Prelim Bits 24-12-2019

Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Fund

The first tripartite Memorandum of Agreement was signed for the implementation of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Fund (FIDF).
It is signed between the department of Fisheries Government of India, NABARD and the Government of Tamil Nadu.
The nodal loaning entities for the fund are

The fund would provide concessional finance to take up investment activities of fisheries development.
The beneficiaries are State Governments / UTs and State entities, cooperatives, individuals and entrepreneurs etc.,
The Department of Fisheries provides interest subvention up to 3% per annum for providing the concessional finance by the nodal loaning entities at the interest rate not lower than 5% per annum.
NABARD provides concessional finance for development of fisheries infrastructure facilities through State Governments/State Entities under the FIDF.

India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative

India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative prepared the first comprehensive estimates of disease burden attributable to mental health from 1990.
It states that Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh account for a higher prevalence of mental disorders.
It manifests primarily during adulthood in depression and anxiety.
It finds that roughly one in seven Indians, or 197 million persons, suffered from mental disorders of varying severity in 2017.
These include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, idiopathic developmental intellectual disability, conduct disorders, and autism.
The contribution of mental disorders to the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) has doubled between 1990 and 2017 increasing from 2.5% to 4.7%.
In accordance with socio-demographic index (SDI), prevalence of depressive disorders was highest in,

Tamil Nadu (loss of 836 years per 1 lakh population ), Kerala (loss of 641 years) in the high SDI state group and
Andhra Pradesh (loss of 793 years) in the middle SDI State group.

DALY - the sum of total years of life lost and years lived with disability
SDI - It is a composite measure of per-capita income, mean education, and fertility rate in women younger than 25 years and is calculated on a scale of one.

Eurasian Economic Union

The Eurasian Economic Union is an international organization for regional economic integration.
It provides for free movement of goods, services, capital and labour, pursues coordinated, harmonized and single policy in the sectors determined by the Treaty.
The Member-States are Republic of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz and Russian Federation.
It is being created to promote stable development and living standards of the nations of the Member-States.
Russia is looking forward to India concluding a new Free Trade Agreement with the EAEU.

Zero-day Vulnerability

A zero-day exploit is a cyber-attack that occurs on the same day a weakness is discovered in software.
At that point, it is exploited before a fix becomes available from its creator.
Zero-day vulnerabilities are basically bugs in software, which leaves the doors open for cyber criminals to break into the system.
Cyber security experts have found a zero-day vulnerability in Windows, allowing attackers to gain higher privileges on the target machine.

New Cabinet Committees

Cabinet Committee on Investment & Growth is the newly formed cabinet committee with Prime Minister as the chairman.
The panel has 4 members - Home Minister, Highways and MSME Minister , Finance Minister and Commerce & Railways Minister.
Cabinet Committee on Employment & Skill Development with PM as the head and 10 panel members was also constituted.
Ministers from the following ministries are members - Home, Finance, Commerce & Railways, Agriculture, Petroleum, Skill Development, Labour, Housing & Urban Development and HRD.
These committees were formed in response to growth slowing down and a rise in unemployment.

Source: PIB, The Hindu