IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Centre signs new package to permanently settle Mizoram’s Bru migrants in Tripura

News

• The Centre signed a quadrupartite agreement to resolve the 22-year-old Bru displacement crisis in Tripura and announced that over 30,000 Bru migrants, who are languishing in six relief camps since October 1997, would be settled in the state.
• The government has also declared Rs 600 crore package for resettling them.

Bru displacement crisis

• The agreement would basically redirect the entire package, previously announced for repatriation to Mizoram, which includes Rs 1.5 lakh housing assistance to the migrants into three installments: Rs 4 lakh one-time cash assistance for sustenance to be handed over after 3 years, Rs 5,000 monthly cash assistance, and free ration for two years to migrants who wish to be permanently settled in Tripura.
• The agreement will help the Bru refugees to benefit from numerous development schemes.
• A previous agreement, signed in 2018, mandated that the migrants would be repatriated to Mizoram, where they came from. However, the deal didn’t receive acceptance among a majority of migrants, who feared ethnic clashes after their return.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

Barrage on Tapi river to ensure uninterrupted water supply in Surat

News

• In a bid to maintain water flow in Tapi river throughout the year and ensure uninterrupted water supply in Surat, the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has initiated work to build a conventional barrage on the river joining Rundh and Bhata villages at a cost of Rs 500 crore.

Ensure uninterrupted water supply

• The river is a lifeline to a population of around 65 lakh in Surat city. During summer and winter, the water flow in the river reduces, depriving drinking water to parts of the city. The barrage will help maintain the flow throughout the year, according to SMC sources.
• For Tapi river, Ukai dam is the main source of water, which is stored in weir cum causeway at Singhanpore.
• According to SMC sources, the corporation treats 1,200 million litres of water per day from the causeway and supplies it to different parts of the city.
• During summer, SMC has to cut the supply once or twice a week in some areas due to water shortage.
• The estimated cost of the project is around Rs 500 crore, of which the state government has already released Rs 100 crore. Tenders were floated and and three expert agencies have shown interest in the project.
• A flyover will also be made on the barrage connecting both Rundh and Bhata villages. The SMC is also trying for a loan from the World Bank for the project.

Telling Numbers: Indian passport ranked 84th in the world, Japan’s on top

News

• Japan has the world’s strongest passport; Afghanistan, at rank 107, the weakest.
• The Indian passport is closer to the bottom, ranked 84th in the world, according to the latest edition of the Henley Passport Index, widely acknowledged to be the most reliable of such rankings.

Strongest passport

• The residence and citizenship planning firm that publishes the ranking, the Index lists the world’s passports “according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa”.
• The ranking is based on data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association of some 290 airlines, including all major carriers.
• The index includes 199 different passports and 227 different travel destinations, the publisher of the rankings said in a press release last week. The data are updated in real time as and when visa policy changes come into effect, the release said.
• Japan has been topping the Index for three straight years; according to the 2020 index, its citizens are able to access 191 destinations without having to obtain a visa in advance.
• Singapore, in second place (same as in 2019), has a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 190. Germany is No. 3 (same position as in 2019), with access to 189 destinations; it shares this position with South Korea, which dropped from the second place it held a year ago, the release said.
• The US and the UK have been falling consistently over successive Indices. Both countries are in eighth place in 2020; a significant decline from the No. 1 spot they jointly held in 2015.
• Since the index began in 2006, the Indian passport has ranked in a band of 71st to 88th. (The number of passports ranked has, however, varied from year to year.) The Indian passport’s 2020 ranking of 84th translates into visa-free access to 58 destinations, including 33 which give Indians visas on arrival.
• The Indian passport ranked higher in both 2019 (82, with visa-free access to 59 destinations) and 2018 (81, with visa-free access to 60 destinations).

US signs first phase of trade deal with China

News

• President Donald Trump signed a trade agreement with China that is expected to boost exports from US farmers and manufacturers and is aimed at lowering tensions in a long-running dispute between the economic powers.

Trade agreement

• The agreement is being described as “phase one” of a larger negotiation focusing on other tensions in the US-China trade relationship. Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in a letter to Trump that the first phase “good for China, the US and for the whole world.”
• But this agreement would do little to force China to make the major economic changes such as reducing unfair subsidies for its own companies that the Trump administration sought when it started the trade war by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports in July 2018.
• The agreement is intended to ease some US economic sanctions on China while Beijing would step up purchases of American farm products and other goods. Trump cited beef, pork, poulty, seafood, rice and dairy products as examples.
• The deal would lower tensions in a trade dispute that has slowed global growth, hurt American manufacturers and weighed on the Chinese economy. Trump said easing trade tensions was critical.
• White the deal stops short of many changes the president has sought from China, it leaves in place tariffs on about $360 billion in Chinese imports, leverage the administration hopes will generate future concessions.
• The US has dropped plans to impose tariffs on an additional $160 billion in Chinese imports, and it cut in half, to 7.5%, existing tariffs on $110 billion of good from China.
• Beijing agreed to significantly increase its purchases of US products. According to the Trump administration, China is to buy $40 billion a year in US farm products _ an ambitious goal for a country that has never imported more than $26 billion a year in US agricultural products.
• So far this year, the US deficit with China in the trade of goods has declined by 16%, or $62 billion, to $321 billion compared with a year earlier. The deficit will narrow further if Beijing lives up to its pledges to buy dramatically more American imports.

Trump’s tariff increase have proved to be a headwind for China’s economy, which was already slowing, though the damage has been less than some expected. Chinese global exports eked out a 0.5% increase in 2019 despite a plunge in sales to the United States.

In Hisar villages, 95% houses have cellphones, only 4.5% have reading material for kids

News

• Only 4.5 per cent households have reading material for children in the villages of Haryana’s Hisar district while mobile phones are in there 95 per cent households, claims the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released by NGO Pratham.

Reading material

• The rural areas of other states covered under the survey also have almost similar scenarios except few district like Trissur district of Kerala where 33.7 per cent households have reading material for the children.
• Almost 20 per cent households in Dimapur district of Nagaland have reading material for the children, while 12.1 per cent households in Bathinda district of Punjab also have similar material for the children.
• The national average among the surveyed districts is also just 9.4 per cent households with reading material for the children.
• ASER ‘Early Years’ Survey reported on the pre-schooling or schooling status of children in the age group 4 to 8 years. The ASER 2019 sample consists of 26 districts spread across 24 states which give a sample of at least 1,200 children in each district.
• The report is a rapid assessment of children, done in households, by ordinary citizens. The assessment was done simultaneously across the country in October and November 2019.
• In survey, its teams reached 1,415 children in the age-group of 4-8 years in 1,203 households in 59 Hisar villages.
• These villages have as many as 69.8 per cent “pucca houses” while 97.5 per cent of the total houses have electricity connections.
• As many as 97.9 per cent houses have the facility of the toilet, while 91.3 per cent houses have television. As many as 59.5 per cent households have smart phones.
• There are 83.3 per cent “pucca houses in the villages of Punjab’s Bathinda district while 99.7 per cent houses have electricity connections. Here, as many as 98.1 per cent houses have toilets and 92 per cent television while 75.3 per cent households have smart phones.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

The Black hole at centre of Milky Way is forging new star-gas hybrid objects

News

• Milky Way galaxy is glued together by a super-massive black hole Sagittarius A* at its centre, buried deep in the constellation Sagittarius constantly pulling stars, dust, and other matters inward.
• A new study suggests that the Sagittarius A* might not be only devouring things but actually responsible for the creation of new kind of stars that are quite different from the stars we know.

Sagittarius A*

• • Astronomers from UCLA’s (University of California Los Angeles) Galactic Center Orbits discovered the new class of objects at the centre of our galaxy not far from Sagittarius A*.
  • The study  mentions that these anomalous objects look like oblong blobs of gas several times more massive than Earth but behave like small stars capable of passing perilously close to the black hole’s edge without being ripped to shreds.
  • Given the shape, orbits, and interaction of these six objects (dubbed G1 to G6) with Sagittarius A*, researchers believe that each G object is a pair of binary stars (two stars that revolve around each other) that got smashed together by the black hole’s gravity millions of years ago and still spilling out clouds of gas and dust in the messy aftermath of the collision.
  • The first G-objects (G1) was discovered in 2005 by Ghez’s research group at the centre of our galaxy and in 2012 astronomers in Germany made a puzzling discovery of a bizarre object named G2 that made a close approach to the Sagittarius A* in 2014.
  • At the time, Ghez and her research team believe that G2 is most likely two stars that had been orbiting the black hole in tandem and merged into an extremely large star, cloaked in unusually thick gas and dust.
  • Research group later reported the existence of four more objects they called G3, G4, G5 and G6. The researchers found out that while G1 and G2 have similar orbits, the other four have very different orbits.
  • Researchers noted that while the gas from G2’s outer shell got stretched dramatically, its dust inside the gas did not get stretched much.
  • Researchers have already identified a few other candidates that may be part of this new class of objects, and are continuing to analyze them.

Moody’s: Rising sea levels threaten sovereign credit ratings

News

• Economic shocks stemming from rising sea levels pose a long-term risk to the sovereign credit ratings of dozens of countries that have large areas at risk of submersion, including Vietnam, Egypt, Suriname, and the Bahamas, Moody’s said.

Rising sea levels

• Climate science suggests that sea levels will continue to rise for decades, contributing to increasingly frequent natural disasters such as storm surges, floods, and cyclones, the credit rating agency.
• The economic and social repercussions of lost income, damage to assets, a loss of life, health issues and forced migration from the sudden events related to sea-level rise are immediate.
• Vulnerability to extreme events related to sea-level rise can also undermine investment.
• Farming, tourism, and trade are all threatened by rising sea levels, especially in countries with a large proportion of land and people at risk of submersion, including island states like the Philippines, Fiji and the Maldives.
• While high-income economies, such as Japan and the Netherlands, are also exposed, they have countermeasures in place that mean their credit ratings are unlikely to be materially impacted.

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