Government Instant Messaging System (GIMS) is the platform in the testing stage developed by National Informatics Centre.
It is the Indian equivalent of popular messaging platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram.
It is being packaged for employees of Central and state government departments and organisations for intra and inter organisation communications.
It is seen as a secure Indian alternative without the security concerns associated with apps hosted abroad or owned by foreign entities.
It employs end-to-end encryption for one-to-one messaging.
StrandHogg
StrandHogg is a bug that allows real-time malware applications to pose as genuine applications and access user data of all kind.
It poses threat to all versions android system including Android 10.
It can then potentially listen to their conversations, access photo album, read/send messages, make calls, record conversations and get login credentials to various account.
Recently, Union Home Ministry has sent an alert to all states warning about this bug.
The information was shared by the Threat Analytical Unit, Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.
Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre
It is under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
It would deal with cybercrimes such as financial frauds, circulation of communal and pornographic contents.
The centre would maintain a list of suspects and the leads generated during investigations in cybercrime cases.
This would be shared with law enforcement agencies through a "secured internal network".
Hydrogen Fuel Cells
Fuel Cell electric vehicles uses hydrogen as a source of fuel and an oxidant to create electricity by an electrochemical process.
The fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen to generate an electric current, water being the only by-product.
Like conventional batteries, it converts chemical energy into electrical energy.
It gets differed from battery operated vehicles which stores energy whereas fuel cells rely on a constant supply of fuel and oxygen.
It is similar to the combustion engines with constant supply of fuel (petrol or diesel) but there will be no moving parts as in the combustion engines.
Pros – It produce much smaller quantities of greenhouse gases and none of the air pollutants that cause health problems.
It is far more energy efficient than tradition combustion technologies.
Unlike battery-powered electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles do not need to be plugged in.
Cons – While they do not generate gases that contribute to global warming, the process of making hydrogen needs energy often from fossil fuel sources.
Hydrogen is more explosive than petrol thus raising the questions of safety.
The vehicles are expensive, and fuel dispensing pumps are scarce.
Asteroid Bennu
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) was launched by NASA in 2016.
Its target is Near-Earth Asteroid called Bennu.
It will be NASA’s first to collect samples from an asteroid and return to Earth.
It will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.
NASA have recently identified the target area, known as the “Nightingale site”.
The site is just 16 metres across and sits inside a large crater in Bennu’s northern hermisphere.
Near-Earth Asteroid
Asteroids, or minor planets, are small and often irregularly shaped celestial bodies.
Most of them orbit the Sun in the so-called main asteroid belt, between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter.
An asteroid is coined a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) when its trajectory brings it within 1.3 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun and hence within 0.3 AU of the Earth's orbit.
NEA are also known Potentially Hazardous Asteroid.
