IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Women essential in police forces: SC

News

• The presence of women personnel in the police force, considering the crime against women, is the prime need of the hour, the Supreme Court has said in a recent judgment.

Representation of women

• A Bench said every endeavour should be made to ensure the higher representation of women in the police force.
• The order was passed in an appeal filed by Khusbu Sharma, an applicant to the post of SI in the Bihar Police. The respondent was the Bihar Police Subordinate Service Commission.
• Sharma, who had cleared the preliminary and main written examinations, wrote to the Commission in 2018 to postpone the date for the physical test as she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Later, on checking, the apex court found that there were 73 other women aspirants who had written to the Commission with an identical plea to postpone the physical test which was due in last year. The Commission, the court learnt, deemed best not to respond to any of these aspirants.
• The Bench said the Commission did not conduct the tests as per schedule initially and the women aspirants were not to blame. The court directed the physical test and other processes to be completed in two months and allowed the women aspirants to take part.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

 

India rejects RCEP e-commerce chapter

News

• India’s hopes for retaining the right to implement data localisation laws remain alive as Indian negotiators declined to agree to the e-commerce chapter of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement.

Data localisation

• The e-commerce chapter contains clauses that, if India had agreed to them, would have prevented it from implementing data localisation rules on companies doing business in India.
• While the e-commerce chapter has some clauses that affect data localisation, India has been trying to water these down. Clouding the issue further is that the annexe on financial services, already agreed upon by all the RCEP countries, says that the domestic laws of a country regarding keeping financial data within a country supersede the RCEP agreement.
• The section on transfers of information and processing of information says that a party shall not take measures that prevent transfers of information, including transfers of data by electronic or other means, necessary for the conduct of the ordinary business of a financial service supplier.

India slams Turkey for Syria action

News

• India described Turkey’s military action in Syria as unilateral and asked Ankara to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria.
• The comment from the Ministry of External Affairs called upon Turkey to exercise restraint.

Unilateral

• Turkey  launched the military campaign on Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane rebels in northern Syria as it considers the outfit a terrorist organisation.
• Ankara claims that the groups being targeted in the operation are already designated as terrorists in the United States and the European Union. Turkey has accused the PKK/YPG of killing 40,000 civilians.
• Ankara maintains that the fight against YPG is not new but part of the 30-year long counter-terror operation against the Kurdish PKK.
• Tough diplomatic exchanges between Turkey and India have intensified in recent weeks following India’s decision to end the special status of Kashmir. 
• India issued a strong statement expressing “deep regret” after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took up the Kashmir issue in his speech at the UN General Assembly. India indicated on Thursday that it does not agree with the Turkish notion of terrorism.

₹2,447.66-crore special package for Kuttanad

News

• The State Planning Board has recommended a ₹2,447.66-crore special package for the post-flood development of Kuttanad, with integrated water resources management (IWRM) and “resilient agriculture” as the central themes.

Post-flood development

• Entrusted with the preparation of a reconstruction plan for the region after the 2018 floods, the Planning Board handed over its set of recommendations to Chief Minister, who formally released it.
• The recommendations broadly cover nine key sectors and call for their coordinated and closely-monitored implementation.
• The report provisionally earmarks ₹1,589.16 crore for water resources development, ₹252 crore for agriculture, ₹230 crore for fisheries and ₹291 crore for drinking water supply.
• Other tentative outlays include ₹15 crore for the establishment of an integrated rice park in Alappuzha, ₹40.5 crore for an electricity substation, ₹11 crore for responsible tourism initiatives, ₹3-crore technological solutions for sanitation and ₹16 crore for animal husbandry.
• Envisaging Kuttanad as an efficient special agricultural zone, with an ecologically sustainable convergence of agriculture and policy, the Planning Board has recommended for the region a hierarchy of primary, secondary and tertiary ‘water systems’.

Hopes high for interim U.S.-China deal

News

• Chinese and U.S. trade officials resumed bargaining efforts as optimism grew for the two sides to reach an interim agreement and mark a pause in their increasingly damaging trade war.

Trade war

• President Donald Trump postpone next week’s scheduled tariff increases on hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese imports.
• Trump was expected to meet with Beijing’s top trade envoy Liu He in a sign the two sides likely expect to make a positive announcement.
• China’s securities regulators set a timetable for removing foreign ownership limits in finance companies in 2020 helping attract foreign investment as China’s economy slows but also removing constraints on foreign capital.
• China will continue to increase purchases of U.S. farm exports and pledge to refrain from currency manipulation while Washington will suspend a tariff increase, Bloomberg reported. Where matters go from there remains to be seen.

State to continue release of ₹ 339 crore a month to villages

News

• Chief Minister has announced the government’s resolve to continue releasing ₹ 339 crore every month for taking up developmental programmes and strengthening the infrastructure at the village-level in Telangana.

Palle Pragati

• The 30-day special action plan, Palle Pragati, launched for improving the conditions in villages.
• The power week conducted by the department for on the spot redressal of the grievances and improving services received widespread accolades from people.
• Inspired by the success of the Palle Pragati, which envisaged active participation of the people as well as the departments concerned for improving the conditions in their respective areas, the government plans to conduct similar programmes in future too.
• As part of efforts to strengthen the administration at the grass root level, the government had taken steps to fill vacant posts at various levels.
• The government at the same time is firm on ensuring that there is no shortage of funds for taking up developmental programmes at the village-level. The government had decided to continue release of ₹ 339 crore a month to villages and this is over and above the revenue generated by the villages at their level.
• The Chief Minister announced release of ₹ 2 crore each for the 32 districts, except Hyderabad, and the Collectors can use their discretionary powers in utilising this funds for continuing the tempo and completing the ongoing work in these areas.
• The government prepared plans relating to work that should be taken up annually as well as those relating to the longer term of five years and the government prepared a green plan for enhancing the green cover in these villages.
• The Palle Pragati helped the government in identifying the locations for burial/cremation grounds, dump yards and nurseries in a majority of the villages and efforts should be made to ensure that the remaining villages are covered at the earliest.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

NASA launches satellite to explore where air meets space

News

• NASA launched a satellite to explore the mysterious, dynamic region where air meets space.

Satellite ICON

• The satellite called ICON, short for Ionospheric Connection Explorer rocketed into orbit following a two-year delay. It was dropped from a plane flying over the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
• The ionosphere is the charged part of the upper atmosphere extending several hundred miles (kilometers) up. It’s in constant flux as space weather bombards it from above and Earth weather from below, sometimes disrupting radio communications.
• The refrigerator-size ICON satellite will study the airglow formed from gases in the ionosphere and also measure the charged environment right around the spacecraft which is at a level of 580 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.
• A NASA satellite launched last year, Gold, is also studying the upper atmosphere, but from much higher up. More missions are planned in coming years to study the ionosphere, including from the International Space Station.

In Pavagada, Karnataka, five villages protect their hillside forest

News

• Three decades ago, the rocky hills of Pavagada taluk in Karnataka’s Tumakuru district were barren and bleak. And if this perennially drought-hit region needed anything urgently, it was some green cover.
• Today, the hillsides are verdant with hundreds of trees: neem, tamarind, honge, jackfruit, teak, jamun, peepal, mango and banyan. And as the trees send their roots deeper into the soil, at the foothills, a small army of guardians keeps vigil.

Forest the hillside

• In a heartwarming display of citizenship initiative, the people of five villages in the region formed committees to first forest the hillside and now these committees prevent anybody from cutting down even a single precious tree. They carry out their work with quiet determination: anyone caught chopping a tree down is fined anything between ₹100 and ₹5,000, depending on the weight of the wood and the extent of the ‘crime’.
• Villagers say the afforestation has had a noticeable impact.
• A lot of planning has gone into creating the watchdog committees.
• As with the best conservation efforts, many former offenders are today the Samiti’s most ardent supporters.

Another threat

• Now, the young forest has a new threat: forest fires. This year alone, some 24 hectares were burnt.

Industrial production drops by 1.1% in August

News

• Signs of slowdown became more pronounced as the government data revealed factory output shrank by 1.1% in August, recording the poorest performance in seven years due to a sharp decline in production of capital goods and consumer durable.

Industrial production 

• Industrial production growth for the first time in more than two years has treaded into negative territory.
• The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had shown a growth of 4.8% in August 2018. The previous low in IIP was (-) 1.7% in November 2012.
• The manufacturing sector, which contributes over 77% to the IIP, contracted by 1.2%, the lowest in five years, as against a growth of 5.2% in the year-ago month.
• The previous low in the manufacturing segment was recorded at (-) 1.8% in October 2014.
• The data revealed that electricity generation growth too was in negative at (-) 0.9% as against an expansion of 7.6% in the year-ago month while the mining sector growth was flat at 0.1%.
• Providing further details of the IIP, the NSO data showed the worst performance came from the capital goods segment as its output shrank by over 21% as against an expansion of 10.3% in August last year.
• Consumer durables output too declined by 9.1% in August 2019 as against 5.5% growth in the same month of 2018.
• Another poor performing segment was infrastructure/ construction goods. It showed a decline of 4.5% 2019 as against a growth of 8% in the corresponding month of last year.
• ‘Intermediate goods’ sector, however, showed a healthy growth of 7%, up from 2.9% in the year-ago month. Consumer non-durables segment posted an expansion of 4.1% in August. This compares with 6.5% expansion in August 2018.
• In terms of industries, 15 out of the 23 industry groups in the manufacturing sector have shown negative growth during August 2019 as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year.
• Moody’s Investors Service slashed its 2019-20 GDP growth forecast for India to 5.8% from 6.2% earlier, saying the economy was experiencing a pronounced slowdown.

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