Current Affair 1:

International Seabed Authority (ISA)

 

Read:

India is a member:

No deep seabed mining operations have started anywhere in the world. Current exploration activities undertaken in the seabed area are aimed at gathering the necessary information on the location and quality of the seabed minerals and collecting all the necessary environmental information.

The international seabed area – the part which is under ISA jurisdiction – is the seabed and ocean floor and the subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

UNCLOS does not deal with matters of territorial disputes or to resolve issues of sovereignty, as that field is governed by rules of customary international law on the acquisition and loss of territory.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 has a target regarding the conservative and sustainable use of oceans and their resources in line with the UNCLOS legal framework.

Current Affair 2:

European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act

 

News:

The AI Act is a proposed European regulation on artificial intelligence (AI) – the first comprehensive regulation on AI by a major regulator anywhere.

The Act assigns applications of AI to three risk categories.

1. First, applications and systems that create an unacceptable risk, such as government-run social scoring of the type used in China, are banned.
2. Second, high-risk applications, such as a CV-scanning tool that ranks job applicants, are subject to specific legal requirements.
3. Lastly, applications not explicitly banned or listed as high-risk are largely left unregulated.

Like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, the EU AI Act could become a global standard, determining to what extent AI has a positive rather than negative effect on your life wherever you may be.

Few Prohibited AI systems, you can read:

Current Affair 3:

Cocoa Production

 

News:

A shortage of cocoa beans has led to a near shutdown of processing plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two countries responsible for 60% of global production. Three factors are at play: environmental, economic cycle related and human.

It is an important plantation crop grown for chocolates around the world.

With respect to India, I will take Ministry’s data stated in parliament:

World’s largest producer:

Cocoa beans are produced in tropical zones around the Equator, where climate conditions are well suited for growing cocoa trees. About 70 percent of the world’s cocoa beans come from four West African countries: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.

Required climatic conditions:

1. It can be grown up to 300 m above mean sea level.
2. Rainfall: It requires an annual rainfall of 1500-2000 mm.
3. Temperature: The temperature range of 15°-39°C with optimum of 25°C is considered ideal.

Current Affair 4:

United Nations Forum on Forests

 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Forum on Forests are the coordinators of the International Day of Forests.

 

The theme for International Day of Forests 2024 is Forests and Innovation: New Solutions for a Better World.

So, today we will learn about United Nations Forum on Forests:

The UN Strategic Plan for Forest (2017 – 2030) has adopted a set of six Global Forest Goals and 26 associated targets to be reached by 2030, which are voluntary and universal.

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