Current Affairs 20 December 2025
Corporate Social Responsibility
- Legal Provision: CSR is a mandatory requirement for certain companies under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, compelling them to undertake activities that contribute to the social, environmental, and economic development of the country.
- Fund Allocation: Companies are obligated to allocate at least 2% of their average net profit of the preceding three years to CSR activities.
- Activities covered under CSR: Eradicating hunger, poverty and malnutrition, promoting gender equality, ensuring environmental sustainability, etc.
Syria (Capital: Damascus)
- US launched massive airstrikes on dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria.
- Political Features:
- Lies in West Asia, on the east coast of Mediterranean Sea (West), in the Levant region.
- Bordering Countries: Turkey (North), Iraq (East), Jordan (South), Israel and Lebanon (West).
- Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 Six-Day War
- Geographical Features
- Major Physical Regions: Syrian Desert, Euphrates River Valley, and Anti-Lebanon Mountains (mark Syria’s border with Lebanon).
- Major Rivers: Orontes, Tigris, etc.
Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe)
- Genesis: established in 2020.
- Autonomous agency: A single-window, independent, nodal agency that functions as an autonomous agency in the Department of Space.
- Objective: Space sector reforms to enable and facilitate the participation of private players.
- Function: responsible to promote, enable, authorize and supervise various space activities of non-governmental agencies.
- Acts as an interface between ISRO and Non-Governmental Entities (NGEs).
Support to Poor Prisoners’ Scheme, 2023
- Objective: Enable release of indigent prisoners/undertrials unable to pay fines or furnish bail sureties; thus reducing prison overcrowding.
- Nodal agency: The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
- Institutional Mechanism
- District-level Empowered Committee, examines eligibility of prisoners, assess requirement of financial assistance for bail/fine and recommend release of funds.
- State-level Oversight Committee
- Exclusions: Scheme is not applicable to offences under Prevention of Corruption Act, PMLA, NDPS Act and UAPA
- Also excludes heinous crimes like Terrorism, national security offences, Dowry death, rape, human trafficking and POCSO Act
- Jail Superintendent has to inform District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) within 1 week if release is stalled due to non-payment of fine.
Bureau of Port Security (BoPS)
- It shall be constituted as a statutory body under the provisions of Section 13 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 2025.
- It is being modelled on the lines of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS).
- Objective: It shall be responsible for regulatory and oversight functions relating to the security of ships and port facilities.
- Key Functions: It shall also ensure timely analysis, collection and exchange of security-related information, with a special focus on cyber security.
- It will function under the aegis of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways.