Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Andhra Pradesh will have separate High Court from January 1: Supreme Court

News

• Come New Year and the State of Andhra Pradesh will have a separate high court as the Supreme Court has given the green signal for issuing the notification to this effect.

Beyond News

• It will be the 25th high court in the country and will initially function from a temporary structure till the permanent building comes up in the ambitious Justice City complex in the State’s capital Amaravati.
• Since the bifurcation of the State on June 2, 2014, Andhra Pradeshand Telangana have had a common high court situated at Hyderabad, the latter’s capital city.
• The Act, which had come into effect from June 2, 2014 has also a provision for separate high courts for State of Telangana and State of Andhra Pradesh.
• Hyderabad, which was the capital of erstwhile State of Andhra Pradesh is now part of Telangana and has become its capital.
• The existing high court is located at Hyderabad and it would be housing the High Court of State of Telangana.
• Insofar as State of Andhra Pradesh is concerned it has decided to create and construct new city known as Amaravati which is going to be the capital of the State and the new High Court of Andhra Pradesh would be located in that city.

India, Zimbabwe ink 6 agreements as Venkaiah Naidu meets President Mnangagwa

News

• India and Zimbabwe signed six signed agreements, including on mining, Information and communications technology (ICT), visa waiver and traditional medicine as Vice President Venkaiah Naidu met Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his deputy Kembo Mohadi and held wide-ranging talks.

Beyond News

• Vice President arrived on the second leg of his six-day three-nation tour to Africa, which aims at deepening India’s strategic cooperation with Botswana, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
• India also accepted Zimbabwe’s request to supply 10 ambulances to the African nation. “India will also give life-saving drugs to Zimbabwe,” .
• The Prasar Bharati and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation signed an MoU on “cooperation and collaboration in broadcasting”.
• The two sides also signed an MoU in “geology, mining and mineral resources”.
• The President thanked India for being “supportive during Zimbabwe’s period of isolation” and lauded the Asian nation for “refusing to join other countries in imposing sanctions” against it.
• Naidu is the the first high-ranking Indian Government official to visit Zimbabwe in 21 years.
• According to Indian Embassy in Harare, there are about 9,000 Zimbabweans of Indian origin, who are predominantly from the province of Gujarat. The expatriate Indian community in Zimbabwe is very small numbering around 500 members. Some of them are on long term business or work permits, while most are professionals engaged in IT, accountancy and banking sector.

India’s nuclear triad is complete with INS Arihant ending its first deterrence patrol

News

India declared that its indigenous nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant has completed the first deterrence patrol, indicating that the nation’s nuclear triad is complete.

Beyond News

• Equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, INS Arihant is India’s only Ship Submersible Ballistic Nuclear-powered (SSBN) submarine.
• Given India’s publicly stated position of No First Use (NFU) in launching nuclear weapons, the SSBN underwater is its most dependable platform for a second strike.
• Because they are powered by nuclear reactors, these submarines can stay underwater indefinitely without the adversary detecting it. The other two platforms land-based and air launched are far easier to detect.
• INS Arihant was quietly commissioned into service in August 2016 but its induction was never officially acknowledged. It is powered by a 83 MW pressurised light water reactor with enriched uranium.
• The ATV (Advanced Technology Vessel) project began in 1980s and the first of them, Arihant, was launched in 2009 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Since then it had undergone extensive sea trials and the reactor on board went critical in 2013.

U.S. imposes ‘toughest ever’ sanctions on Iran

News

• The Trump administration’s tough new sanctions on Iran took effect but eight major importers of Iranian oil were spared from immediate penalties.

Beyond News

• The sanctions target Iran’s energy, financial and shipping sectors and are aimed at crippling the country’s economy following President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.
• The measures restore all the U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under the accord that gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.
• The sanctions freeze any assets that those targeted have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from doing business with them. They will also affect non-Iranian companies that deal with sanctioned Iranian firms and officials.
• President Trump says that he wants to get Iran back to the negotiating table on the nuclear issue. The Trump administration also says it wants to stop what it calls Tehran’s “malign” activities including cyber attacks, ballistic missile tests, and support for terror groups in the Middle East.
• India and China  the two biggest buyers of Iranian crude, have so far appeared to have skipped the punitive American sanctions targeting the Iranian oil and financial sectors.
• The two Asian giants are believed to be among the eight countries that have been given the rare temporary exemptions from the Iranian sanctions that kicked off on Monday.
• India, which is the second biggest purchaser of Iranian oil after China, is willing to restrict its monthly purchase to 1.25 million tonnes or 15 million tonnes in a year (300,000 barrels per day), down from 22.6 million tonnes (452,000 barrels per day) bought in 2017-18 financial year, sources in New Delhi had said last week.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

NASA’s Hubble spots cosmic smiley among colourful galaxies

News

• The Hubble Space telescope has spotted a formation of galaxies that resembles a smiling face in the sky.

Beyond News

• The image, taken with the telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows a patch of space filled with galaxies of all shapes, colours and sizes, many of which belong to the galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434.
• Just below centre is a formation of galaxies akin to a smiling face. Two yellow-hued blobs hang atop a sweeping arc of light.
• The lower, arc-shaped galaxy has the characteristic shape of a galaxy that has been gravitationally lensed its light has passed near a massive object en route to us, causing it to become distorted and stretched out of shape.
• Hubble captured the image in an effort to understand how new stars spring to life throughout the cosmos. WFC3 is able to view distant galaxies at an unprecedented resolution high enough to locate and study regions of star formation within them.
• Stars are born within giant clouds of gas. These massive clouds, or stellar nurseries, grow unstable and begin to collapse under gravity, becoming the seeds that will grow into new stars.
• By analysing the luminosity, size and formation rate of different stellar nurseries, scientists hope to learn more about the processes that can lead to the formation of a newborn star.
• Studying nurseries within different galaxies will provide information about star formation at different points in time and space throughout the universe.

Plans for Antarctic sanctuary blocked

News

• A plan to create the world’s largest marine sanctuary in Antarctic waters was shot down when a key conservation summit failed to reach a consensus, with environmentalists decrying a lack of scientific foresight.

Beyond News

• Member states of the organisation tasked with overseeing the sustainable exploitation of the Southern Ocean failed at an annual meeting to agree over the a 1.8 million sq km maritime protection zone.
• The proposed sanctuary some five times the size of Germany would ban fishing in a vast area in the Weddell sea, protecting key species including seals, penguins and whales.
• Consensus is needed from all 24 members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the European Union.
• But environment groups say members such as Russia, China, Norway rejected the plan.

India’s own ‘smog tower’ may help combat air pollution

News

• As the city grapples with dangerous levels of air pollution, a Delhi-based startup has proposed to create a 40-feet-tall purifier, which it claims could provide clean air to 75,000 people living within three-km radius around it.

Beyond News

• Kurin Systems applied for patent after testing the technology at one of their at-home devices. It got the patent for the “world’s largest as well as the strongest air purifier” .
• Specially designed keeping the national capital’s air condition in mind, a single one of these purifiers can provide clean air within three-km radius of their location, impacting the lives of 75,000 people.
• According to the World Health Organization, India is home to six of the top 10 polluted cities in the world, with Delhi placed on the top of the list.
• As many as 1.2 million people die every year in India due to air pollution, a Greenpeace report published last year showed.
• The purifier, which Kurin calls the ‘City Cleaner’, will have the capacity to clean 32 million cubic metres of air per day, its makers said.
• The device can generate 1,300,000 cubic metres of clean air per hour, they said.
• The air will be purified by using the highly effective H14 grade highly effective particulate arrestance (HEPA) filter, which can clean up to 99.99% of the particulate matter present in the air in conjunction with a pre-filter and activated carbon.
• Kurin City Cleaner can use nine stages of physical filters to clean out 99.99% pollutants from the air.

Greater flamingoes visit Hope Island after 25 years

News

• After a long a gap, a flock of five greater flamingoes has been spotted on the Coast of Hope Island, a part of the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh.

Beyond News

• The long-legged and long-necked birds were last seen in a group about two and a half decades ago, while a lone flamingo was recorded in the 2016 Asian Water Bird Census at Sirra Yanam village in East Godavari district.
• Spread over 235 sq. km, the sanctuary is an abode for about 35 species of mangrove plants and another 120 species of rare birds.
• In addition, 236 species of migratory birds are spotted in and around the sanctuary with over 60,000 water birds visiting the sanctuary every year.
• A group of greater flamingoes, however, was last seen here in 1993.
• The greater flamingoes are the filter feeders and get their characteristic pink colour from their diet of brine shrimps and algae available in the coastal wetlands. They feel the flamingoes are the indicators of healthy coastal environment.

Saving wetlands from extinction

News

• It has been 43 years since the Ramsar Convention on conservation of wetlands came into force, and 36 years since India signed it.
• It has also been 17 years since the Supreme Court began hearing a related case, yet things continue to move at a snail’s pace in the State.

Beyond News

• The Madras High Court has now stepped in to save from extinction hundreds of wetlands, considered a vital part of the hydrological cycle and highly productive ecosystems that support rich biodiversity.
• Apart from storing and purifying water, mitigating floods, controlling erosion, recharging aquifers and regulating microclimate, wetlands also play a significant role in aesthetic enhancement of landscapes.
• Despite such benefits, the lands remain threatened due to a variety of reasons including reclamation, degradation through drainage, landfills, discharge of industrial effluents, disposal of solid wastes and encroachments.
• It was submitted to the court that at present the Point Calimere Wildlife Sanctuary at Kodiakarai in Nagapattinam is the only wetland in the State to have been included under the Ramsar Convention.
• In so far as the wetlands protected and conserved by the forest department were concerned, the government said that about 24 such lands spread over 1.40 lakh hectares were being taken care of under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.
• Division Bench issued a direction to the government officials concerned to provide full cooperation to the senior counsel in taking stock of the situation and submitting periodical reports to the court on the progress made by the State along with his suggestions on the issue.
• The court-monitored conservation measures have now raised hopes of some concrete on-the-ground action.

‘Rarest plants, vital crops cannot be preserved for future generations’

News

• International efforts to save some of the world’s rarest and economically important plants from climate change are doomed to fail because their seeds cannot be stored, researchers warned .

Findings

• As the planet heats and mankind continues to decimate natural habitats, scientists concede that the only way to save some types of vegetation is in seed banks giant repositories of thousands of species preserved for future generations.
• Nations agreed a global strategy in 2002 to conserve at least three quarters of threatened plant species with the aim of recovering and restoring their stocks in nature at some point.
• Scientists working in several seed banks around the world currently conserve seeds by drying them before freezing.
• It was previously known that at least 8% of plants including oak trees, mango, avocado and cacao produce “recalcitrant” seeds that die when dried. But with seed banking a work in progress, only a small proportion of plants have had their suitability for freezing assessed.
• The analysis showed that the goal of conserving 75% of the world’s threatened plant species outside their natural habitat by 2020 was “practically impossible”.
• In addition, even a proportion of seeds that survive drying and freezing have been shown to deteriorate while in storage, further complicating efforts to save their species.
• One potential way of saving plants with hard-to-store seeds is to freeze them at a much lower temperature using liquid nitrogen.

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