• India’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who died in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, was cremated with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday. His wife Madhulika, who was also killed in the accident, was cremated alongside him.
• Defence minister Rajnath Singh, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami, DRDO chief Dr G Satheesh Reddy, defence attaches of various countries, Ambassador of France in India Emmanuel Lenain and British High Commissioner Alex Ellis, were among the dignitaries present at the crematorium to pay their last respects.
• CDS Rawat was accorded a 17-gun salute and Last Post and Rouse was played by tri-services buglers, per military protocol. A ceremonial battery of 2233 Field Regiment provided gun carriage. About 800 service personnel were in attendance for the military funeral of the CDS.
• Daughters Kritika and Tarini performed the traditional rituals before the caskets of their parents were moved to the gun carriage.

• Earlier in the day, right outside CDS Rawat’s official residence at 3, Kamraj Marg, several people who had gathered, raised slogans of “Bharat Mata ki jai“, “Gen Rawat amar rahe“, “Uttarakhand ka heera amar rahe” and “Jab tak suraj chaand rahega, Bipinji ka naam rahega“.
• Home minister Amit Shah, NSA Ajit Doval and Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and Harish Rawat, BJP chief JP Nadda and DMK leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi were among those who laid a wreath on the mortal remains of CDS Rawat and his wife.
• Brigadier LS Lidder, who also died in the crash, was cremated earlier in the day.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar Friday said the practice of offering namaz in public spots “will not be tolerated” and effectively barred it in the city of Gurugram, where for several weeks right-wing mobs had been demonstrating against the Islamic Friday prayers.

• Permission issued earlier to hold the Friday prayers have now been withdrawn, the BJP leader said after a meeting he chaired with the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA).
• “Offering namaz in the open and this confrontation, we will not allow this confrontation to continue,” he said.
• “Now, talks will be conducted with a fresh approach again. Everyone should get the facility. No one’s rights should be infringed, but no one will be forced,” he said.

Context:

• For several weeks, right-wing groups have been protesting against Friday prayers at designated public spots. In October, the Haryana Police even booked 25 people for disrupting prayers in two sites, but released them on bail the same day.
• Later the Gurugram administration withdrew permission to hold namaz at 8 sites. There were 37 such designated sites before that.
• On November 3, after the administration held talks with members of the Muslim community, 20 spots were allowed.
• But on November 5, a Friday, the Samyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti held ‘Govardhan puja‘ at three sites designated for namaz. BJP leader Kapil Mishra and VHP members attended it.
• Since then, Hindutva groups have claimed that all namaz spots will be closed by December 4. Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti’s Mahavir Bhardwaj last Friday said the “deadline” had ended and that the Friday prayers would not be allowed from December 10. “We want to bring it to the notice of the administration and the Government,” he had said.

• Thirty two cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected in India so far, accounting for less than 0.04% of the total variants detected. And “mainly mild symptoms” have been noted in all the cases, informed health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal on Friday.
• Where? That’s 17 in Maharashtra, nine in Rajasthan, three in Gujarat, two in Karnataka, and one in Delhi.
• Agarwal added that 2,937 cases of the new variant have been found in 59 countries so far. As many as 78,063 probable cases are presently under testing and genomic sequencing and meetings are being held regularly to keep a watch on the global scenario and examine the situation in India.
• From the ICMR: Clinically, Omicron is not posing a burden on the healthcare system yet but the vigil has to be maintained, per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). An ICMR official said that scientific evidence for diagnosis and treatment are being reviewed regularly and the treatment remains unchanged at the moment.
• Vaccination status: The government said 86.2% of the country’s adult population received the first vaccine dose, while 53.5% has been administered both doses.
• Another official said the government has not received any recommendation from the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) on the paediatric vaccination against Covid yet.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday called for global norms for emerging technologies like social media and cryptocurrencies so that they “empower” democracy and not “undermine” it. He was speaking at the virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by US President Joe Biden.
• A theme: Even at last month’s virtual Sydney Dialogue, Modi had said democratic nations should ensure that cryptocurrency does not end up in the “wrong hands”. The Dialogue is a forum focused on emerging, critical and cyber technologies.
• This even as the parliament awaits the proposed bill on cryptocurrencies the government has prepared. The bill is expected to ban private cryptocurrencies but lay the framework for an official central bank digital currency.
• On social media, the centre had introduced new IT Rules that mandate them to identify the “first originator” of “unlawful” content when asked, among other things. WhatsApp, which is end-to-end encrypted, has challenged this traceability clause in court.
• UN Special Rapporteurs, in a letter to the government, had expressed “serious concern about obligations on companies to monitor and rapidly remove user-generated content, which we fear is likely to undermine the right to freedom of expression.”

• Clue 1: Formed on Dec. 11, 1946, it’s headquartered in New York.
• Clue 2: It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 and the Indira Gandhi Prize in 1989.
• Clue 3: It’s also the only UN agency that depends on voluntary contributions — from public donors, businesses, foundations and individuals.

Scroll below for answer

• Loujain al-Hathloul, the women’s rights activist detained and tortured for over 1,000 days by Saudi Arabia before being released earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit against a US cyber-surveillance company and three former intelligence officers for allegedly hacking her phone and tracking her movements.
• The lawsuit claims the illegal hacking campaign was run by DarkMatter and three former US intelligence officers hired by the UAE following the Arab Spring protests. The cyber-surveillance tool was used against dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists, on behalf of Saudi Arabia, it said.
• Her iPhone was hacked to track her location and steal information as part of this effort, the lawsuit said, and led to her “arbitrary arrest by the UAE’s security services and rendition to Saudi Arabia, where she was detained, imprisoned, and tortured.”
• It matters: The hidden world of cyber-surveillance has been thrust into focus by a series of revelations regarding spyware Pegasus and its Israeli maker NSO Group. NSO Group has since been blacklisted by the US government, and is being sued by WhatsApp and Apple. India’s Supreme Court has appointed an expert panel to look into Pegasus allegations.
• al-Hathloul’s lawsuit trains the spotlight beyond NSO, on a US-based surveillance company. The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation is assisting her in the case.
• They say: “Companies that peddle their surveillance software and services to oppressive governments must be held accountable for the resulting human rights abuses,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene.

The US moved closer to extraditing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange after London’s High Court overturned a lower court’s ruling in January earlier this year against Assange’s extradition, noting that he would likely commit suicide in prison.

What the US offered

• Saying that “the court allows the appeal”, the judges said they were satisfied with the assurances given by the US, including that Assange wouldn’t be held in Colorado’s ADX Florence Supermax jail — a maximum security prison, which is usually for hardened criminals — and also that he wouldn’t be kept in solitary confinement.
• The US also assured the court that if extradited, Assange could serve any US prison sentence he receives in Australia — Assange is an Australian citizen. Lawyers for the US government argued that Assange “has no history of serious and enduring mental illness” and that his mental illness “does not even come close” to prevent his extradition.

What next

• The US however, still has a long way to go before Assange — who’s been indicted on 17 counts of espionage and 1 count of computer misuse for publishing classified US military and diplomatic documents on Wikileaks in 2010 and 2011 — sets foot on US soil.
• That’s because under the UK extradition rules, the case will now be sent to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court with the direction that the judges send it to the government — usually the Secretary of State — to decide whether or not Assange is to be extradited to the US. Moreover, with Assange allowed to appeal against the extradition, it could be several months before he is taken into US custody.

Noting the improvement in the air quality index of the national capital Delhi, the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday gave liberty to the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR to take a decision on lifting the ban on construction activities and other industrial activities within a week.

What the SC said

• Directing the “Commission to examine requests of various industries & organisations about relaxation of conditions imposed by virtue of our orders or otherwise as per their circulars”, the apex court said it expected “the commission will look into this in a week’s time.”
• Last month on November 24, the SC had reimposed the ban on construction activities due to poor air quality in Delhi NCR after the Commission had issued an order lifting the ban from November 22. Delhi’s air quality index (AQI) has improved from the ‘Severe’ category — AQI between 401-500 — to ‘Very Poor’ category — AQI between 301-400 — with Friday’s AQI hovering at 387.
• Following a dressing down from the SC, the Commission had on December 3 informed the court about the steps taken to mitigate the impact of pollution, including suspending operations of polluting industries on weekends and limiting their hours of operations on weekdays.

What else

• The SC’s directions came while disposing a plea by industrial units, such as builders forum, operators of sugar, rice and paper mills though the court retained the application related to payment of minimum wages to construction workers during the ban period.
• The apex court also ordered the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to file affidavits showing compliance with the SC’s directions to pay minimum wages to labourers during the period of construction ban.

• Moderna said a flu vaccine it developed based on the mRNA tech behind its highly-effective Covid-19 vaccine was no more effective than shots already available. The company’s shares tumbled in response.
• It matters: The technology uses genetic material made in the lab, messenger-RNA or mRNA, to precisely design the appropriate immune response. Covid-19 vaccines of Moderna and Pfizer were the first successful products based on the technology, opening up possibilities of creating vaccines for other hard-to-cure diseases including cancer.
• And now? Moderna said when its mRNA flu vaccine was tested against all four strains of the influenza virus, the antibody levels were not “high or necessarily better than” some high-efficacy vaccines already available.
• But the vaccine is no failure as it did prompt antibody response. An interim analysis of the next stage of testing is expected early next year. The early results also put Moderna ahead of Pfizer, which is also a flu vaccine based on messenger RNA.

UNICEF. Today is UNICEF Day, observed annually on December 11 — the date it was created by the UN General Assembly, 75 years ago. The organisation works in 191 countries and territories aiming to save children’s lives, to defend their rights, and to help them fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.