Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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US accuses India of non-adherence to parental child abduction protocols

News

• The United States accused India of not adhering to any protocol with respect to international parental child abduction, claiming 90 per cent of requests for the return of “abducted children” remained unresolved for over a year.

Beyond News

• International Parental Child Abduction (IPCA) generally refers to the “wrongful removal” or “wrongful retention” to another country of a child by the child’s parent or guardian.
• The State Department in its latest Annual Report on IPCA described India as a “non-compliant country,” a tag the country carries since 2014 when the first report came out.
• The 2017 annual report cites countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Peru, United Arab Emirates, Columbia, Egypt, Panama, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Tunisia and Ukraine.
• As a Party to the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Convention), the US believes that the courts in a child’s place of habitual residence should resolve matters of custody, and that abducted children should be promptly returned to their country of habitual residence.
• In 2017, the competent authorities in India demonstrated a pattern of non-compliance by regularly declining to work with the Department of State toward the resolution of pending abduction cases. Moreover, the competent authorities have failed to resolve cases, the State Department said.
• It said the Indian government failed to take “concrete” steps to resolve pending cases despite repeatedly meeting with US officials to discuss abduction cases.
• In 2017, the State Department reported 104 cases of abduction of US children in India. This includes 20 new cases and 84 from the previous years.
• Notably, almost all such cases are results of marital disputes in which one of the parents lives in India with their children and mostly obtains court order to take custody of their kids. The other parent, an American citizen approaches the US court and seeks governmental intervention to obtain custody of their children. In American legal parlance, officials describe this as “abduction of US children.
• In 2017, the State Department received 11 initial inquiries from parents regarding possible abductions to India in which no additional assistance was requested or necessary documentation was not received as of December 31, 2017, the report said.
• According to the State Department, in 2017, seven abduction cases were resolved through voluntary means.
• Without the Hague Abduction Convention or any other protocols intended to resolve abduction cases, parents generally must pursue custody of abducted children in Indian courts.
• The State Department said that, it will continue to encourage India to accede to the Convention and expand public diplomacy activities related to the Convention.

Swachh rankings are out, Indore gets cleanest city tag

News

• Jharkhand has emerged as the best-performing State in terms of cleanliness, while Indore in Madhya Pradesh was adjudged the cleanest city in the country, according to the government swachhta survey released.

Beyond News

• Maharashtra stood second behind Jharkhand, while Chhattisgarh was at the third position in the category of ‘best-performing States’ in the ‘Swachh Survekshan 2018’ released by Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri here.
• As far as cities are concerned, table-topper Indore is followed by Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, while Union Territory of Chandigarh stands at the third place in the national-level category.
• Indore and Bhopal have retained their respective positions from the last year survey. But this year, the survey has covered 4,203 cities while in 2017 only 434 cities were surveyed.
• State ranking was introduced in this year’s survey, which was conducted between January 4 and March 10.
• The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) got the tag of India’s ‘cleanest small city’ (urban local body) with population between 1 lakh and 3 lakh in the 2018 survey.
• In the ‘cantonment’ category, the Delhi Cantonment has emerged as the cleanest, followed by Almora, Ranikhet and Nainital (all three in Uttarakhand).
• Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad was adjudged the “fastest mover big city” in this survey.
• Mysuru has been ranked the cleanest medium-sized city in the country. Mysuru has been ranked the cleanest among cities with a population of between 3 lakh and one million.

Mangaluru has been ranked the best city in solid waste management.

Cabinet approves new biofuels policy

News

• The Union Cabinet approved a national policy on biofuels that seeks to not only help farmers dispose of their surplus stock in an economic manner but also reduce India’s oil-import dependence.

Beyond News

• The policy expands the scope of raw material for ethanol production by allowing use of sugarcane juice, sugar containing materials like sugar beet, sweet sorghum, starch containing materials like corn, cassava, damaged food grains like wheat, broken rice, rotten potatoes [that are] unfit for human consumption for ethanol production.
• Farmers are at a risk of not getting appropriate price for their produce during the surplus production phase.
• Taking this into account, the policy allows use of surplus food grains for production of ethanol for blending with petrol with the approval of National Biofuel Coordination Committee.
• The policy also provides for a viability gap funding scheme of ₹5,000 crore in six years for second generation (more advanced) ethanol bio-refineries in addition to tax incentives and a higher purchase price as compared to first generation biofuels.
• One crore litres of E10 [petrol with 9-10% ethanol blended in it] saves ₹28 crore of forex at current rates.
• The ethanol supply year 2017-18 is likely to see a supply of around 150 crore litres of ethanol which will result in savings of over ₹4,000 crore of forex.
• The release added that one crore litres of E10 saves reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 20,000 tonnes.
• By reducing crop burning and conversion of agricultural residues/wastes to biofuels there will be further reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Cliff habitat needs a vulture safe zone

News

• The Long-billed vulture or Indian vulture (gyps indicus) is critically endangered. According to conservationists, the way to conserve its present population and increase it is to step up conservation efforts at the Palarapu cliff vulture habitat in Kumram Bheem Asifabad.

Beyond News

• A team of Forest Department officials connected with conservation of vultures at Palarapu habitat the only one in Telangana State  recently visited the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre (JCBC), Pinjore, Haryana, to study the methods and status of conservation.
• According to them, the Vulture Safe Zone (VSZ) initiative of the Pinjore JCBC needs to be implemented in Telangana too to make it safer for the scavenger birds here.
• The JCBC has launched the initiative to protect three species of vultures including the Long-billed vulture, but its efforts are concentrated in North Indian States only.
• The team will submit its report to the authorities soon which will discuss the VSZ.
• The project envisages elimination of the probability of consumption of the drug Diclofenac through animal carcasses by the vultures within a radius of 100 km which is considered to be the range of the habitat.
• The VSZ will need the cooperation of Forest, Food and Drug Administration and Animal Husbandry departments to control the supply of Diclofenac.
• As the zone will encompass 32,000 sq km in Telangana, Maharashtra and Chattisgarh, the involvement of the governments of these States is also essential.
• The initiative involves massive awareness on the issue of Diclofenac not only among people but other stakeholders like the government departments.
• The effort in establishment of VSZ will also benefit vulture habitats in Maharashtra and Chattisgarh.

Fastest growing blackhole of the universe discovered

News

• Scientists have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known in the universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our Sun every two days.

Beyond News

• The astronomers Australian National University have looked back more than 12 billion years, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns.
• This black hole is growing so rapidly that it’s shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy.

Banned ozone-destroying chemical on rise: scientists

News

• The decline in the atmosphere of an ozone-depleting chemical banned by the Montreal Protocol has recently slowed by half, suggesting a serious violation of the 196-nation treaty, researchers revealed.

Beyond News

• Measurements at remote sites, including the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, of the chemical, known as CFC-11, point to East Asia as the source or renewed production.
• They show that the rate of decline of atmospheric CFC-11 was constant from 2002 to 2012, and then slowed by about 50% after 2012.
• This evidence strongly suggests increased CFC-11 emissions from eastern Asia after 2012.
• The ozone layer in the stratosphere, 10-to-40 kilometres above Earth’s surface, protects life on the planet from deadly ultraviolet radiation.
• The 1987 Montreal Protocol banned industrial aerosols such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were chemically dissolving ozone, especially above Antarctica.
• The findings, reported in Nature, also have implications for the fight against climate change.
• Perhaps even more serious is the role of CFCs as long-lived greenhouse gases.
• Two decades ago, CFCs accounted for around 10% of human-induced global warming.

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