Increase random checking of VVPAT slips to five per Assembly segment: SC

  • The Supreme Court on Monday increased voter verified paper audit trial (VVPAT) verification to five random Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in each Assembly segment/constituency.
  • Earlier, under the ECI guideline 16.6, only the VVPAT slips from one EVM in every Assembly segment/constituency was subjected to physical verification.

Nirmala Sitharaman rejects US magazine’s claim on Pakistani F-16

  • Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman rejected the claim made by Foreign Policy magazine that India’s assertion about shooting down a Pakistani F-16 jet during a dogfight on February 27 was untrue.
  • The ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine had said that US officials who counted Pakistan’s jets did not find any missing.

CRPF Squad Safely Evacuated As Libya Conflict Worsens, Says Sushma Swaraj

  • As the conflict between government forces and those loyal to the opposition leader intensified in Libya, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted that a peacekeeping team of 15 CRPF soldiers had been evacuated
  • “The situation in Libya has suddenly worsened. There is fighting in Tripoli. Indian Embassy in Tunisia has evacuated the entire contingent of 15 CRPF personnel yesterday itself,” Sushma Swaraj tweeted

Iran floods: Mass evacuations amid warnings of heavy showers

  • Dozens of villages and towns have been evacuated in southern Iran as authorities issued warnings for a fresh round of flooding in the regions bordering Iraq, home to a number of rivers and dams.
  • Fresh flooding may affect 400,000 people in southern Iran, officials say, after 70 people were killed by rising waters.
  • Continuous floods that started in March have so far claimed 70 lives, destroyed infrastructures and displaced thousands of people across Iran.

Digital screen time has minimal impact on adolescent’s mental well-being: Study

  • The much-hyped notion that watching TV or being in front of mobile screens before bedtime impacts the well-being has shown little evidence in a recent study published in the journal ‘Psychological Science’
  • The researchers collected data from more than 17,000 teenagers. It came out that an adolescent’s total screen time per day had minimal impact on their mental well-being, both on weekdays and weekends.