Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Editorials are covered separately. HINDU NOTES are available free date wise| CLICK HERE

India to host U.S. for 2+2 talks

News

• India will host the inaugural round of the two-plus-two dialogue with the United States on September 6.

Beyond News

• The ministerial-level meeting will cover bilateral, regional and global issues, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
• The dialogue will be led by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman from the Indian side and the Secretary of State Mike R. Pompeo and Secretary of Defence James Mattis from the U.S.
• This new dialogue format is in pursuit of agreement reached between India and the U.S. during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington D.C. on June 25-26 2017.
• The 2+2 meeting will cover a broad range of bilateral, regional and global issues of shared interest, with a view to strengthening strategic and security ties between the two countries.
• The announcement of the meeting which was postponed twice before comes in the midst of growing concern that anti-Iran sanctions from the U.S. might impact the energy scenario of India.
• This will also be the first round of high-level interaction between the two sides following the elections in Pakistan that will conclude in the last week of July.

Trust vote sets the tone for 2019 poll

News

• The BJP-led NDA government on Friday defeated the no-confidence motion moved against it by the Opposition and initiated by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) after a 12-hour debate that sketched the contours of the 2019 electoral face-offs.

Beyond News

• The final figures, subject to correction, stood at 325 with the government and 126 against, with no abstentions.
• The figures indicate that even without the Shiv Sena, the BJP got support from non-NDA parties.

New cell to resolve child custody disputes

News

• The government told Parliament that a mediation cell would be set up under the apex child rights body, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), to resolve child custody disputes arising from cases of transnational marital discord.

Beyond News

• The Ministry has in-principle decided to establish a Mediation Cell under the NCPCR chairperson to resolve the cases of children who were taken away by one of the spouses without the permission of the other due to marital discord from other countries to India or vice versa and preparing a parental plan taking into account the best interest of the child
• The U.S. has been exerting pressure on India to sign the multilateral treaty.
• According to its Child Abduction Report 2018, with 104 cases of inter-country parental abduction, India was second only to Mexico which had 241 cases.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Jupiter and its 79 moons

News

• Scientists have discovered twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total number of natural satellites circling around the king of planets to a whopping 79.

Findings

• The findings include 11 “normal” outer moons, and one that scientists call an “oddball.”
• Researchers, first spotted the moons last year while they were looking for a possible massive planet far beyond Pluto.
• Nine of the new moons are part of a distant outer swarm of moons that orbit it in the retrograde, or opposite direction of Jupiter’s spin rotation.
• These distant retrograde moons are grouped into at least three distinct orbital groupings and are thought to be the remnants of three once-larger parent bodies that broke apart during collisions with asteroids, comets, or other moons.
• The newly discovered retrograde moons take about two years to orbit Jupiter.
• Two of the new discoveries are part of a closer, inner group of moons that orbit in the prograde, or same direction as the planet’s rotation.
• This new “oddball” moon is more distant and more inclined than the prograde group of moons and takes about one and a half years to orbit Jupiter.
• So, unlike the closer-in prograde group of moons, this new oddball prograde moon has an orbit that crosses the outer retrograde moons.
• As a result, head-on collisions are much more likely to occur between the “oddball” prograde and the retrograde moons, which are moving in opposite directions.
• The team think this small “oddball” prograde moon could be the last-remaining remnant of a once-larger prograde-orbiting moon that formed some of the retrograde moon groupings during past head-on collisions.
• The name Valetudo has been proposed for it, after the Roman god Jupiter’s great-granddaughter, the goddess of health and hygiene.

Cryptocurrencies will boost illegal transactions: RBI to SC

News

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)said dealing in cryptocurrency will encourage illegal transactions. The RBI has already issued a circular prohibiting use of these virtual currencies.

Beyond News

• Cryptocurrencies are “a stateless digital currency” in which encryption techniques are used for trading and these ‘currencies’ operate independently of a Central bank like the RBI, “rendering it immune from government interference”.
• A Bench, was informed by senior advocate, appearing for the RBI, that a committee has been set up by the Centre to deal with issues relating to cryptocurrencies.

NGT orders unique ID for waterbodies

News

• The National Green Tribunal (NGT) directed the Haryana government to provide unique identification numbers to 123 waterbodies in Gurugram and Faridabad within three months.

Beyond News

• The green panel directed the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority to undertake the process of identification and restoration of waterbodies that are under the State government’s possession.
• The directions came while the NGT was hearing a plea by Lieutenant Colonel, who sought directions for identification and restoration of waterbodies in the area.

NASA launches tools to increase commercial use of satellite data

News

• NASA has launched an online toolkit to make it easier for users to find, analyse and utilise the most relevant satellite data for their research, business projects or conservation efforts.

Beyond News:

• The “Remote Sensing Toolkit” provides a simple system that quickly identifies relevant sources based on user input, NASA said in a statement .
• The toolkit is designed to help users search for data, as well as ready-to-use tools and code to build new tools.
• This new tool makes finding and using NASA satellite data easier than ever before, and we hope it sparks innovation among the entrepreneurial community and leads to further commercialisation of NASA technology and benefits people across the world.

Counting the tiger: on India’s fourth national tiger census

News

• This year, almost 15,000 pairs of camera ‘traps’ are being placed across protected areas and reserve forests in 18 States all to count the elusive national animal.

Beyond News

• Photographs of the big cats and indirect tiger signs will contribute to the fourth All India Tiger Estimation, undertaken to ascertain India’s current tiger population.
• But scientists will arrive at the final number only by the first quarter of 2019, for the process is lengthy, the science complex, and the implementation of the exercise challenging.
• The quadrennial survey will cover almost 4,00,000 sq km of tiger habitats in India.
• This time, the almost 500-day-long process began in December 2017 across different parts of the country. Designed by scientists at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), it involves four distinct phases. In the first phase, forest department personnel tramped through the tiger habitats in their beats for a week, recording signs of large cats (such as scats or pugmarks).
• This provides information on the number of tiger signs seen every kilometre, which is later used to supplement camera trap data and predict tiger numbers in larger areas where such cameras cannot be used.
• The field teams also note signs of prey and the area’s dominant vegetation. With many tiger habitats bordering villages and towns, human disturbance in the region is noted too, for it can play a role in tiger distribution.
• In the ATR, for instance, tea and coffee plantations completely surround some of the reserve’s lush evergreen forest patches.
• During the sign survey, forest guards in the ATR identified numerous such locations where camera traps had the maximum chances of obtaining tiger photographs.
• Using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to locate each of these spots, forest guards and watchers installed 170 pairs of camera traps in the first block by late December and monitored them for 25 days, setting the scene for Phase III.
•  
• CLICK HERE TO SEE DATE WISE CURRENT AFFAIRS.