Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Indonesia reroutes all flights around erupting Anak Krakatau volcano

News

• Indonesia  raised the alert level for the erupting Anak Krakatau volcano to the second-highest, and ordered all flights to steer clear, days after it triggered a tsunami that killed at least 430 people.

Beyond News

• A crater collapse on the volcanic island at high tide on Saturday sent waves up to 5 metres (16 feet) high smashing into the coast on the Sunda Strait, between the islands of Java and Bali.
• Authorities have warned that the crater of Anak Krakatau, or child of Krakatau, remains fragile, raising fears of another collapse and tsunami, and have urged residents to stay away from the coast.
• The volcano has been rumbling on and off since July but has been particularly active, spewing lava and rocks, and sending huge clouds of ash up to 3,000 metres into heavily overcast skies.
• The national geological agency, in raising the alert level to the second-highest, set a 5-km exclusion zone around the island.
• A thin layer of volcanic ash has been settling on buildings, vehicles and vegetation along the west coast of Java since late.
• Authorities said the ash was not dangerous, but advised residents to wear masks and goggles when outside, while aircraft were ordered away.
• In 1883, the volcano then known as Krakatoa erupted in one of the biggest blasts in recorded history, killing more than 36,000 people in a series of tsunami and lowering the global surface temperature by one degree Celsius with its ash.
• Anak Krakatau is the island that emerged from the area in 1927 and has been growing ever since.
• Indonesia is a vast archipelago that sits on the Pacific ”Ring of Fire”. This year, the country has suffered its worst annual death toll from disasters in more than a decade.
• The latest tsunami disaster, coming during the Christmas season, evoked memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami triggered by an earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed 226,000 people in 14 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana to have separate High Courts

News

• Following a Supreme Court order to the Centre to notify the bifurcation of the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana High Courts by January 1, President Ram Nath Kovind ordered the separation of the “common” Hyderabad High Court into the two separate High Courts of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
• Both will function separately from January 1, 2019. The principal seat of the Andhra Pradesh High Court is Amaravati, the capital of the State. The High Court in Hyderabad will function separately as the High Court of the State of Telangana.

Beyond News

• Sixteen HC judges, including Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, who is now the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court, shall become judges of the Andhra Pradesh High Court from January 1.
• The new Telangana High Court will have a sanctioned strength of 10 judges.
• The Presidential notification quoted Article 214 of the Constitution which provides that there shall be a High Court for each State.
• The Presidential notification pointed out that under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, both States were to have a common high court, till separate ones were formed.

Lok Sabha passes triple talaq Bill

News

• Lok Sabha passed The triple talaq Bill after the Congress and AIADMK members walked out protesting the government’s refusal to send the Bill to a Joint Select Committee for scrutiny.
• The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018 goes for voting. The Lok Sabha Secretary explains the procedure for voting.
• With 250 members attending the House, 50 members oppose it.

MEA upbeat over China ties

News

• Restoring relations with China and bringing back a “balance” to ties in the neighbourhood are considered achievements of the government’s foreign policy in the year 2018, while challenges ahead in 2019 will include keeping the balance between the U.S.-Europe axis on one hand and the Russia-China axis on the other.

Beyond News

• According to a year-end review of the government’s policies, the establishment of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) by India ranked amongst its biggest successes as it is the first multilateral organisation with as many as 71 member countries already signed on that is headquartered in India.
• In the neighbourhood, the restoration of balance in our relationship with Nepal, as well as the reconnection with the new leadership in the Maldives are positive outcomes. The fact that the new Bhutan Prime Minister is making his first visit to India within a month is a positive, India was not “the subject of domestic politics in the region, and the government has taken great care to ensure this in the recent political developments both in Sri Lanka and in Bangladesh.
• However, no forward movement is expected with Pakistan, where talks over the Kartarpur corridor were described as a “cultural initiative” but not diplomacy.
• Wuhan Summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as three subsequent meetings between the leaders this year as “unprecedented”, relations with China had returned to the “normal track” with progress made with high-level visits, the resumption of defence ties suspended last year after the Doklam standoff, restoration of peace at the India-China boundary and forward movement on trade where Beijing is actively considering Indian requests for more market access on agricultural and pharmaceutical products in particular.
• While ties with the United States have seen an upward swing, the sources said some concern was felt about the recent developments over Afghanistan, with reports of a possible pullout of US troops and moves to engage the Taliban along with visits to Pakistan by special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad being studied closely.
• Meanwhile, the government acknowledged that there was a relatively lower amount of contact at the level of PM Modi and US President Trump, who only met once in the year in a trilateral format with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but said that there had been must closer contacts between the Foreign, Defence and Commerce Ministers and their counterparts than before.

Govt declares KLF banned organisation

News

• The Union Home Ministry has banned Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, noting that it was floated with the objective of establishing an independent State by secession of Punjab through violent means.

Beyond News

• The MHA issued a notification, which mentions that KLF was engaged in the killing of innocent persons and police officers, several bombings of civilian targets in the country, collection of funds for terror activities through extortion, kidnappings, bank robberies and assassination attempts on important government functionaries.
• The notification said the outfit had committed acts of terrorism and was engaged in radicalising and recruiting youth for terror activities in India. A five-member KLF module was busted by the Punjab Police, which resulted in solving of two cases related to planting of improvised explosive devices in Nabha.
• Last year, security agencies detected a module which had carried out a series of incidents of killings or attempted killings of specific communities and organisations.
• The members of this militant group in India are getting financial and logistic support from their handlers based abroad.
• According to the agencies, KLF was earlier active in the 1980s and was revived in 2009 in Malaysia. It is currently being headed by Harmeet Singh alias “PhD”, who is said to be living in Lahore since 2008.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Indian bustard on the brink of extinction

News

• The great Indian bustard, that narrowly missed being christened India’s national bird, is now teetering on its last legs.
• Several threats including power lines are decimating bustard populations. India, effectively the only home of the bustards, now harbours less than 150 individuals in five States.

Findings

• The great Indian bustard, that narrowly missed being christened India’s national bird, is now teetering on its last legs. Several threats — including power lines — are decimating bustard populations. India, effectively the only home of the bustards, now harbours less than 150 individuals in five States.
• What changed after 1969, when over 1,000 of these large, stately birds still roamed the dry grasslands of 11 Indian States. While hunting was probably one of the first factors (the bird was a popular game bird and still is in some pockets, despite being listed in Schedule I of India’s Wildlife Protection Act), bustard habitats have undergone tremendous change over the last decades.
• The untamed, arid grasslands that bustards thrive in are categorised as ‘wastelands’, like most grassland habitats in India. The push to make these areas more ‘productive’ has seen an increase in water availability in these parts, resulting in the spillover of agricultural land into bustard habitats.
• Yet the birds do rely on agricultural fields too, suggests the only study of their diets to date: in the mid 1980s, researchers found that though they are predominantly insect-eaters, bustards “relished” arugula plants and ate cultivated Bengal gram and Ziziphus or ber berries.
• More recent but unpublished data also suggests that the wide-ranging birds disperse to agricultural landscapes near Gujarat’s Kachchh during the non-breeding season. Yet, intensification of agriculture including more pesticides, barbed-wire fences and new crops could endanger the birds’ survival in this landscape.
• More recently, what remains of their grassland homes are now sites for renewable power projects. With new wind turbines, come more power lines to take the ‘green’ energy to grids and homes.
• Bustards, with their poor frontal vision and heavy bodies, cannot manoeuvre away from cables in time. On a survey over the last year, the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) found four bustards charred to death due to collisions with power lines in the Thar landscape alone.
• Their report published suggests that around 18 bustards are likely to die every year (from a population of around 128 in the Thar) due to high-tension cables that intersect priority bustard habitat here.
• The situation is so dire that three non-profits the Corbett Foundation, Conservation India and Sanctuary Nature Foundation have initiated an online petition (which has already garnered more than 6,000 signatures) to Union Power Minister to demand that power lines be routed underground.

Another olive ridley nesting site soon

News

• The Odisha forest department is all set to add another olive ridley mass nesting site to its wildlife map.
• It has started preparing the beach at the Bahuda river mouth in Ganjam district to lure the endangered turtles to come over for mass nesting next year.

Beyond News

• Around 3-km stretch of the beach from Sunapur to Anantpur at Bahuda rookery is being developed as a possible olive ridley mass nesting site. The Bahuda rookery is located around 20 km to the south of Rushikulya rookery coast, a major mass nesting site of olive ridleys on the Indian coastline.
• The forest department has decided to fence off around 2-km stretch of the beach near Bahuda river mouth to protect the turtles during the nesting season.
• This year, a few hundred olive ridleys had nested at Bahuda river mouth in February. This encouraged the forest department to develop it as a second mass nesting site for the turtles on the Ganjam coast. At present, mating olive ridleys are being sighted near the Bahuda rookery. It is being hoped that the turtles will find the beach conducive and their mass nesting number at Bahuda will increase in 2019.
• Marine fishermen in the area have been requested to refrain from using gill nets during fishing as that can kill the turtles. Fishermen near Rushikulya rookery do not use such nets. With the support of local residents, efforts are being made to reduce polythene pollution caused by tourists and picnickers at Bahuda river mouth to keep the sand clean for mass nesting.

Scientists ‘sew’ with just sound waves

News

• Scientists have successfully used sound waves to levitate and manipulate multiple objects simultaneously for the first time, using the system to “sew” a thread into a piece of fabric.
• The system could be use to acoustically stitch up internal injuries or deliver drugs to target organs.

Findings

• Sound exerts a small acoustic force and by turning up the volume of ultrasonic waves, too high pitched for humans to hear, scientists create a sound field strong enough to move small objects.
• Scientists attached two millimetric polystyrene spheres to a piece of thread and used the acoustic tweezers to “sew” the thread into a piece of fabric. The system can also simultaneously control the 3D movement of up to 25 of these spheres in air.
• Acoustic tweezers have similar capabilities to optical tweezers, the 2018 Nobel prize winner, which uses lasers to trap and transport micro-particles. However, acoustic tweezers have the edge over optical systems when it comes to operating within human tissue.
• Lasers only travel through transparent media, making them tricky to use for applications within biological tissue. On the other hand, ultrasound is routinely used in pregnancy scans and kidney stone treatment as it can safely and non-invasively penetrate biological tissue.
• Another advantage is that acoustic devices are 1,00,000 times more power efficient than optical systems.

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