UPSC Prelims News 21st September 2022

UPSC Prelims News of 21st September 2022

Global Registry of Fossil Fuels

Context: It is the world’s first public database of fossil fuel production, reserves and emissions.

It is developed by Carbon Tracker, a non-profit think tank that researches the energy transition’s effect on financial markets, and the Global Energy Monitor, an organization that tracks a variety of energy projects around the globe.
It includes data from over 50,000 oil, gas and coal fields in 89 countries.
It covers 75% of global reserves, production and emissions, and is available for public use.
- Producing and combusting the world’s reserves would yield over 3.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, over seven times the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degrees Celsius and more than all emissions produced since the industrial revolution.
It shows that the United States and Russia have enough fossil fuel reserves to exhaust the world’s remaining carbon budget to stay under 1.5 degrees Celsius warming.

UPSC Prelims News of 22nd September 2022

Klobuchar Bill

Context: A group of companies have urged the US Congress to approve a bill, dubbed Klobuchar bill, designed to rein in Big Tech firms.

About the Bill:

The antitrust legislation is known officially as the American Innovation and Choice Online (AICO) Act. It was co-sponsored by Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Chuck Grassley.
Companies such as Mozilla, Proton and DuckDuckGo have been urging the US Congress to approve the bill.
Objective: The bill seeks to prevent Big Techs from promoting their own products, services or line of business over rivals, modifying search results in their favour, limiting rivals’ access to platform data, etc.

Effects on Big Tech Firms:

The bill will apply to online platforms having over 50 million monthly active users, or annual market capitalization or US net sales of over $550 billion (Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta).
If passed, the bill will authorize US antitrust agencies to impose penalties on such platforms for unfair preferencing of their own products and services, stopping another’s products to compete against their own, discrimination of application of enforcement terms, and more.

Effects on India:

Big Techs in India have been against some government policies, saying they are governed not just by Indian law but also those in the US. The US antitrust laws will determine how they function globally.
An anti-trust legislation in the US will set precedent for regulators globally, and bodies like the Competition Commission of India can follow them.
Tech industry has been urging governments to bring commonality in regulations and the bill will be a first step in this direction.

Asia-pacific Institute of Broadcasting Development (AIBD)

Context: The member countries of AIBD have taken a unanimous decision to extend India’s presidency for one more year.

Asia-pacific Institute of Broadcasting Development (AIBD)

About

It is a regional inter-governmental organization that is mandated to serve the countries of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) in field of electronic media development.
It was established in 1977 under auspices of UNESCO.
Location: It is hosted by Government of Malaysia and its secretariat is located in Kuala Lumpur.
Members: Currently it has 26 countries as full members represented by 43 organizations, and 52 affiliate members.

Miscellaneous

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) are founding organizations of the Institute and they are non-voting members of the General Conference.

SCALE App

Context: Union Minister for Education and Skill Development has launched the SCALE (Skill Certification Assessment for Leather Employees) app for skill development in the leather sector.

About SCALE App

It provides a one-stop solution for the skilling, learning, assessment, and employment needs of the leather industry.
It is designed and developed by the Leather Sector Skill Council (LSSC).
The SCALE studio App developed by LSSC allows people from all age groups interested in leather craft to access online live streamed classes from the state-of-the-art studio at its office.

Leather Sector Skill Council (LSSC):

The Leather Sector Skill Council (LSSC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to meet the demand for skilled workforce in the leather industry in India.
LSSC was set up in 2012 as one of the key sector skill councils approved by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).
LSSC caters to the training and employment needs of various sub-sectors in the leather industry.