Current Affairs Feb 18 – GES Reporter

Comprehensive Economic cooperation and Partnership Agreement

Why in News?

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister has approved signing of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) between India and Mauritius.

The salient features of India-Mauritius CECPA are as follows:

The India-Mauritius CECPA will be the first trade Agreement to be signed by India with a country in Africa.
The Agreement is a limited agreement, which will cover Trade in Goods, Rules of Origin, Trade in Services, Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Dispute Settlement, Movement of Natural Persons, Telecom, Financial services, Customs Procedures and Cooperation in other Areas

Impact or benefits:

CECPA provides for an institutional mechanism to encourage and improve trade between the two countries.
The CECPA between India and Mauritius covers 310 export items for India, including food stuff and beverages (80 lines), agricultural products (25 lines), textile and textile articles (27 lines), base metals and articles thereof (32 lines), electricals and electronic item (13 lines), plastics and chemicals (20 lines), wood and articles thereof (15 lines), and others.
Mauritius will benefit from preferential market access into India for its 615 products, including frozen fish, speciality sugar, biscuits, fresh fruits, juices, mineral water, beer, alcoholic drinks, soaps, bags, medical and surgical equipment, and apparel.
India has offered around 95 sub-sectors from the 11 broad services sectors, including professional services, R&D, other business services, telecommunication, financial, distribution, higher education, environmental, health, tourism and travel related services, recreational services and transport services.
Both sides have also agreed to negotiate an Automatic Trigger Safeguard Mechanism (ATSM) for a limited number of highly sensitive products within two years of the Signing of the Agreement.

PIB

Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015

Why in News?

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister has approved the proposal of the Ministry of Women and Child Development to amend the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 to introduce measures for strengthening Child Protection set-up to ensure best interest of children.
The amendments include authorizing District Magistrate including Additional District Magistrate to issue adoption orders under Section 61 of the JJ Act, in order to ensure speedy disposal of cases and enhance accountability.
The District Magistrates have been further empowered under the Act, to ensure its smooth implementation, as well as garner synergized efforts in favour of children in distress conditions.
Defining eligibility parameters for appointment of CWC members, and categorizing previously undefined offences as ‘serious offence’ are some of the other aspects of the proposal.
Several difficulties faced in implementation of various provisions of the Act have also been addressed.

PIB

PLI Scheme for Telecom and Networking Products

Why in News?

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister has approved Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Telecom and Networking Products with a budgetary outlay of Rs. 12,195 crore.

About

The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme intends to promote manufacture of Telecom and Networking Products in India and proposes a financial incentive to boost domestic manufacturing and attract investments in the target segments of telecom and networking products in order to encourage Make in India.
The scheme will also encourage exports of telecom and networking products ‘Made in India’.
Support under the Scheme will be provided to companies/entities engaged in manufacturing of specified telecom and networking products in India.

Eligibility

Eligibility will be further subject to achievement of a minimum threshold of cumulative incremental investment over a period of four years and incremental sales of manufactured goods net of taxes (as distinct from traded goods) over the Base Year 2019-2020.
The cumulative investment can be made at one go, subject to annual cumulative threshold as prescribed for four years being met.
Globally Telecom and Networking Products exports represent an US$100 billion market opportunity, which can be exploited by India.
With support under the scheme, India will augment capacities by attracting large investments from global players and at the same time encourage promising domestic champion companies to seize the emerging opportunities and become big players in the export market.
There will be a minimum investment threshold of Rs.10 crore for MSME with incentives from 7% to 4 % and Rs. 100 crore for others with incentives from 6% to 4 % over 5 year above Base Year.
With this scheme, India will be well positioned as a global hub for manufacturing of Telecom and Networking Products. Incremental production around Rs. 2 Lakh crore is expected to be achieved over 5 years.
It is expected that scheme will bring more than Rs. 3,000 crore investment and generate huge direct and indirect employments.

PIB

Sub Mission on Plant Protection and Plant Quarantine (SMPPQ)

Why in News?

The Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare performs regulatory, monitoring, surveillance and Human Resource Development functions through a scheme “Sub Mission on Plant Protection and Plant Quarantine (SMPPQ)”.

Aim

Minimizing loss to quality and yield of agricultural crops from the ravages of insect pests, diseases, weeds, nematodes, rodents etc. and to shield our bio-security from the incursion and spread of alien species.
Revalidation of more than 1200 pack houses, rice mills, processing units, treatment facilities, fumigation agencies, post entry quarantine facilities etc to facilitate agri export has been done.
The Destructive Insect and Pests Act, 1914 and the Insecticides Act, 1968 provide the legal framework for the regulatory function.
During 2020-21, India became the first country in the world to control locusts by using drones after finalizing protocols and Standard Operating Procedures.

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Enhanced Delegation of Financial Powers

Why in News?

The Union Cabinet approved enhanced delegation of Financial Powers under Capital Procurement to levels below Vice-Chief of Armed Forces.
As per the approval, under Other Capital Procurement Procedure (OCPP) of Defence Acquisition Procedure-2020, financial powers up to Rs.100 crore has been delegated to General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief (FOC-in-C), Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) at Services Command and Regional Commanders, Indian Coast Guard (ICG)
Powers up to Rs. 200 crore has been delegated to Deputy Chief of Army Staff (CD & S)/ MGS (Master General Sustenance), COM (Chief of Material), AOM (Air Officer Maintenance), DCIDS (Deputy Chief Integrated Defence Staff) and ADG ICG (Additional Director General Indian Coast Guard).
This delegation of powers within Service Headquarters and up to Command Level for items of Capital nature such as overhauls, refits, upgrades etc. will enhance the utility of existing assets and will facilitate faster processing and implementation of projects for modernization of Armed Forces to meet the security challenges of the nation.
The Cabinet has also approved enhanced financial powers in the Make-I category under which Government funding up to 70% of the prototype development cost is available for Design & Development of equipment, systems, major platforms or upgrades thereof.
Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee (CISC), Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS), Vice Chief of Naval Staff (VCNS), Deputy Chief of Air Staff (DCAS), and Director General Coast Guard (DG(CG)) have now been given powers to sanction Government support up to Rs.50 crore towards cost of prototype development.

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Draft Blue Economy Policy for India

Why in News?

The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) has rolled out the Draft Blue Economy policy for India in the public domain inviting suggestions and inputs from various stakeholders including industry, NGOs, academia, and citizens.
The draft blue economy policy document outlines the vision and strategy that can be adopted by the Government of India to utilize the plethora of oceanic resources available in the country.

Aim

To enhance contribution of the blue economy to India’s GDP, improve lives of coastal communities, preserve marine biodiversity, and maintain the national security of marine areas and resources.

India’s CoastLine

With a coastline of nearly 7.5 thousand kilometers, India has a unique maritime position. Nine of its 29 states are coastal, and the nation’s geography includes 1,382 islands. There are nearly 199 ports, including 12 major ports that handle approximately 1,400 million tons of cargo each year.
Moreover, India’s Exclusive Economic Zone of over 2 million square kilometers has a bounty of living and non-living resources with significant recoverable resources such as crude oil and natural gas. Also, the coastal economy sustains over 4 million fisherfolk and coastal communities.

The MoES prepared the draft blue economy policy framework in line with the Government of India’s Vision of New India by 2030. It highlighted blue economy as one of the ten core dimensions for national growth. The draft policy framework emphasizes policies across several key sectors to achieve holistic growth of India’s economy. The document recognizes the following seven thematic areas.

National accounting framework for the blue economy and ocean governance.
Coastal marine spatial planning and tourism.
Marine fisheries, aquaculture, and fish processing.
Manufacturing, emerging industries, trade, technology, services, and skill development.
Logistics, infrastructure and shipping, including trans-shipments.
Coastal and deep-sea mining and offshore energy.
Security, strategic dimensions, and international engagement.
The United Nations Member States, including India, adopted 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, in 2015 as a universal call to take action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.
SDG 14 seeks to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Australia, Brazil, United Kingdom, United States, Russia, and Norway have developed dedicated national ocean policies with measurable outcomes and budgetary provisions.
Canada and Australia have enacted legislation and established hierarchal institutions at federal and state levels to ensure progress and monitoring of their blue economy targets.

PIB

AWBI (The Animal Welfare Board of India) Awards

Why in News?

The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), the apex body in the country for the welfare and protection of animals, established under Section 4 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 conferred 14 Prani Mitra awards and JeevDaya awards 2021 to the individuals, organizations and corporates for their outstanding performance in the field of animal welfare.
The following individuals / organizations have been awarded with the Prani Mitra and JeevDaya Awards in their respective fields: –

(1) Prani Mitra Award Individual – Shri Yogender Kumar, New Delhi, Shri Manish Saxena, Jaipur, Rajasthan and Shri Shyam Lal Chaubisa, Udaipur, Rajasthan.

(2) Prani Mitra Award Shaurya – Shri Anil Gandas, Gurugram, Haryana, Late Smt. Kalpana Vasudevan, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu.

(3) Prani Mitra Award – Life Time Animal Service – Maj. Gen. (Retd) Dr. R. M. Kharb, AVSM, Gurugram, Haryana, Dr. S. Chinny Krishna, Chennai, Tamilnadu and Dr. S.R. Sundaram, Chennai, Tamilnadu.

(4) Prani Mitra Award – Animal Welfare Organization – World Sankirtan Tour Trust, Hodal, Haryana, Shri Karuna Foundation Trust, Rajkot, Gujarat and People for Animals, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

(5) Prani Mitra Award – Corporate – Tata Trust Foundation, Mumbai, Maharashtra.

(6) JeevDaya Award – Animal Welfare Organization – Dhyan Foundation, New Delhi and Animal Aid Charitable Trust, Udaipur, Rajasthan.

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Indian Sign Language dictionary

Why in News?

From names of banks, political parties, websites and apps to fast food dishes like pani puri and momos, the third edition of the digital Indian Sign Language dictionary launched, included 10,000 terms across six categories.
The dictionary, prepared by the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre under the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry, included terms of daily use, academic, legal and administrative, medical, technical and agricultural terms.
Project of making education materials accessible for students of Class 1 to 5 by the ISLRTC and the NCERT would be completed by March 31.

Involvement of community

The dictionary has been made with the full involvement of the deaf community by ensuring that only deaf experts have provided the signs for the dictionary…Since the launch of the first edition in 2018, the ISL dictionary has been utilised by special educators, ISL interpreters, parents of children with hearing disabilities, professionals in the field, organisations working with people with hearing disabilities and by the general public.
The first edition was launched in March 2018 with 3,000 terms, followed by the second edition in February 2019 that had 6,000 terms.

THE HINDU

Comet from Edge of Solar System Killed the Dinosaurs

Sixty-six million years ago, a huge celestial object struck off the coast of what is now Mexico, triggering a catastrophic “impact winter” that eventually wiped out three-quarters of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
A pair of astronomers at Harvard say they have now resolved long standing mysteries surrounding the nature and origin of the “Chicxulub impactor.”
Their analysis suggests it was a comet that originated in a region of icy debris on the edge of the solar system, that Jupiter was responsible for it crashing into our planet, and that we can expect similar impacts every 250 million to 750 million years.
Older theory claims the object was a fragment of an asteroid that came from our solar system’s Main Belt.
“Jupiter is so important because it’s the most massive planet in our solar system”. Jupiter ends up acting as a kind of “pinball machine” that “kicks these incoming long-period comets into orbits that bring them very close to the Sun.”
So-called “long-period comets” come from the Oort cloud, thought to be a giant spherical shell surrounding the solar system like a bubble that is made of icy pieces of debris the size of mountains or larger.
The long-period comets take about 200 years to orbit the Sun, and are also called sungrazers because of how close they pass. Because they come from the deep freeze of the outer solar system, comets are icier than asteroids, and are known for the stunning gas and dust trails that they produce as they melt.
The evaporative impact of the Sun’s heat on sungrazers is nothing compared to the massive tidal forces they experience when one side faces our star. “As a result, these comets experience such a large tidal force that the most massive of them would shatter into about a thousand fragments, each of those fragments large enough to produce a Chicxulub size impactor, or dinosaur-killing event on Earth.”

‘A beautiful sight’

Another line of evidence in favor of the comet origin is the composition of Chicxulub: only about a tenth of all asteroids from the Main Belt, which lies between Mars and Jupter, are made up of carbonaceous chondrite, while most comets have it.
Evidence suggests the Chicxulub crater and other similar craters, such as the Vredefort crater in South Africa that was struck about two billion years ago, and the million-year-old Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan, all had carbonaceous chondrite.
The hypothesis can be tested by further studying these craters, ones on the Moon, or even by sending out space probes to take samples from comets.
The telescope might be able to see tidal disruption of long-period comets “and will be extremely important in making forecasts for definitely the next 100 years, to know if anything bad could happen to us.”

THE HINDU

Social media is an uncontrollable medium

Why in News?

Social media is an “uncontrollable medium” with a potential to even destabilise society, but “response” to such a problem should be national in nature and come from Parliament, the Centre argued before the Supreme Court.
The Centre was responding to a petition filed by senior Facebook official Ajit Mohan against his summons by the Committee to testify about any role played by social media platforms in the events leading up to the Delhi riots in February last year.
Parliament has already passed the Information Technology Act which deals with social media intermediaries.
Offences pertaining to social media intermediaries are statutorily defined by Parliament. The field is occupied by a Central Act.

THE HINDU

India likely in fastest-growing emerging-market economies

Why in News?

S&P Global Ratings said India will be one of the fastest growing emerging-market economies with a 10% growth in the next fiscal, and future sovereign rating action would hinge on lowering fiscal deficit and sustaining debt burden.
The forecast for India in 2021 is on stronger side and shows that a lot of economic activity, which was frozen last year, is coming back on line to normalisation, thereby brightening the growth prospects.

Bounce back

India will be one of the fastest-growing economy in the EM (emerging market) space.
India’s contraction this year was steep and may be deeper than global average, but a bounce back of 10% that are expecting next fiscal year will be putting India amongst the fastest growers in 2021.
S&P said India’s economy has stabilised over recent months, with progressively better manufacturing, services, labour-market and revenue data. The hard part will be converting the trends into a sustained recovery over the next few years.

THE HINDU

Music of the past

About 18,000 years ago, the inhabitants of Marsoulas Cave (now in France) tuned a sea snail shell into a wind instrument and used it during important social events and rituals.
Musicologists and researchers worked together and have now reproduced the sound of the horn.
“This seashell horn, with its unique sonority…sheds light on a musical dimension until now unknown in the context of Upper Paleolithic societies”.

Why did North America’s megafauna go extinct?

The arrival of humans and over-hunting were believed to be one of the reasons behind the extinction of North America’s largest mammals such as the woolly mammoth and saber-tooth cat.
A new study found that climate change (a decrease in global temperatures around 13,000 years ago) initiated the decline of these massive creatures.
There was no evidence for a relationship between human and megafauna population levels in North America.

THE HINDU

New imaging technology

A new imaging technology called Coherence Tomography with Extreme Ultraviolet Light.
The method is highly precise and can help inspect the deep structure of the tiny samples and also study the chemical composition of the samples in a non-destructive manner.

THE HINDU

Genome of white-faced capuchin sequenced

White-faced capuchin monkeys found across Central and South America, have the largest relative brain size of any monkey and are also known to live past the age of 50, despite their small size.
A study of their genome has now identified genes associated with longevity, brain development and also shown how they live in different environmental conditions.

THE HINDU

Global Wildlife Trade

Why in News?

International wildlife trade is causing declines of over 60% in the abundance of species on the planet, say scientists who call for more research on the impacts of this severe threat across the world.
The scientists found that wildlife trade is causing declines of around 62% in the abundance of species, with endangered species suffering losses of over 80%.
Although there are policies managing trade, the study, warned that without enough research on the effects of wildlife trade these policies cannot claim to safeguard species.
According to the researchers, at least 100 million plants and animals are internationally trafficked each year and the international wildlife trade is said to be worth between $4 to $20 billion per year.
Wildlife trade continues to impact the decline of African elephants due to the ivory trade and the demise of pangolin species across Africa and Asia.
The research called for better protective measures for threatened species and management of trade with trade still driving declines of 56% in protected areas.
The scientists believe trapping drives particularly severe declines in species at high risk of extinction and those traded for pets.
According to the scientists, an understanding of how wildlife trade is impacting species is severely lacking in developed nations, and for many commonly traded wildlife groups, despite it being one of their biggest drivers of species extinction.

THE HINDU

Extinction Rebellion

Why in News?

Delhi Police have named environmental activists Disha Ravi, Nikita Jacob, and Shantanu Muluk, who are volunteers of a global environment movement seeking to call attention to the climate change emergency, in the Greta Thunberg ‘toolkit’ case.

What is Extinction Rebellion?

The global movement Extinction Rebellion, also referred to as ‘XR’, describes itself as a “decentralised, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency”.
XR was launched in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2018, as a response to a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which declared that “we only have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change and our understanding that we have entered the 6th mass extinction event”.
The logo of Extinction Rebellion is an ‘X’ with the top and bottom crossed so that it resembles, according to the movement’s website, an hourglass, which stands for a warning that time is running out for many species. The extinction (X) hourglass is placed within a circle that represents the planet Earth.
The movement now has a presence in 75 countries, including India.

What does XR want?

The group has “three core demands” of governments around the world. It wants governments to “Tell the Truth”, to “Act Now”, and to “Go Beyond Politics” in order to confront the climate and ecological emergency that the world is faced with.
It wants them to communicate the urgency to bring change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
XR seeks to “rebel”, and asks groups to “self-organise”, without the need for anyone’s permission, to come up with collective action plans as long as they adhere to the group’s core principles and values.