Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Women’s representation in Lok Sabha rises to a record at 14.4%

News

• At 78 elected women MPs, the 17th Lok Sabha will have the highest number of women representatives ever.
• They will account for 14.39% of the entire strength of the Lower House, which was at 12.5% with a total 65 women MPs in the previous Lok Sabha.

Beyond News

• With 40 women MPs, BJP has sent the largest number of elected women representatives to Lok Sabha because of the sheer size of its victory.
• It is followed by Trinamool Congress (9), Congress (6), BJD (5) and YSRCP (4), as per data compiled by Association for Democratic Reforms, which analysed 539 out of the total 542 winning candidates.
• However, it is the regional parties that boast of a higher ratio of women MPs to their total MPs in the new Lok Sabha.
• Women candidates also displayed a higher winnability factor or strike rate with 75.47% or 40 out of 53 women fielded by BJP bagging a Lok Sabha seat.
• A higher success rate or winnability factor shown by women candidates is consistent with the past record. As per official data maintained from the second Lok Sabha onwards, women have always had a better winnability factor. During the 16th Lok Sabha, the winning percentage of women was at 9.13% and those of men was at 6.36%.

Odisha tribal woman to become youngest-ever MP

News

• Chandrani Murmu, 25 years 11 months and eight days old, who won the Keonjhar Lok Sabha seat (reserved for STs ) on a BJD ticket by a margin of 66,203 votes, will enter the Lok Sabha as the youngest member in the Lower House’s history.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

President Trump, PM Modi to meet at G-20 Summit in June

News

• U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have agreed to meet at the G-20 Summit in Japan on June 28 and 29.

Beyond News

• The leaders look forward to seeing one another at the G-20 Summit in Osaka, where the U.S., India, and Japan will hold a trilateral meeting to pursue their shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.
• The U.S. and India have made enormous strides together which include the expansion of bilateral defence cooperation and combined military exercises, the historic civil nuclear deal, the nearly six-fold increase in U.S.-India trade, the Defence Technology and Trade Initiatives and the designation of India as a Major Defence Partner.
• The White House said that the President and Prime Minister pledged to continue to strengthen the United States-India strategic partnership, building on the achievements of the last two years.
• The U.S. and China are locked in a tussle for the commercial control of the South China Sea (SCS) which serves as a passage for annual trade worth $3.5 trillion.
• China claims almost all of the strategic SCS. While Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam push their claims to parts of the resource-rich maritime region, the U.S., Japan and India do not have any territorial claims there.

Election Commission yet to receive data on VVPAT slips

News

• The Election Commission is yet to receive country-wide data on the mandatory matching of Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) results of five random polling booths in each Assembly segment.

Beyond News

• The slips of 20,625 VVPAT machines were counted in over 4,000 Assembly segments falling under the 542 Parliamentary constituencies, as per the Supreme Court directive.
• The Commission has laid down an elaborate procedure to ensure the integrity of VVPATs and EVMs. They are transported in GPS-fitted vehicles and their movement is kept under constant surveillance.
• Before the actual use of EVMs and VVPATs at polling stations, mock polls are conducted on the machines three times. After the exercise, the printed slips from each VVPAT machine are counted and the result is tallied with the electronic result of control unit. The tally is shown to representatives of political parties.
• It was on August 14, 2013, that the Conduct of Election Rules was amended and notified to introduce VVPATs. These were first used in the byelection to the Noksen Assembly seat in Nagaland the same year. Then in October 2013, the Supreme Court directed the Commission to introduce the VVPAT in a phased manner.

Indian Army officer appointed the commander of UN Mission in South Sudan

News

• UN Secretary, General Antonio Guterres, has appointed Indian Army officer, Lieutenant General Shailesh Tinaikar, as the new Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).

Beyond News

• The UN chief made the announcement that Lieutenant General will succeed Lieutenant General Frank Kamanzi of Rwanda who completes his assignment.
• The decorated Indian Army officer has had a long and distinguished career with the Indian Armed Forces spanning over 34 years.
• He has won the Sena Medal and the Vishisht Seva Medal for his service.
• From 1996 to 1997, he served in the United Nations Angola Verification Mission III, and from 2008 to 2009, in the United Nations Mission in Sudan.
• India, the fourth largest contributor of uniformed personnel to the UN peacekeeping missions, currently contributes more than 6,400 military and police personnel to the UN peace operations in Abyei, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Lebanon, the Middle East, South Sudan and the Western Sahara.
• The UN Mission in South Sudan, a country born in July 2011, has 19,400 personnel deployed with it as of March 2019.
• India is the second highest troop contributing country to UNMISS with 2,337 Indian peacekeepers, second only to Rwanda with 2,750. In addition, India currently contributes 22 police personnel to UNMISS.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

SpaceX launches 60 little satellites, with many more to come

News

• SpaceX has launched 60 little satellites, the first of thousands that founder plans to put in orbit for global internet coverage.

Beyond News

• The first-stage booster landed on an ocean platform following lift-off, as the tightly-packed cluster of satellites continued upward.
• All 60 flat-panel satellites were deployed and online a few hundred miles (kilometres) above Earth. Each weighs 500 pounds (227kg) and has a single solar panel and a krypton-powered thruster for raising and maintaining altitude. The satellites have the capability of automatically dodging sizeable pieces of space junk.
• Twelve launches of 60 satellites each will provide reliable and affordable internet coverage throughout the U.S.
• Twenty-four launches will serve most of the populated world and 30 launches the entire world. That will be 1,800 satellites in total, with more planned after that.
• Other companies have similar plans, including Project Kuiper from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon and OneWeb.
• California-based SpaceX can use Starlink revenue to develop more advanced rockets and spacecraft to achieve his ultimate goal of establishing a city on Mars.
• The Starlink satellites are designed to re-enter the atmosphere after four or five years in orbit, burning up harmlessly over the Pacific. There will be no safety issues on the ground from falling chunks of debris.

Beating plastic pollution, individually and socially

News

• The world is drowning in plastic pollution,warned a recent UN report.
• One million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year, according to the UN Environment.

Findings

• In total, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once, and thrown away.
• Single-use plastic waste is a global menace. Oceans get clogged with an estimated nine million tonnes of plastic every year, and rivers play a significant role in making the problem worse as they act as conveyor belts for plastic debris flowing into the oceans.
• Ten rivers carry more than 90% of the plastic waste. The Meghna, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges carry 72,845 tonnes of plastic waste a year.
• The “Sea to Source: Ganges” expedition is the first of several international river expeditions planned as part of the National Geographic’s initiative, which aims to significantly reduce the amount of single-use plastic reaching oceans.
• The team working on the land will collect data on the use of plastic in communities and how waste is collected and managed, and will quantify the movement and type of plastic in the environment. The water team will study plastic pollution in the air, water, sediment and species in and around the river.
• The socioeconomic team will survey local communities along the expedition route to better understand perceptions of plastic pollution, household plastic waste management and local solutions.
• The expedition is designed to mobilise a global community of experts to help tackle the problem, Valerie Craig, vice-president of operating programmes at the National Geographic Society, said in a statement before the team started its work in Bangladesh.
• Researchers estimate that more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since the early 1950s. About 60% of that plastic has ended up either in a landfill or the natural environment. Some other worrying trends have emerged.
• Since the 1950s, the rate of plastic production has grown faster than that of any other material. There has also been a major shift away from durable plastic towards plastics that are meant to be thrown away after a single use.
• The UN has urged people to beat plastic pollution in their everyday lives and has asked global leaders to act fast. Whether these alterations in business and people’s lifestyles will lead to an overall change remains to be seen.

New vine snake discovered in Odisha biosphere reserve

News

• A group of researchers has discovered a tenth species of the vine snake of genus Ahaetulla after a gap of more than a century.

Beyond News

• Before this discovery, there were nine species of vine snakes reported from the country. The Ahaetulla laudankia, the newly-discovered snake, was first spotted by researchers in Simlipal Biosphere Reserve near Lulung in Odisha.
• According to researchers, Odisha is home to three species: the common Indian vine snake, variable-coloured vine snake and the third being the recently-named Laudankia vine snake.
• This rare snake has been reported from Mayurbhanj, Balasore and Boudh districts of Odisha and other states such as Maharastra and Rajasthan. It has ochre brown dorsal body with an orange-red belly.
• The genetic distinctiveness has been proven through scientific studies.

FDA okays $2M medicine, most expensive ever

News

• S. regulators have approved the most expensive medicine ever, for a rare disorder that destroys a baby’s muscle control and kills nearly all of those with the most common type of the disease within a couple of years.

Beyond News

• The treatment is priced at $2.125 million (About 14 crore rupees). Out-of-pocket costs for patients will vary based on insurance coverage.
• The medicine, sold by the Swiss drugmaker Novartis, is a gene therapy that treats an inherited condition called spinal muscular atrophy. The treatment targets a defective gene that weakens a child’s muscles so dramatically that they become unable to move, and eventually unable to swallow or breathe. It strikes about 400 babies born in the U.S. each year.
• The Food and Drug Administration on May 24 approved the treatment, called Zolgensma, for all children under age 2 who are confirmed by a genetic test to have any of the three types of the disease. The therapy is a one-time infusion that takes about an hour.
• Novartis said it will let insurers make payments over five years, at $425,000 per year, and will give partial rebates if the treatment doesn’t work.
• The defective gene that causes spinal muscular atrophy prevents the body from making enough of a protein that allows nerves that control movement to work normally. The nerves die off without the protein.
• In the most common type, which is also the most severe, at least 90% of patients die by age 2, and any still alive need a ventilator to breathe. Children with less-severe types become disabled more slowly and can live for up to a couple decades.
• Zolgensma works by supplying a healthy copy of the faulty gene, which allows nerve cells to then start producing the needed protein. That halts deterioration of the nerve cells and allows the baby to develop more normally.
• The FDA said side effects included vomiting and potential liver damage, so patients must be monitored for the first few months after treatment.

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