Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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World’s northernmost settlement hit by record ‘Arctic heat wave’

News

• Temperatures hit a record 21 degree Celsius in Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited spot on the planet less than 965 km from the North Pole, the Canadian meteorology service said.

Beyond News

• The temperature was recorded at Alert, a permanent military base on the 82nd parallel which intercepts Russian communications and which has been home to a weather station since 1950.
• The previous record of 20 degrees Celsius was set on July 8, 1956, but since 2012 there have been several days where the temperature has risen to 19 or 30 degrees Celsius at the base on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.
• The average daily temperature in Alert in July is 3.33 degrees Celsius, with average maximum temperatures of 6.11 degrees Celsius.
• The current heatwave is due to a high pressure front over Greenland, which is “quite exceptional” and feeds southerly winds on the Arctic Ocean.
• The Arctic is heating up three times faster than other parts of the planet.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

ICJ asks Pakistan to review conviction, sentencing of Jadhav

News

• The International Court of Justice has ordered Pakistan to review Kulbhushan Jadav’s death sentence, ruling Islamabad had violated New Delhi’s rights to consular visits after his arrest.

Beyond News

• The Hague-based ICJ has ordered the “effective review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence.”
• ICJ President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf delivered the judgment. Fifteen other judges have concurred with the final verdict. The Pakistani judge has dissented.
• The U.N. top court has ruled that Pakistan had breached the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, which gives countries the right to consular access when their nationals are arrested abroad.

National Register of Citizens: Centre wants to publicise NRC exercise through music videos, films

News

• The Union government wants to showcase and publicise the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise through music videos and films.
• The office of the NRC Coordinator has invited bids to film the process for which it will “share data” with private creative agencies.

Beyond News

• The documentary will include “the verification processes undertaken across the State, interviews of [the] public and interviews of officials involved in NRC work,” the Request for Proposal (RFP) says.
• NRC update is an extremely huge exercise without any precedence and it is imperative that adequate documentation of the process is carried out. Such documentation also needs to be done in formats which are to be understood and have the ability to record the elaborate and IT-intensive nature of the exercise.
• The RFP said the language of the documentaries will be English with versions in Hindi and Assamese.
• Around 1,200 employees of software major Wipro have provided the IT backup to the project.
• The NRC exercise in Assam under the supervision of the Supreme Court is one of the most keenly watched processes in the country as several lakh people will be rendered Stateless once the final list is published.
• The SC has asked the list to be published by July 31 but the Centre and the State have moved the Court seeking “sample re-verification” in areas bordering Bangladesh.
• Around 41 lakh people have been excluded from the draft NRC lists published in July 2018 and June this year. Around 36 lakh have filed claims against their exclusion and objections have been filed against two lakh inclusions.
• The hearings for these claims and objections are underway at various NRC centres.NRC first published in Assam in 1951 is being updated as per directions of the SC to segregate Indian citizens living in Assam from those who have illegally entered the State from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971.

Lok Sabha clears Appropriation Bill

News

• The Lok Sabha passed the Appropriation (No.2) Bill-2019 allowing the Union government to withdraw ₹98.18 lakh crore from the Consolidated Fund of India to meet its expenditure during 2019-20. 

Beyond News

• The House also discussed demands for grants of various Ministries, including rural development, agriculture and farmers’ welfare, railways, and road transport and highways.
• With the passage of the Appropriation bill No. 2, the government has sought the approval of the Lok Sabha for expenses for this entire financial year.

‘Look beyond hunger’ says U.N. as one in four lack access to healthy food

News

• More than 2 billion people lack access to healthy food, putting them at risk of health problems and many of them live in North America or Europe, the United Nations said, urging governments to “look beyond hunger.”

Findings

• More than a quarter of the world’s population now struggles to eat “safe, nutritious and sufficient food”, according to the U.N.’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 report.
• That includes about 8% of people in Europe and North America, according to the annual study, which for the first time includes people affected by “moderate food insecurity” as well as outright hunger.
• Moderate food insecurity affects people who have had to reduce the quality or quantity of what they eat due to lack of money or other resources. It can lead to obesity as well as stunting – a condition that permanently affects children’s mental and physical development.
• The findings show governments need to pay more attention to different aspects of food availability instead of just focusing on producing more.
• The new data reflects the fact that there are now more obese people in the world than hungry ones. But it also showed the number of hungry people increased in 2018 for the third year running. Hunger is on the rise in most of Africa, in parts of the Middle East and in Latin America and the Caribbean, the report said, with conflict and climate shocks largely to blame.
• The report said there were 822 million obese people in 2016, the most recent year for which figures were available, when 796.5 million people were undernourished. Nutritionists have said obesity figures are likely to have increased further since then.

U.S. bans Myanmar military leaders over Rohingya abuses

News

• The U.S. announced sanctions against Myanmar military’s Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing and other leaders it said were responsible for extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims, barring them from entry to the country.

Beyond News

• The steps, which also covered Min Aung Hlaing’s deputy, Soe Win, and two other senior commanders and their families, are the strongest the U.S. has taken in response to massacres of minority Rohingyas in Myanmar.
• It identified the two others as Than Oo and Aung Aung, both Brigadier Generals.
• With this announcement, the United States is the first government to publicly take action with respect to the most senior leadership of the Burmese military.

Dam Safety Bill gets nod from CCEA

News

• The Centre is set to introduce the Dam Safety Bill, 2019 in Parliament after it was cleared by the Union Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).

Beyond News

• A version of the Bill was first introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2018 (and which subsequently lapsed). It aims to put in place a systematic procedure to ensure that India’s 5,600 dams are made and maintained safely.
• Various editions of the Bill have been introduced since 2010 but it has never been successfully passed, largely due to opposition by States at various times.
• Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha have opposed the Bill on the grounds that it encroaches upon the sovereignty of States to manage their dams. The Bill lays the onus of the dam safety on the dam owner and provides for penal provisions for wilful “commission and omission of certain acts.”
• The The Bill also provides for establishment of a National Dam Safety Authority as a regulatory body to implement the policy.
• Every state shall establish a ‘State Dam Safety Organisation’ which will be manned by officers from the field dam safety. The CCEA also approved the ₹1,600-crore pre-investment expenditure for the Dibang Multipurpose Project in Arunachal Pradesh, India’s largest hydropower project.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Hafiz Saeed, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind, arrested in Pakistan

News

• Hafiz Saeed, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief, was arrested by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, officials said.

Beyond News

• The JuD is believed to be the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is responsible for theattacks that killed 166 people.
• The U.S. Department of the Treasury has designated Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and the U.S., since 2012, has offered a $10 million reward for information that brings him to justice.
• Under pressure from the international community, the Pakistani authorities have launched investigation into matters of the JuD and LeT regarding their holding and use of trusts to raise funds for terror-financing.

Met Department sounds red alerts for six districts

News

• The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued red alerts in six districts in Kerala, warning of the possibility of extremely heavy rainfall.

Beyond News

• Orange alerts signal the possibility of isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall (64.5 mm and up to 204.4 mm in a 24-hour period). Yellow alerts signalling the possibility of heavy rain has been issued for most districts.
• Urging government departments and the public to be prepared, the KeralaState Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) warned that incessant extremely heavy rainfall increases the chances of natural calamities such as floods and landslides.
• As water levels in rivers and canals are bound to rise, care should be taken not to enter them. The public should also avoid bathing or washing clothes in rivers, the KSDMA said.
• The KSDMA has also advised people residing in the districts where the alerts have been issued to prepare emergency kits containing a torch, radio, 500 ml of water, ORS packet, medicines, anti-septic lotion, 100 gm of peanuts, 100 gm of dried grapes, a pen knife, ten chlorine tablets, power banks/batteries and money. Documents, certificates and other valuables also can be kept in the kits.

Coliform bacteria found in 80% of water samples in Kozhikode

News

• Around 80% of water samples collected from various parts of Kozhikode city in Kerala were found to have coliform bacteria, indicating the possibility of faecal contamination that could lead to disease outbreaks if the water is not boiled before use.
• A few of the samples were found to have E-coli bacteria too.
• This was revealed in a survey taken up by the health section of the civic body between 2018 and 2019.

Findings

• The presence of coli form bacteria indicates that disease-causing organisms could be found in the water system and E-coli is a sub-group of fecal coli form.
• As many as 723 water samples were randomly collected from open wells, borewells or water taps.
• Health inspectors were asked to cover schools, anganwadis, hotels and restaurants, juice parlours, and private and government institutions across the city. They were subjected to bacteriological and chemical analysis at the Centre for Water Resource Development and Management. There are 75 wards within the city corporation limits.
• The presence of the bacteria was found to be higher during the monsoon as the groundwater table would see a rise at that time. This leads to spreading of the bacteria across the water source. In summer, when the water table depletes, their numbers are less.
• The official claimed that one of the main reasons for contamination was the lack of efforts to clean water tanks frequently. The location of septic tanks close to open or borewells and drinking water pipes laid next to drainage too were other reasons, he said.
• Sources in the corporation said that some samples collected from water sources on the banks of the Conolly Canal were highly polluted. Now, the officials were sorting out area-wise figures to see which ward had the highest presence of the bacteria.
• The corporation had also collected samples of ice, meat and fish samples for checking and the process to collect the data was on.

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