India re-elected as ‘observer’ to Arctic Council, research to get big boost in strategic region                                                                                                            

Home Ministry has done away with Black Lists of Indian-origin people: Officials                                                                                                                                       

WHO for eliminating industrially produced Trans fats by 2023                               

India’s newest pit viper found in Arunachal Pradesh                                               

NASA to crash spacecraft into asteroid in 2022                                                       

India re-elected as ‘observer’ to Arctic Council, research to get big boost in strategic region

GS PAPER - 02 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - Important International institutions, agencies and fora- their structure, mandate.

Context :

• At 11th Arctic Council ministerial meeting held at Rovaniemi in Finland, India has been re-elected as an observer to the Arctic Council.

More about the news:

• India was given observer status in 2013 which was renewed now.

• India has also shown keen interest in the evolving climate change induced developments in the Arctic region.

• India had embarked upon Arctic research by launching its first scientific expedition in August 2007, using the international research facility at Ny-Alesund in the Spitsbergen Island of Norway.

• The country has since then been regularly sending scientific teams for carrying out studies in the Arctic, primarily in the fields of glaciology, hydrochemistry, microbiology and atmospheric sciences.

• A station building “HIMADRI” with accommodation and work space for a total of eight scientists, was formally inaugurated there on July 1, 2008.

Arctic Council :

• Arctic Council was formally established in 1996 by The Ottawa Declaration.

• It is an intergovernmental forum for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction between the Arctic States.

• It is Not a treaty-based international organization but rather an international forum that operates on the basis of consensus.

• The decisions, recommendations or guidelines of the Arctic Council are non-enforceable and strictly the prerogative of the individual state.

• Its mandate explicitly excludes military security.

Who Takes Part?

• The Ottawa Declaration lists the following countries as Members of the Arctic Council: Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States.

• In addition, six organizations representing Arctic indigenous peoples have status as Permanent Participants.

  • The category of Permanent Participant was created to provide for active participation and full consultation with the Arctic indigenous peoples within the Council.

  • They include: the Aleut International Association, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, Gwich’in Council International, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North and the Saami Council.

• Observer status in the Arctic Council is open to non-Arctic states, along with inter-governmental, inter-parliamentary, global, regional and non-governmental organizations that the Council determines can contribute to its work.

  • Arctic Council Observers primarily contribute through their engagement in the Council at the level of Working Groups.

  • Besides India,12 other nations, including China, France, Germany, Japan, UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands have the observer status.

  • India and China were given observer status in 2013 at Kiruna Declaration.

Organisation Structure :

• Chairmanship: rotated every two years once

• Secretariat:

  • Rotated biennially with the Chairmanship of the Arctic Council

  • It supports the Chair of the Arctic Council

  • It manages logistics related to the biennial member states’ meetings and the more frequent SAO meetings.

• SAO ( Senior Arctic Official): a government representative, usually from a member states’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  • SAO guides and monitors Arctic Council activities in accordance with the decisions and instructions of the Arctic Council Foreign Ministers.

Arctic Council working Group :

• Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP)— strengthening and supporting mechanism to encourage national actions to reduce emissions and other releases of pollutants.

• Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) — monitors the Arctic environment, ecosystems and human populations, and provides scientific advice to support governments as they tackle pollution and adverse effects of climate change.

• Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) — addresses the conservation of Arctic biodiversity, working to ensure the sustainability of the Arctic’s living resources.

• Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR)— protect the Arctic environment from the threat or impact of an accidental release of pollutants or radionuclides.

• Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) –protection and sustainable use of the Arctic marine environment.

• Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) — works to advance sustainable development in the Arctic and to improve the conditions of Arctic communities as a whole.

                                                                                                                                                 Source :- Times of India

Home Ministry has done away with Black Lists of Indian-origin people: Officials

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context :

• Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

What is it?

• It is a list maintained by Indian Embassies in different countries and posts abroad.

• It contains list of Indian-origin people who have taken asylum (i.e. right to international protection in this other country) abroad under plea of alleged persecution in India. These asylum seekers in list are predominantly Sikhs.

• Those who are in list are denied visa services by Indian missions and posts in respective country.

Blacklist :

• The Black List was maintained by Indian missions and posts abroad.

Who all are included in the List ?

• The Indian-origin people who took asylum abroad under the plea of alleged persecution in India are included in the list.

What does it mean to be in Blacklist?

• Those who are in the Black list are denied visa services by Indian missions and posts.

Impact of Cancelling the List :

• With the decision to do away with the list, such asylum seekers along with their family will be granted visa and consular services at par with foreigners of the country in which they are living.

• The asylum seekers, who are mostly Sikhs, can also obtain Overseas Citizen of India cards if they have held normal Indian visas for at least two years.

                                                                                                                                                                    Source :- PIB

WHO for eliminating industrially produced Trans fats by 2023

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Context :

• The World Health Organization (WHO) has partnered with International Food and Beverage Alliance (IFBA) to achieve the goal of eliminating industrially produced Trans-fats by 2023.

More about the news:

• Trans fat, also called the worst form of fat in food, responsible for over 5,00,000 deaths globally from coronary heart disease each year.

• The WHO says that eliminating industrially produced trans-fat is one of the simplest and most effective ways to save lives and create a healthier food supply.

• WHO met with IFBA to discuss actions to eliminate industrial trans fats, and reduce salt, sugar and saturated fats in processed foods.

• The meeting also stressed the value of regulatory action on labelling, marketing and urged industry for full adherence to the WHO code of marketing of breast milk substitutes.

• The commitment made by the IFBA is in line with the WHO’s target to eliminate industrial trans fat from the global food supply by 2023.

• It is decided by IFBA to ensure that the amount of industrial trans fat in their products does not exceed 2 gram per 100 g fat/oil globally by 2023.

                                                                                                                         Source :- The Hindu

India’s newest pit viper found in Arunachal Pradesh

GS  PAPER - 03 ENVIRONMENT - Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Context :

• India now has a fifth brown pit viper but with a reddish tinge.

• A team of herpetologists have described a new species of reddish-brown pit viper which has been found in a forest in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. The discovery has been published in the March-April volume of the Russian Journal of Herpetology.

Arunachal Pit Viper :

• It has been named as Trimeresurus arunachalensis.

• It is the second serpent to have been discovered in Arunachal Pradesh after the non-venomous crying keelback in the Lepa-Rada district in 2018.

• The new species has made Arunachal Pradesh the only Indian state to have a pit viper named after it.

•  India had four brown pit vipers before the Arunachal Pradesh discovery. The other four — Malabar, horseshoe, hump-nosed and Himalayan — were discovered 70 years ago.

• Comparative analyses of DNA sequences and examination of morphological features suggested that the snake belonged to a species not described before.

• The single known specimen of this species makes it currently the rarest pit viper in the world.

                                                                                                                                                     Source :- The Hindu

NASA to crash spacecraft into asteroid in 2022

GS PAPER - 03 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - Awareness in the fields of  Space .

Context :

• In a first, NASA will launch a spacecraft that will collide with an asteroid in 2022 to demonstrate a planetary defense technique.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART):

• The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, is a spacecraft designed to determine whether an asteroid can be redirected with a high-speed collision.

• The programme, designed to protect Earth from dangerous comets and asteroids, aims to crash DART into Didymoon in 2022 to alter its orbit around Didymos.

• SpaceX will launch the spacecraft toward an asteroid named Didymos about 4 million miles from Earth.

• It then will ram into the asteroid’s small moon at about 13,000 miles per hour

More about the news:

• The target for DART is an asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022, and then again in 2024.

• The asteroid is called Didymos – Greek for “twin” -because it is an asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about 780 metres in size, and a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 160 metres in size.

• DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B. The Didymos system has been closely studied since 2003.

• The primary body is a rocky S-type object, with composition similar to that of many asteroids.

• The composition of its small companion, Didymos B, is unknown, but the size is typical of asteroids that could potentially create regional effects should they impact Earth.

• After launch, DART would fly to Didymos and use an APL-developed onboard autonomous targeting system to aim itself at Didymos B.

• Then the refrigerator-sized spacecraft would strike the smaller body at a speed about nine times faster than a bullet, about six kilometres per second.

• Earth-based observatories would be able to see the impact and the resulting change in the orbit of Didymos B around Didymos A, allowing scientists to better determine the capabilities of kinetic impact as an asteroid mitigation strategy.

• The kinetic impact technique works by changing the speed of a threatening asteroid by a small fraction of its total velocity, but by doing it well before the predicted impact so that this small nudge will add up over time to a big shift of the asteroid’s path away from Earth.

                                                                                                                                   Source :- Business Standard

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