GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the probe into the killing of tailor in Rajasthan's Udaipur over a social media post.

What is the National Investigation Agency (NIA)?

• It is a central agency mandated to investigate all the offences affecting the sovereignty, security and integrity of India, friendly relations with foreign states, and the offences under the statutory laws enacted to implement international treaties, agreements, conventions and resolutions of the United Nations, its agencies and other international organisations.
• It came into existence with the enactment of the National Investigation Agency Act 2008 by the Parliament of India on 31 December 2008.
• It acts as the Central Counter Terrorism Law Enforcement Agency.
  • NIA was created after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks as need for a central agency to combat terrorism was realised.
• The Agency has been empowered to conduct investigation and prosecution of offences under the Acts specified in the Schedule of the NIA Act.
• Officers of the NIA who are drawn from the Indian Revenue Service, Indian Police Service, state police, Income Tax as well as officers from the Central Armed Police Forces, have all powers, privileges and liabilities which the police officers have in connection with investigation of any offense.
• These include terror acts and their possible links with crimes like smuggling of arms, drugs and fake Indian currency and infiltration from across the borders. The agency has the power to search, seize, arrest and prosecute those involved in such offences.

What are the scheduled offences?

The list includes:

• Explosive Substances Act,
• Atomic Energy Act,
• Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act,
• Anti-Hijacking Act,
• Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act,
• SAARC Convention (Suppression of Terrorism) Act,
• Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Maritime Navigation and Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf Act,
• Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Act
• Relevant offences under the Indian Penal Code, Arms Act and the Information Technology Act.
• In September 2020, the Centre empowered the NIA to also probe offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act that are connected to terror cases.

How wide is NIA's jurisdiction?

• The law under which the agency operates extends to the whole of India.
• It also applies to
  • Indian citizens outside the country;
  • persons in the service of the government wherever they are posted;
  • persons on ships and aircraft registered in India wherever they may be;
  • persons who commit a scheduled offence beyond India against the Indian citizen or affecting the interest of India

How does the NIA take up a probe?

• As provided under Section 6 of the Act, State governments can refer the cases pertaining to the scheduled offences registered at any police station to the Central government (Union Home Ministry) for NIA investigation.
• After assessing the details made available, the Centre can then direct the agency to take over the case.
• State governments are required to extend all assistance to the NIA.
• Even when the Central government is of the opinion that a scheduled offence has been committed which is required to be investigated under the Act, it may, suo motu, direct the agency to take up/over the probe.

After finding several carcasses of wild boar, Kerala health officials recently confirmed the presence of anthrax in Thrissur district.

What is Anthrax?

• Anthrax, also known as malignant pustule or woolsorter’s disease.
• It is a rare but serious disease caused by the rod-shaped bacteria known as Bacillus anthracis.
• It occurs naturally in soil.
• According to the WHO, it is primarily a disease of herbivores, with both domestic and wild animals being affected by it.
• Anthrax is a zoonotic disease, meaning that it is naturally transmissible from animals (usually vertebrae) to humans.
• People can get the disease through contact with infected animals or animal products that are contaminated with bacteria.
• According to the WHO, Anthrax is generally regarded as non-contagious.
• There have been instances of person-to-person transmission, however, such instances are extremely rare.

How do humans get infected?

• Humans almost always contract the disease directly or indirectly from animals or animal products.
• According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people get infected with anthrax when spores enter the body, through breathing, eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water, or through cuts or scrapes in the skin.
• The spores then get “activated” and multiply, spreading across the body, producing toxins and causing severe illness.

Symptoms:

• A group of small blisters or bumps that may itch
• Swelling can occur around the sore
• A painless skin sore (ulcer) with a black center that appears after the small blisters or bumps. Most often the sore will be on the face, neck, arms, or hands.

Types of Anthrax

• Cutaneous:Most common form of anthrax infection, and is considered to be the least dangerous. Infection usually develops from 1 to 7 days after exposure.
• Inhalation:Inhalation anthrax is considered to be the most deadly form of anthrax. Infection usually develops within a week after exposure, but it can take up to 2 months
• Gastointestinal: Gastrointestinal anthrax has rarely been reported. Infection usually develops from 1 to 7 days after exposure.
• Injection: This type of infection has never been reported.
  
  

Prevention

• Antibiotics can prevent anthrax from developing in people who have been exposed but have not developed symptoms.
• Ciprofloxacin and doxycycline are two of the antibiotics that could be used to prevent anthrax.
• People who have been exposed to anthrax must take antibiotics for 60 days. This will protect them from any anthrax spores in their body when the spores are activated.

Odisha has applied for the geographical indications (GI) registry of Kai Chutney under food category.

About Kai Chutney:

• The chutney is prepared by mixing and grinding salt, ginger, garlic and chilly and is sold by tribals in rural markets.
• This savoury food item, rich in valuable proteins, calcium, zinc, vitamin B-12, iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium, copper, fiber and 18 amino acids, is known to boost the immune system and keep diseases at bay.
• The process is herculean.
• First, they collect the red ants from the hives in branches, leaves or the tree trunks in forests, and boil the ants to turn it into a paste.
• A combination of grounded green chillies, ginger, garlic, onion and salt is then mixed with the boiled red ants, and the end result of the mixture is 'kai' chutney.
• It is often served with 'Pakhala', finger millet (mandia), and whoever has savoured it will never forget the taste

Medicinal and bio-control uses:

• The tribes of Mayurbhanj consume Kai chutney or soup to get rid of flu, common cold, whooping cough, to increase appetite, enhance vision and eyesight naturally without corrective eye wear and to treat joints pain, stomach diseases, essentials for the development of a healthy brain and the nervous system.
• The tribal healers also prepare medicinal oil by dipping the collected Kais in pure mustard oil.
• After 30 days, this oil is used as baby oil and externally used to cure rheumatism, gout, ringworm and other skin diseases.
• Kais (Weaver ants) are bio-control agents.
• They are aggressive and prey on most arthropods entering their territory.
• Due to their predatory habit, Kais are recognized as biological control agents in tropical crops as they are able to protect a variety of crops against many different insect pests.
• In this way, they are utilized indirectly as an alternative to the chemical insecticides,

About Weaver ants:

• Weaver ants, scientifically called Oecophylla smaragdina, are abundantly found in Mayurbhanj throughout the year. 
• Red Weaver Ants are known for their unique nest building behaviour where workers construct nests by weaving together leaves using larval silk.
• There is a division of labour, which is associated with the size difference between workers, whereby major workers ants forage, defend and maintain the ant colony and the minor ants stay within the nests to care of the newly hatched ants.
  
  
  
  

Ten years ago, scientists announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, which helps explain why elementary particles (the smallest building blocks of nature) have mass.

Higgs Boson:

• Physicist Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs boson in a series of papers between 1964 and 1966, as an inevitable consequence of the mechanism responsible for giving elementary particles mass.
  • This theory suggests particle masses are a consequence of elementary particles interacting with a field, dubbed the Higgs field.
  • And according to the same model, such a field should also give rise to a Higgs particle — meaning if the Higgs boson wasn’t there, this would ultimately falsify the entire theory.
• They are smaller than an atom and the wavelength of visible light, so the only way we can detect and observe their behaviour is by smashing the atomic nucleus of particles together at intense speeds (close to the speed of light), which generates vast amounts of exotic particles that are only created at high energies.
  • These collisions resemble the conditions physicists believe existed during the time of the big bang.
• Thanks to particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the (now defunct) Tevatron circular particle accelerator, physicists have made a lot of progress in designing a “theory of everything.”
• This theory postulates how all the subatomic particles in the universe operates and how they interact to comprise the Universe as we know it.
• One of the most complete models that comes anywhere near producing a “theory of everything,” is the Standard Model of Fundamental Particles and Interactions, which describes how particles and forces interact.

Discovery of Higgs Boson:

• In 2010, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) began colliding protons with seven times more energy than the Tevatron.
  • The Tevatron collided protons (which, along with neutrons, make up the atomic nucleus) and antiprotons (nearly identical to protons but with opposite charge).
• Finally, on July 4 2012, two independent experiments at CERN had each collected enough data to declare the discovery of the Higgs boson.
• In the following year, Higgs and his collaborator François Englert won the Nobel prize “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles”.

What have we learned since the Higgs boson discovery?

• Discovering the Higgs boson was just the beginning. In the ten years since, physicists have examined how strongly it interacts with other particles, to see if this matches theoretical predictions.
• Interaction strength can be measured experimentally by looking at Higgs boson production and decay: the heavier a particle the more likely the Higgs boson is to decay into or be produced from it. Interaction with tau leptons was discovered in 2016 and interaction with top and bottom quarks in 2018.
• But there is much more still to learn about this elusive particle.

In the last two weeks, Australian authorities have exterminated millions of honeybees in a bid to prevent a potentially devastating parasitic plague affecting the southeast region of the country.

• Until recently, Australia was one of the few countries that was able to successfully clamp down on the spread of Varroa mite-induced plagues, known to be the biggest threat to bees worldwide.
• Colonies of honeybees have been put under “lockdown” as part of a wide range of biosecurity measures to limit the outbreak.

Varroa mites

• Varroa mites (Varroa destructorand  jacobsoni) are tiny red-brown external parasites of honey bees.
• Although Varroa mites can feed and live on adult honey bees, they mainly feed and reproduce on larvae and pupae in the developing brood, causing malformation and weakening of honey bees as well as transmitting numerous viruses.
• Varroa mites are parasitic mites, which require a honey bee host to survive and reproduce.
• The Varroa mite is only able to reproduce on honey bee brood, while only adult female Varroa mites are able to feed on adult honey bees. Therefore, the entire life cycle of Varroa mite occurs within the honey bee colony.
• Honey bees are weakened by mites feeding on them as pupae, and adult bees often emerge with deformities.
  
  

Impacts

Environmental

• Debilitates and eventually kills bee colonies, reducing managed and feral honey bee populations.
• Varroa mite can also carry bee viruses, including exotic viruses like deformed wing virus. These viruses can be more devastating to bee colonies than the mite themselves.

Economic

• Potential to severely affect honey production.
• Potential to severely affect a wide range of pollination-reliant food crops and crops that support primary food production.

The Importance of Bees:

• Bees are beneficial because of their pollination services, helping to provide food in the form of fruits, berries, nuts - and seeds.
  • Arguably, it is the most interesting parts of our diet that are reliant on bees (and other pollinators) for cross pollination
• Bees are not the world's only pollinators. Flies, wasps, moths, beetles and even some birds, bats and lizards all pollinate, but they only visit flowers enough to feed themselves.
  • Because they gather pollen to stock their nests, bees are generally the most effective pollinators since they visit many more flowers and carry more pollen between them.
• Some bee species are also specially developed to pollinate particular plants and without them those plants would be less well-pollinated.
• Bees help in:
• producing 1/3 of our food supply
  • providing ½ of the world’s fibers, oils, and other raw materials
  • creating many medicines
  • Providing food for wildlife
  • preventing soil erosion