News in Short

• The House has approved a bill to provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome after it was removed from a separate bill to prevent a government shutdown and suspend the nation’s borrowing limit.
• The $1 billion in funding allocated for the aerial defense system had initially been included in the must-pass legislation that the House considered earlier in the week, but the provision was removed from the final version to appease a group of democrats.
• Iron Dome has destroyed thousands of short-range rockets and shells launched by Hamas militants from Gaza before they were able to hit populated areas.

• Internet freedom that includes digital rights, freedom of information, and the right to Internet access, has declined for the 11th year in a row worldwide, according to a report by U.S.-based not-for-profit entity Freedom House.
• The greatest deteriorations were found in Myanmar, Belarus, and Uganda, where state forces cracked down amid electoral and constitutional crises. China was ranked as the worst environment for Internet freedom for the seventh year in a row.
• Suppression of Internet freedom indicates that governments across the world are asserting their authority over technology platforms, forcing business to comply with censorship and surveillance.

• The Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) has become the first-of-its-kind institute in the Union Territory to have an internet connection using Light Fidelity (LiFi) technology.
• Ahmedabad-based Nav Wireless Technologies Pvt Ltd has set up a LiFi network at India’s highest altitude educational organisation to help the local education fraternity.
• LiFi means transmitting data with a light beam spectrum through open space in outdoor and indoor environments.
• LiFi systems provide ultra-fast data connections, and are especially useful in urban areas where radio spectra are congested and also very useful in rural areas wherein Fiber Optic Cables or networks are not reachable.

• China sent 19 aircraft towards Taiwan amid rising tensions across the straits, in the latest messaging from Beijing to both Taipei and Washington.
• Beijing has in the past used its air force as a form of signalling, for instance recently dispatching fighters to coincide with visits of U.S. diplomats to Taiwan.
• The latest show of force came as Taiwanhad submitted an application to join the 11-nation CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade deal, days after China said it had formally applied to join the Pacific pact.
• China views Taiwan as its province, although both have been ruled separately since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 when the Kuomintang (KMT) and Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island.

• Footprints dating back 23,000 years have been discovered in the United States, suggesting humans settled North America long before the end of the last Ice Age.
• The findings push back the date at which the continent was colonized by its first inhabitants by thousands of years.
• The footprints were left in mud on the banks of a long-since dried-up lake, which is now part of a New Mexico desert.
• Sediment filled the indentations and hardened into rock, protecting evidence of our ancient relatives, and giving scientists a detailed insight into their lives.
• Researchers also found tracks left by mammoths, prehistoric wolves, and even giant sloths, which appear to have been around at the same time as the humans visited the lake.