and thorium contain the ability to give off radiation. This discovery would be groundbreaking and considered her biggest addition to the development of physics. Amazed by his wife's innovative findings, Pierre would soon join her side and by the end of June 1898, they would discover a substance 300 times stronger than uranium. The couple accounted for their accomplishment to the public in a publication in July of the same year, suggesting the name of Polonium for the newly found substance. Then on December 26, 1898, the Curies presented to La Académie des Sciences evidence of an additional element and with it a name, radium. In 1903, Antoine-Henriques Becquerel, Pierre Curie and Marie Curie would graciously share a Nobel Peace Prize in Physics for their discoveries in radiation. While the world of science shared their names, the rest of the world embodied the thought of this miracle compound seeking to use its properties to the fullest potential. Dr. Saban Arnold Von Soshaki had just completed his doctorate in medicine at the University of Moscow and his eyes were set on the promising narrative of the American Dream. In 1906, he moved to the United States, specifically immigrating to New York, where he would spend the next ten years practicing medicine. Dr. Von Soshaki stayed busy during his tenure in New York before moving to New Jersey, providing ideas and contributions to the use of radium. In 1913, alongside Dr. Edward J. Lehman, he would play a part in the development of radioluminescent paint, seeing long-term use within one's home. In 1921, he provided the following quote, The time will doubtless come when you will have in your own house a room lighted by radium. The light thrown off by radium paint on walls and ceiling would in color and tone be like soft moonlight. By 1917, Dr. Von Soshaki, along with colleague Dr. George S. Willis, and a handful of investors would form the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, later renamed the United States Radium Corporation. The group's primary focus was producing uranium, until eventually shifting to the application of Dr. Soshaki's radioluminescent paint that he dubbed Undark. The United States Radium Corp wasted little time opening three factories across New Jersey, one in Newark, New Jersey and Orange, and with this ample workforce, they jumped at the opportunity to assist the U.S. military during World War I with a handful of products dosed in Undark. While the management team and scientists took the utmost precautions when handling the radium products, they could care less about their workers. This carelessness was evident by a common practice influenced by management throughout the production lines. They instructed the young women who worked in the factories to place the tip of their paintbrushes between their lips and to wet it with their tongue to keep the tip extra straight. Their reasoning was that dial and watch painting was delicate work, and keeping the paintbrush tips straight was crucial in providing the best quality work. Among the workforce at the radium factory in Orange, New Jersey was Grace Fryer. Daily activities for Grace and her co-workers included manning a workstation with a rack of dials nearby ready to be painted with a radioluminescent solution composed of glue, water and radium powder that would be mixed into a glowing greenish-white paint. Once the paint was ready to be applied, each of the dial painters would dip their brushes in and then neatly apply the paint to the dial's numbers. When the brush lost its pointed appearance, the women lost the ability to paint accurately. To combat this, each painter would follow the standard practice of bringing the brushes back to their pointed form by dragging the bristles between their lips. Grace is quoted saying, Our instructors told us to point them with our lips. And I think I pointed mine about six times to every watch dial. It didn't have any taste and I didn't know it was harmful. Much like Grace, each of the other women shared a similar routine, unbeknownst at the time of the harmful and life-threatening effects of radium. In fact, much of the outside world saw radium as a magical cure-all because of its known use in cancer treatment. The dial painters' exposure to radium expanded much outside of common practice and many women would often paint their nails, teeth and faces because of the glow in the dark properties. Years later, when Grace left her dial painting job for a more suitable employment at a local bank, the lasting effects remained. First, she noticed that glowing snot had filled her handkerchief after she blew her nose and before long, her teeth began to ache. By 1922, her teeth began to fall out and she suffered acute jaw pain. Throughout her painful struggles, Grace would visit various medical professionals who were alarmed by their x-ray findings. Grace was enduring severe bone decay in not only her mouth but her back as well. This finding left doctors bewildered. They hadn't seen anything like it before. Finally, in 1925, a doctor suggested to Grace that her condition could have been the everlasting effects of working with radium at her previous employer. Grace would not be the only worker to suffer from lasting effects due to radium poisoning and because the human body confuses radium with calcium, many of the cases were horrendous. Like Grace, many victims saw the loss of teeth. Beyond this, many experienced brittle bones that were easily broken and in some cases, total spinal collapse. By the late 1920s, it is estimated that more than 50 people had died due to radium exposure with one of the most devastating cases recorded being that of Molly Maggia. Molly Maggia was a fellow dial painter and co-worker to Grace and with the onset of a mysterious illness, she had no choice but to quit her job in 1922. Molly first noticed excruciating pain in her jaw in the form of a toothache. She soon retreated to the dentist for a tooth removal. This pain only continued to spread and multiple teeth had to be removed. Where her teeth once sat, now blood and pus-filled ulcers began to grow, making a simple everyday task like breathing hard to accomplish.  It wasn't long before Molly's mouth and lower jaw had become a large abscess. Molly would visit the dentist for one of her last times in May of 1922, suffering from unbearable jaw pain and to the dentist's horror, her jaw gave way to the weight of his fingers gently nudging. It was discovered that radium poisoning had deteriorated much of Molly's bone structure, leaving it very porous. Later, on September 12 of the same year, 24-year-old Molly Magia would succumb to the lasting effects of radium where her throat deteriorated, causing her jugular vein to collapse and unfortunately, leaving her to choke to death on her own blood before medical assistants could intervene. Henceforth, Molly Magia would set a precedence for what was to come for many of her fellow co-workers. Following the opinion of her doctor and fearful of a similar fate as her peers, Grace sought to expose the atrocities of the U.S. Radium Corporation and it didn't take long for the organization to rear its wicked head in the form of a misinformation campaign. As Grace worked to expose the company, she was met by a Columbia University specialist claiming to be referred by friends wanting to help her in her fight. Frederick Flynn offered to examine Grace's conditions and she obliged. Flynn would be fruitful with evidence supporting his claim that Grace was in perfect health. It wouldn't be long after this encounter that Flynn was exposed as a fraud. He wasn't a licensed professional and lacked any medical training. Frederick Flynn was an industrial toxicologist and vice president of the U.S. Radium who hoped to detour Grace Fryer in her pursuit of justice by squashing her confidence like a bug. Grace would not be hindered and was valiant in her efforts to take down U.S. Radium. As she gained momentum, four of her fellow dial painters would join her side determined to file a lawsuit against the company, remaining resilient in their efforts to find a lawyer to take their case seriously. Eventually, in 1927, the women were successful in finding aid in their fight in the form of a young lawyer by the name of Raymond Berry. With the help of Berry, the women raised a lawsuit against U.S. Radium for their inhumanity in the form of $250,000. But because many of the women were living on borrowed time with some given less than a year to live, they eventually settled for a significantly less $10,000 each and a yearly annuity of $600 for as long as they lived. Beyond this cash settlement, they were truly victorious in their endeavors by exposing the deadly effects of Radium poisoning because of their efforts. The case of the Radium Girls was the first of its kind and a pivotal moment in the history of employee rights. The atrocities exposed during the movement shined a light on the horrible conditions that some employees face and where their employer's hearts and minds truly lay. As a result, the case would give birth to multiple laws intended to protect employees by holding employers accountable for their health and safety, eventually leading to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA. If this was a movie, we would expect a happy ending on the part of Grace Fryer. But unfortunately, it is not so. Grace Fryer passed away on October 27, 1933, at the young age of 34, suffering from the lasting effects of Radium poison like many of her fellow dial painters. I think it is important to remember Grace Fryer and her fellow Radium Girls for their tenacity. Let's remember to always stand up for what is right and in life's hardest battles, fight like you are dying. As Grace Fryer once said, it is not for myself I care. I am thinking more of the hundreds of girls whom this may serve as an example. Many are familiar with the history of and haunting legends of St. Augustine, but less are familiar with a small island to the north. Sitting right below the state border is Amelia Island. Chaz CMP had the pleasure of spending Halloween on this island and he was absorbed in some of its bizarre history and paranormal locations. He brings us, in writing, a short tour through one of Florida's forgotten haunted islands. Amelia Island boasts a large Spanish fort that still stands named Fort Clinch, and like most of the others, it has attracted a variety of legends. It was used in the Civil War, Spanish American War, and the genocide that would be known as the Seminole War. It sits at the mouth of the Amelia River, which flows all the way down to the Nassau Sound. Along this river sits an area known as Old Town. Archaeological evidence shows that this was the original location of the Timakua settlement and the Spanish began to occupy the same area at various times since 1560, establishing an official town named Fernandina in the early 1800s. Stories of ghosts and witches, pirates, and smugglers have surrounded the area ever since. As one travels south from there, they would cross over Egan's Creek. A rough, unpaved trail follows the creek and despite its proximity to the popular nearby beach, the trail is surprisingly remote. That doesn't prevent the occasional hiker from following its path, perhaps to read its nature signs or perhaps in search of treasure. The story goes that somewhere along the creek a pirate buried his treasure. Once it was buried, he killed his companions and placed a chain on a tree to mark the location of the treasure. Unfortunately, he was bit by a snake and died on the island, never recovering his treasure. A great pirate story, despite a few plot holes, it is said that those who try to recover the treasure only meet a curse. This is just one of many pirate stories that surround the island. The Amelia Island History Museum has many such stories. The museum itself is inside an old brick building which used to be a jailhouse. The museum itself has attracted ghost stories, including that of a pirate who was sentenced to hang.   He survived, just to be hung the next day in what one can assume was an extra gory display. The museum today is host to a variety of strange phenomena, especially the portion that remains designed like a jail cell. A headless apparition is also seen from time to time, assumed to be the executed pirate. Near the museum sits a variety of other properties whose histories are said to have ghosts attached. The nearby Florida House Inn was used to house union officers during the Civil War, one of whom bought the property afterwards. Presidents, actors, and other famous guests have stayed at the property, but it is the officer's wife who is said to still be hanging around. Employees and guests have reported smelling her perfume and feeling her presence. Stranger, a pair of her shoes that are normally in a locked display case, have a habit of disappearing and then reappearing in the rooms of guests. We spent the night in the inn and while we experienced nothing strange, the staff assured us that paranormal happenings are common on the grounds. The Epps House is a short walk from there and is also said to be occupied by a female spirit. The green two-story colonial building is stunning. Its large porches elegantly lined with artfully trimmed white pillars and railings. Now it is a private residence. It was once the mansion hotel. This hotel was home to a toxic couple, Thomas Jefferson Epps and his wife Celeste. Celeste was a beautiful but less than stable woman. She told her husband that Ferdinand Sewer, hotel manager and city council president, had made some kind of pass at her and she was deeply offended. Epps shot and killed the man and the couple fled the island. Later Celeste died in childbirth. Afterwards, her ghost began to appear at the bedside of her friends and, according to some, still appears looming over the beds in the house. A few blocks back toward the Amelia River sits the Palace Saloon, which proudly boasts itself as the oldest bar in Florida. The bar itself claims to have ten decades of ghosts. Bar tenders report feeling an icy hand on their shoulder when no one is there. Music and chatter can be heard coming from the building in the odd hours when the bar is closed and empty. A player piano seems to have a mind of its own and starts playing at strange times. We walked a short distance from the Florida house in to the Palace Saloon, stopping at a bookstore on the way to pick up a book about local legends. We got to the bar in ornate wooden one with a carved woman holding lamps. We sat and the bartender told us about the local ghost, a bartender who lived and worked at the bar and is said to still show up from time to time. The surface of Amelia Island is covered in these stories. In downtown, one can even take a ghost tour on the weekends, which covers these and a scattering of other locations on the island. We drag a few more and flipped through the book Ghosts of Amelia and Other Tales written by a local author, Maggie Carter-DeVries. The table of contents surprised us. There were 26 tales, much more than had been available from online sources. The sun sets and we started hopping bars and looking for haunted locations. It became clear that the island had many more legends to explore and one night was certainly not enough. With that in mind, we just might be heading back to Amelia Island next Halloween. Thanks for listening to Paranormality Magazine. Get more information about the magazine and subscribe to our monthly publication at ParanormalityMag.com or click the link in the show description.  We might feature you in our next issue. If you have a paranormal podcast, you can add it to our website so our readers can find your show. And artists, if you'd like your work to be featured in our magazine or on our back cover, contact us. Again, our website is ParanormalityMag.com. I'm Darren Marlar and I'll have more paranormal for you next time from Paranormality Magazine.


Well, you know, I emphasize that the rise of the digital economy has very profound macroeconomic implications, implications for macroeconomic policies, for product market regulation, monetary policy, fiscal policy, and let me give you just two examples. One is product market regulation, because the digitalization of the economy in fact is underpinning good things, rising productivity that may be forthcoming, but also less good things, which is a rise in market power. This rise in market power up to a point can be a good thing also, because you need incentives, you need market power to innovate, but beyond a point it can discourage innovation by the leaders and also by the followers that would want to overtake the leaders. And what we see now in the data is that in fact this rise in market power that we've seen in advanced economies, it has already had a negative impact on investment, it has reduced labor income shares to a modest extent, but still a slight negative overall. So that's something to be addressed, and for that you're going to need adjustment to competition policies, you know, antitrust, and also perhaps adjustment to intellectual property rise, in particular, rewarding major innovation much more than incremental one. And the other part, the other example that I want to give is monetary policy. Here on monetary policy, one very neat example is the fact that digitalization means a rise in intangible assets, and intangible assets you cannot bring them as collateral to borrow. So that means in crisis times, you're going to cut on that, you're going to cut on innovation enhancing investment that's going to reduce productivity, and that's when you need monetary policy much more than you did in the past. So monetary policy is going to be very powerful in a world with assets and intangibility.


A very good evening everyone. Welcome to the Hindi news analysis brought to you by Shankara IAS Academy for the date 21st September 2021. So we have 7 topics chosen for discussion today. Good news is 2 topics have been already discussed very recently so I am not going to touch upon it. So apart from that we have 5 topics chosen for discussion today. Our first topic will be based on National Register of Citizens and its nexus with the Citizenship Amendment Act. We will be seeing the entire topic in total in the context of the Foreigner's Tribunal verdict in the recent context. So it will be a comprehensive discussion on that, a bit lengthy discussion on that and our second discussion is going to be based on the ease of doing business and we know recently the World Bank has scrapped the ease of doing business ranking. So we will see why was it scrapped and the author in this editorial has given a critical view of the index in itself. So we will be looking at that and our next discussion will be a geography based discussion. We will be refreshing about western guards and the eastern guards. So this particular part of the discussion will be very relevant for those appearing for prelims this time as well as for next time. And after that we will be talking about something very grim which is called the marital rape in India and unfortunately in India it is still permitted. It is still a legal crime. So in that context we will be talking about marital rape and the faces surrounding it. And lastly we will be talking about the national institutional ranking framework. So that is a quick take away topic that is going to be a very small discussion only that will not take much time. So our analysis today will have five topics with four comprehensive discussions and one quick take away topic. And lastly we will conclude our sessions with some main questions. So write the answers and post it in the comment section for peer review. So with that let's move on to the discussion for today. Now look at this editorial. See this editorial discusses about the national registry of citizens. In this context we will be discussing the citizenship amendment at the national registry of citizens and also regarding the current move by the foreigners tribunal in Assam. All right so let's get into the discussion. First let us start by knowing the basic objective of the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019. See this particular act is an amended version of Citizenship Act of 1955. And if you see this amendment act aims to grant citizenship to members of six minority communities who have migrated to India from three different countries. And the six minority communities are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. And the three countries that is mentioned in this amendment are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Okay and as you can see one particular religious minority in India has been excluded and that is the reason why this particular act has also made news. And another thing that you will have to notice only those people will be granted citizenship through this route who have migrated to India before the 31st of December 2014. And if at all anybody who is belonging to these six minority communities or from these three countries even if they have migrated to India after 2014 they will not be given any citizenship through this particular route. Okay keep this in mind and those persons who have migrated to India even without valid travel documents or the members whose travel document validity has expired will also be given citizenship based on this particular amendment act provided they had come to India before 31st of December 2014 and they fulfill the other criteria of the six minority communities and these three countries. Okay and here you need to know that two major amendments are important. First is section two of the Citizenship Act of 1955. This section two was amended by inserting a new clause for not treating these persons as illegal migrants because we just saw even people who do not have valid travel documents will be granted citizenship. So section two which deals with illegal migrants had to be amended and the next major amendment is to reduce the time period in acquiring the citizenship or in other words to fast track the citizenship being granted to these people through naturalization. See you may all by now will know that we have five ways of acquiring citizenship and these five ways are prescribed in the Citizenship Act of 1955. So recollect with me the first is by birth, second is by descent and third we have by registration and fourth we have by naturalization and fifth by the incorporation of territory. So just understand that by birth means if an individual is born here how the particular individual is granted citizenship that is dealt with by birth and by descent what do you mean by descent if either of your parents or your grandparents are Indians and you probably are in a different soil or an Indian soil and how are you given citizenship is based on descent and by registration say a foreigner comes to India and he or she wants to get Indian citizenship then they have to go to the government and they have to register themselves and how they get citizenship is by registration and by naturalization we mean how long they stay in India and thereby they acquire the citizenship that is by naturalization and lastly by incorporation of territory. Say for example India acquires a territory from one of the neighboring countries then the people living in that particular territory will become Indian citizens so that is by incorporation of territory. Coming back to naturalization which is what this particular act deals with naturalization literally means the admittance of a foreigner to the citizenship of a country okay and for these persons from these six communities that we just saw from three countries a provision has been inserted in the third schedule as per the amendment act as per this provision the already existing period of not less than 11 years for acquiring citizenship through naturalization has been reduced not less than five years for these persons only understand this by naturalization if a foreigner wants to get citizenship in India it is 11 years but if they belong to these six minority communities from these three countries and if they have come to India before 2014 they just have to stay in India for five years in that case they will be granted citizenship okay so we can see that the citizenship amendment act helps in facilitating and fast tracking these citizenship status of these persons that is they will get citizenship faster compared to people coming from any other country or from any other community okay so remember only for these set of persons the time period to acquire citizenship by naturalization has been reduced and for every other person who wished to acquire citizenship through naturalization the time period was not updated so this is all about this amendment act that you'll need to know now you can see that one particular community that is Muslim community is excluded from this particular amendment but know that people belonging to this community from these three countries can also acquire Indian citizenship doesn't mean that people belonging to this community from these countries cannot acquire they can also acquire but they will have to take the regular route of naturalization that is they will have to show that they stayed in India for longer than five years compared to the other community people and this is why this particular piece of legislation was condemned because it segregated people based on religion whereas India is a secular country that is it does not discriminate people based on religion but this particular act attempts to do so and that is the exact reason why the CAA has been facing a backlash now coming back to the discussion remember after CAA came into force in 2020 it saw widespread opposition from across the country especially the exclusion of Muslim community from this citizenship act has become a major concern among the Indian society and also among the opposition political parties and many petitions were filed in supreme court to stay this act here the protesters of the CAA also say that this act will make the national registry of citizens which was published for Assam as ineffective let us understand this before that let's see what is NRC first see NRC for Assam was a promise made in the Assam accord so this particular NRC seeks to identify and deport the foreigners from Assam that is it is believed that Assam has a lot of influx from Bangladesh right and it has been alleged that these foreigners they take away the resources that is meant for the natives so in order to you know preserve the resources and rights of the local native people this move was done and know that under section 14a one of a citizenship act of 1955 the central government may compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue national identity card to him or her see where you will have to pay attention here is to the word me okay in the 1955 act itself the government has said that the government can register every particular citizen of India but that exercise was never made okay because there is a clause which says it is may right it may be compulsory it may not be compulsory so the government chose not to do it and recently under NRC this particular action of the government has been validated through the section 14a one of citizenship act of 1955 all right now section 14a two of the act provides that the central government may maintain a national registry of Indian citizens so the NRC is the register that contains the name of Indian citizens and this register was prepared for first time after the conduct of census of 1951 and this is under the ministry of home affairs this is an extra information for preliminary exam and these registers cover each and every person enumerated during the census of 1951 and ever since then NRC is being updated for the first time but it is updated only for the state of Assam now let us discuss the issues specific to Assam right see during 1971 of March we remember that there was a war going on yeah and Assam witnessed massive illegal migration from Bangladesh because of the Bangladesh war of independence this has led to huge protests in Assam and finally the Assam accord was signed between the government of India and the protesters in 1985 what did the protesters demand we just saw they wanted their land for themselves and they wanted to send back those people who migrated into India so that was the issue and they started protesting and Assam accord came into place in 1985 as a compromise and one of the important provision of Assam accord was to find out the illegal migrants from Bangladesh and in that direction an NGO filed a petition in the supreme court this was in 2009 so the NGO demanded the updation of NRC to find out the illegal migrants in the state and the supreme court in 2013 said that the process to update the NRCs in Assam should be started so that is how NRC started getting updated in Assam so in accordance with the supreme court order the exercise began two years later that is in 2015 and remember that the objective of NRC was to segregate the Indian citizens living in Assam from those who illegally entered from Bangladesh and the final NRC was published in August 31 2019 and a lot of people were also excluded from the list about 1.9 million people were excluded or 19 lakh people were rendered stateless and by the time NRC was published it became evident that majority of those denied citizenship were Hindus or indigenous tribes and it was at this time that the CAA came into force that means the CAA gives citizenship to illegal migrants who were identified by the NRC but it excludes the indigenous tribes and that is exactly why the CAA NRC nexus is very contentious and frankly speaking quite dangerous as well because it excludes the indigenous people so this was another reason why CAA saw opposition so recently what has happened is coming back to the editorial the foreign NRC tribunal in Assam which is tasked with the work of identifying who is a legal citizen who is a illegal citizen right so that is what it is tasked with it tries to segregate the people who have illegally migrated from those who are residents or citizens of India and a foreigner's tribunal in Assam has held that the national registry of citizens does not require a revisit we just saw about 19 lakh people have been rendered stateless right but still even the government wanted to revisit it but this foreigner's tribunal has held that there is no need for revisiting it the list that is published is final see this particular verdict of the foreigner's tribunal has seen a mix of response because firstly the Hindu from where we took out the article in itself has said that there is no need to revisit NRC it needs to be closed and it is a dangerous exercise that is what the Hindu feels whereas the other experts believe that there is a need to revisit the NRC because the NRC is not even registered with the register general of India which means its legality or the credibility of the document as a representative document of the government of India is very less so it needs to be revisited and the false inclusions or misrepresented inclusions and those who are excluded need to be accommodated as well so these kind of discrepancies have to be taken care of this is another set of opinion whereas few do say that NRC exercise has to be stopped with this so this is the mixed opinion that has been making rounds with respect to NRC so summing up in this part of discussion what did we see we saw about the citizenship amendment act and the national registry of citizens and what is the nexus between these two and we also saw about the recent verdict by a foreigner tribunal from Assam on the status of the national registry of citizens and we also saw what are the opinions given by various experts regarding the NRC and remember the NRC is not registered with the register general of India keep this in mind this is important for the preliminary exam and another thing that you'll have to remember with this particular article is de-voter that is a b c d d for dog de-voter means doubtful voter so this is an important preliminary area as well so when a question asks you what do you understand by de-voter it means doubtful voter especially in the context of NRC all right keep that also in mind so with that in mind let us move on to the next segment of today's discussion now look at this opid recently the world bank group has scrapped the doing business report famously called as the ease of doing business report we all know that doing business report is a flagship publication of the world bank we all might have memorized for a preliminary exam this report published the influential annual ranking of countries on the ease of doing business index so many of us were surprised by this decision of the world bank when it was scrapped and this article analyzes the ramifications of such cancellations and it also discusses the inherent flaws of the edb index here is the syllabus for your reference first let us see why was it cancelled see the world bank house found major ethical issues in the preparations of 2018 and 2020 editions of the ease of doing business index according to trusted sources the ceo of the world bank in 2018 exerted pressure on the internal working team on the doing business report so this pressure was given to falsely boost china's ranking by doctoring the underlying data that is modifying the underlying data and in addition to china pressure was also given to boost rank of many other countries like saudi arabia and these countries have used their political power to improve their ranking so by falsely improving the rank they wanted to polish their international image and sway public opinion so because of these ethical violations the world bank has decided to cancel its doing business report see this part of the discussion so much that we have discussed can be used in multiple areas okay first yes of course you can use it in economic stuff basically it's another economics topic right second you can use it in areas of governance because this is an area where corruption has been detected at one of the highest levels that is in the world bank you can quote this as nepotism because the ceo has shown nepotism in favor of certain countries like china and saudi arabia and besides you can also use this particular incident in your ethics answer as well okay so in areas of ethics where you can use it is governance and apart from that you can also use it in economics discussion so the upcoming part of this discussion will be based more on the economics aspect but so far just keep this particular incident in mind for main's exam see this decision to scrap this index by the world bank has wide ramifications this is because the ease of doing business index serves a variety of purposes because many countries are using this index to attract foreign investments they say i have a very good ranking in the ease of doing business so bring money into my country and invest here and create jobs for my country and national leaders often said ease of doing business targets as well even we have said targets and they use this index to measure domestic policies against the global best practices and they also use this particular index to justify their policies and silence domestic critics for example let us take our own country india india for the past few years wanted to break into the top 50 ranks of the ease of doing business and see we were heavily relying on this index to measure our improvements so this directly infringes in our vision as well see according to the author the ease of doing business index was never perfect even before the 2018 and 2020 ethical violations this index has been suffering from flaws let us see that see the index ranks countries by the simplicity of rules framed for setting up and conducting business that is in essence but it is important to note that this index judges the countries as per the statute it does not go into the actual practice so that is a problem a country may have a very progressive business friendly laws in letter a country may say you can bring in the investments whenever you want in whatever form but in practice there can be various hurdles and these practical hurdles were not measured by the ease of doing business ranking so according to the author the ease of doing business index fails to capture the actual practice part again take our own country for example india ranked low around 130 140 till 2014 and all however it improved to 63rd position in 2019 and 20 it seems like a remarkable achievement so when we just see the rank we may think we are doing very great but according to the author the reality is different look at this particular table see the annual growth rate in GDP manufacturing and constant prices fell from 13.1 percentage in say 2015-16 to minus 2.4 percentage in 2019-20 so the net FDR inflow to GDP ratio has fluctuated around 1.5 percentage only and the fixed investment to GDP ratio fell from 30.1 percentage in 2014-15 to 26.9 percentage in 2019-20 understand these data so what is net FDR inflow to GDP ratio so it is FDR inflow by GDP okay so it measures the amount of FDI that is the investments that come in against the amount of investments that we make outside so that is the net FDI inflow that in comparison to the GDP that particular ratio has not changed over the period from 2014 to 2020 it has remained the same which means the investment friendliness of the country has remained the same now look at the next parameter the fixed investment to GDP ratio at current prices so fixed investment is the amount of investments that is being made in the country which can be from outside or it can be from within the country fixed investments to the growth GDP is the growth so that apparently fell from 30 to 27 which means the amount of investments that are being made could be decreasing an actual picture whereas we saw that the ease of doing business ranking has improved for India remarkably so we can say that ease of doing business is not painting the actual picture see another problem is that the ease of doing business index is constantly tweaking its underlying method for example take chili or South America for that matter chili's rank on the EDB index sharply rose when the conservative government was in power but its rank went down when the socialists took control of the country so it is important to note that the socialist government made no changes in the policies and procedures but still change in government translated to change in rank so you can say that the political currents are influencing the EDB rather than the actual business environment right so we can say that the progress cannot be objectively captured if the methods are constantly changed so these are the flaws now coming back to India's story India wanted to improve a rank in the EDB index so what did we do we weakened our labor laws their enforcements for example we dismantled the idea of official labor inspection systems now we are allowing employers to file self-regulation reports so we've also allowed the private agencies to conduct critical safety regulations such as annual inspection and certification of industrial boilers and our government has gone away from many of its responsibilities to increase our EDB index and our government has reduced its interference to promote a free market which in turn will be better for our rank but this has created many problems think about the labor laws okay the labor laws are in place because they want to safeguard the laborers because they are prone to exploitation dismantling such delicate system can adversely affect the well-being of the laborers and for example we just saw that the inspection system has been dismantled see official labor inspection system allows for a government appointed inspector come and visit a private facility and assess the labor situation there now there is no such system so the government has led the businesses run their own kingdom in their own business so the laborers are prone to being exploited at this particular scenario these kind of changes has proven adverse for the vulnerable sections and also in the recent years issues like workers strike industrial accidents life and asset damages are on the rise and according to the author the lack of independent inspections and employers self-reporting of labor law compliance are the main reasons behind these issues see we have taken drastic steps to improve our ranks in the EDB index but now we have found the index to be flawed and as I already said it also suffers from violations so we have designed our policies and goals around a flawed index this is a major problem so according to the author we should go for a better approach in designing our policies in programs rather than running behind the indices and setting goals based on some index which may or may not be objective in this particular discussion we saw why EDB was dismantled we saw about the corruption and nepotism charges that has been placed on the chief executive officer and like I said the corruption and nepotism charges in the entire fiasco is a very good example for your ethics paper for your governance paper in your main exam okay keep that in mind and we also saw how basing our policies based on an external index which may or may not be objective has affected our trajectory of policymaking okay so this is an interesting discussion on how our country's priorities have changed based on some external factor so with that information in mind let's move on to the next segment of today's discussion now look at this news it is regarding the botanical survey of india see there is a publication by the botanical survey of india called the plan discoveries and it was published in 2020 and in that publication it has added about 267 new species to our country's flora and it is important to note that the western guards contributed more than 22 percentage to the newly added species see we saw it had about 267 new species has been added but yeah we in UPSC also tend to face questions about the new species but not all species are important only those that appear in the newspaper so before problems in case you're appearing for the problems this time just brush through the newly identified species especially if they have some unique names which is based on their geographic area or which is based on the scientist who has discovered not just plants also the animal species just quickly go through it with special focus on the unique names because there was a question in 2016 problems on moosa andamanansis so that is a banana species that was actually found in the Andaman islands so that was asked in 2016 it was an easy question with easy takeaway marks so brush those things up if at all you're appearing for this time's problems all right so coming back to the article in this context let us briefly see about the western and the eastern guards see the entire discussion is of course going to be beneficial for those appearing for problems this time as well as the next time and it'll be a good revision for you if at all you're appearing this time all right see the western guards and the eastern guards mark the western and the eastern edges of the Deccan plateau and we all know that the western guards lie parallel to the western coast and it is important to know that the western guards are continuous range but the eastern guards we can't say they are continuous because see most of the rivers in India are east flowing right so you can see the Kaveri or Krishna, Goda, very Mahana the everything is draining into the east and when you see the eastern guards that is being interrupted by these rivers making it as a discontinuous range compared to the western guards all right so coming back to western guards a western guard can be passed only through passes therefore the western guards have a lot of passes the famous ones are the Talgad, Borgad and the Palgad passes and see when we are talking about the elevation about the western guards and the eastern guards the western guards have a higher elevation compared to the eastern guards and the average elevation of the western guards is around 900 to 1600 meters now a fun fact compare it with the Mount Everest the average elevation of the western guards is 900 to 1600 maybe it will go up to 2000 to 1400 and the eastern guards has an elevation of only 600 meters that is the average but think about Mount Everest it has an elevation of 8,849 meters from the sea level so you can imagine how mighty the Himalayas in comparison to the western and the eastern guards so we can observe that the western guards are higher than the eastern guards and also know that the western guards cause orographic rain by facing the rain bearing moist winds so what is an orographic rain see this orographic rain is also called as the relief rainfall see the orographic rainfall happens when the moist air is lifted as it moves over a range of the mountain and as the air rises and cools the orographic clouds form and precipitation occurs and thereby resulting in rainfall in the side which faces the wind that is called as the orographic precipitation the side that faces the wind is called as the windward side and the one that is away from the wind the other side is called as the rain shadow region and apart from that we have conventional rainfall and cyclonic rainfalls as well cyclonic rainfalls are caused due to cyclones and cyclonic rainfall is also called as frontal rainfall keep that in mind and conventional rainfall happens when the moist air is raised due to the heat in the area and which in turn results in rainfall so that is conventional rainfall the conventional rainfall is due to the convectional currents in the air and that is exactly why the moisture bearing winds are also going up and orographic or the relief rainfall happens due to the mountainous region and we have cyclonic or frontal rainfall because of cyclones now coming back to the discussion on the western and eastern guards western guards are known by different local names for example western guards are known as shahyadri in maharashtra and we have neel giri's in karnataka and tamaladu and in kerala it is commonly called as anamana hills and kardamam hills and also the height of the western guards progressively increases from north to south which means the southern region of the western guards is taller compared to the western guards in the northern region the highest peak of western gacha is anemudi and dhatabatta and the western guards have important hill stations like udagamandalam and this is popularly called as uti and we also have kode kanal which is a very popular hill station in tamaladu and gujrat maharashtra goa karnataka tamaladu and kerala are the six indian states covered by western guards so why are we studying this because there was a question asked in one of the previous years preliminary exam about the states through which the western guards exists so this answer is six which is gujrat maharashtra goa karnataka tamaladu and kerala okay for the regular viewers count the number of states through which the eastern guards passes through and the answer for the same will be given in the next session of mine so if you know the answers post it in the comment section and we'll review that and also know that the western guards are ecologically diverse it has several type of forests like the green forest the moist deciduous forest the scrub jungles also we have and savanas we have and sholas also we have so you should know about sholas sholas is an important area of questioning see the shola forests are typical montane forests found in the valleys separated by grasslands and they're found only in the higher elevations so it is a mixture of grasslands and trees in general the mountains are covered in grasslands and the trees never grow on the mountain tops and finding the shola forest at altitudes about 2000 meters of sea level is unique and furious as well keep that in mind about sholas now coming back to eastern guards see the eastern guards stretch from mahanadi valley to the nil gharis in the south and the eastern guards are discontinuous and irregular and they are also dissected by rivers draining into the bay of bangol and also know that the javadi hills the pal konda range the nalla mala hills and the mahendra ghari hills make up some of the important mountainous hills of the eastern guards so pay attention to these hills see you will have to know the north to south order of these hills also okay when you're reading the map so pay attention to that order and read the eastern guards and the western guards okay so with that information in mind let's move on to the next segment of today's discussion now let us take up this editorial article written by the senior IPS officer this article essentially talks about marital rape and also the need to abolish or get away with the exception provided to it in the IPC so this is the ultimate crux of this editorial with this idea in mind let us look at the important points this is the syllabus relevant for this particular editorial taken out see as we know marital rape or otherwise called a spousal rape is the act of sexual intercourse with one's spouse without the spouse's consent so you'll have to pay attention to the consent part without the spouse's consent so it is one among the many acts of domestic violence that is exhibited but unfortunately marital rape is a non-criminalized crime in india recently two high court judgment on marital rape made headlines the first is the high court of kerala another one is the chhattisgarh high court the kerala high court's judgment is quite progressive it held that the acts of marital rape are a kind of mental cruelty so therefore marital rape is a good ground for divorce and the chhattisgarh high court's judgment was quite conservative it was criticized for being conservative but even then it underlined that the charge of rape framed under section 376 of IPC was erroneous and illegal regarding the exception too see the court judgments have once again brought to light the debate regarding the constitutionality of this particular exception too to the section of 375 of the IPC see what is this 375 the 375 of IPC deals with sexual offenses especially rape and this section lists down various sexual acts which are covered under rape and it also provides the circumstances at which such acts are considered but as you can see this has given two exceptions where the acts will not be considered a rape so as you can see the first circumstance is when it is done for medical purposes okay and the second circumstance is when the sexual intercourse is done by a man with his own wife provided she is over the age of 18 in simple words being sexually involved with a woman of over 18 years of age without her consent is not a crime if she is a legal wife of a person so look at the provision how draconian it is a person can go unscathed if at all he rapes his own wife without the consent and this in turn forms a ground of domestic violence as we saw earlier and know that india is one among the few countries where marital rape is still non-criminalized in fact even the government when this discussion was brought up before the supreme court had said that criminalizing marital rape could destabilize the institution of marriage and that was the ground given by the government to resist criminalizing marital rape so that is a sad state of affair in which india is in right now and this need to criminalize marital rape was highlighted in the report of justice verma committee 2013 and as per the report the marital rape is considered to be a criminal offense in countries like south africa australia canada and all and know that the committee actually recommended to remove the exceptions for marital rape but this suggestion never saw the light by the government and likewise even the andhra pradesh high court expressed the reservations for the particular provisions because there is a high chance for the exception to be misused by a husband for enforcing sexual intercourse with his wife however the supreme court overroled it as well and see some people are of the view that once marital rape is criminalized it may lead to filing of false charges against the husbands see that is a defensive argument given by many see this is not the case because a person will be accused of a crime only after a thorough research based on facts and evidences and not as and when the police prefer even if it is an untrue accusation there are legal provisions to deal with false cases and if found ineffective the legal remedies may be revised suitably so this is not a valid ground to resist criminalization of marital rape likewise some also think that it will be very difficult for the police to prove such cases beyond reasonable doubt and this again doesn't hold water because the difficulty of proof cannot be the criterion for not notifying a unjust or a deviant behavior that is just because I can't find evidence just because the evidence is missing we cannot justify a behavior as correct isn't it so that is the argument presented here and as we all are aware in modern times marriage is considered to be a partnership of equals in the sense marriage is seen as an association of two individuals with each of them having their own separate integrity and dignity so on that lines violating the bodily integrity of a woman is a clear violation of her autonomy as well in fact the european commission of human rights has stated that a rapist remains a rapist regardless of his relationship with the victim so the person who's being raped that is a victim may be a wife or not the crime is a rape so to conclude any provision of law which is not found to be reasonable just and fair and which is against the spirit of article 21 that is protection of life and personal liberty of the constitution is something that is discriminatory and arbitrary and therefore such provisions must be declared unconstitutional and in that regard it is advisable to abolish the exception to the marital rape and since doing it not only exhibits the state's non-tolerance to rape but also makes the institution of marriage more fairer and more equal so what is the use of an institution of marriage which can always subjugate one person to the other so a fairer and equal marriage is much more essential so with this takeaway understand that in India marital rape is not a crime we saw that and we saw arguments why marital rape should be considered a crime in India and how many other countries have criminalized marital rape and how it is a violation of right to life and we also saw about the european commission of human rights stand on this particular issue so these are the basic takeaways that you'll have to keep in mind regarding the marital rape issue with that information in mind let's move on to the next segment of today's discussion now look at this particular news article see this article talks about national institutional ranking framework see i'm not going to get into the substance of the article because that is not very relevant for our exam perspective but you will have to know the basics of the NIRF from the preliminary point of view so let me just briefly tell you what all you'll have to know about NIRF see the national institutional ranking framework that is NIRF is released yearly since 2016 because it was approved in 2015 and was released for the first time in 2016 by the ministry of human resources development and the ministry right now is called as the ministry of education and since 2016 it has been released every year see when it was initially released it had very few categories but right now the ranking is listed for seven categories of colleges or streams okay and these last stream that was added was in 2020 it is for dental category all right so remember that these are the very basic things you will have to remember you don't have to remember which college topped which ranking and all that is all very factual which the UPSC does not touch upon so you should know national institutional ranking framework has been released yearly from 2016 it was approved in 2015 and it has seven categories and the latest addition was in 2020 okay this is all you'll have to know about the national institutional ranking framework the quick takeaway article this is so with that let's move on to the next segment of today's discussion see look at this particular article this article end game is about the bad banks okay and few days ago in bensi mam's discussion we saw about this topic in detail especially in sunday I guess so we are not going to touch upon it again this bad bank topic is very important from the main exam point of view so keep that in mind and also preliminary exam requires you to remember the factual aspects about the structuring functioning and all you'll have to remember all right so brush it up again from the sunday's video and look at this particular topic this topic is about the kudumbashri mission already in one of the previous sessions itself we have discussed about the kudumbashri mission in fact twice we have discussed so i'm not going to repeat it again see this kudumbashri mission is something of a case study type okay you can quote it in the exam paper which is relevant to self-help groups and empowerment of women and women employment all these areas are potential questions which can require a case study and kudumbashri mission will be an ideal fit there okay so with that let's move on to the next segment of today's discussion okay with that we are almost to the closure of the session we have only one practice questions for discussion today and this is based on the citizenship amendment act and the nrc let's look at it in 2019 the final update of nrc was published by the government of india in this context consider the following statements three statement question so it was the first time the nrc was updated see the discussion we saw that yes despite finding its place in the 1955 statute this was the first time nrc is being updated the register covers each and every person enumerated during the census of 1951 so the first statement is correct moving on to the second statement it was updated for the entire of nation see this is a blatantly wrong statement because we all know nrc is updated only for the state of Assam and government is trying to push it for the entire nation but it is still not materialized so statement two is wrong see this is a easy question why we all know statement two is wrong someone who is following the news even roughly will know that statement two is wrong okay now come to the options we see that statement two is there in option a option c option d so let us eliminate all the options which contains statement two then we'll be left only with statement b so only with elimination technique we'll be able to arrive at the answer which is one and three but for knowledge sake let me also go through the third statement the objective of updating nrc was to identify illegal immigrants from Bangladesh see this statement is also correct we saw this in the discussion so the right answer is option b one and three only so with that let's conclude the discussion on the practice preliminary question so that brings us to the end of today's discussion so here are some of the main questions write the answers posted in the comment section for peer review see writing answers is very important i'm talking to those students who are not appearing for preliminary this time so those who are appearing for next time start writing today every day you will be able to cover one or two topics comprehensively when you're reading it yourself all right so post it in the comment section and let's wrap up our discussion with that so pure mask stay safe good day


This study compares the Maxent model with other machine learning models to explore its advantages in simulating urban growth and interpreting driving mechanisms using land use data from Global and 30. The results indicate that the Maxent model outperforms the other models except for computational efficiency, but the time required for Maxent training and projecting is acceptable and less than that of SVM. The Maxent CA model reveals complex driving mechanisms of urban growth in Tianjin due to more variable interactions while the relationships between spatial factors and urban growth are non-linear in all three study areas. Topographic factors, city center, traffic factors, and water bodies are significant factors affecting urban growth in Beijing, Tianjin, and Wuhan, respectively. This article was authored by Bin Zhong and Haijun Wang.