November 2024
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Third Edition of Bilateral Maritime Exercise between Royal Australian and Indian Navies - AUSINDEX-19
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about AUSINDEX)
What's the NEWS
• The third edition of AUSINDEX, an acronym for Australia India Exercise is scheduled to commence at Visakhapatnam on 02 April 19.
• The aim of the exercise is, "To strengthen and enhance mutual cooperation and interoperability between the IN and RAN, providing opportunities for interaction and exchange of professional views between the personnel of the two navies".
Know! more about the exercise
• A sign of strengthening of bilateral and defence cooperation between the two countries as envisaged in the Framework for Security Cooperation (FSC) announced by the Australian and Indian Prime Ministers in 2014.
• The maiden edition of the exercise was held in September 2015 at Visakhapatnam. Australia hosted the second edition of the exercise off Freemantle in June 2017
• Australia and India have a positive defence relationship, underpinned by the 2006 Memorandum of Defence Cooperation and 2009 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation.
• However, post the 2014 bilateral FSC the cooperation on defence and security matters between the two countries has gained significant momentum thus, witnessing conscious and focussed enhancements.
• The complexity of the biennial maritime exercise over the past four years has steadily increased.
• The third edition would involve exercises in all three dimensions with focus on anti- submarine warfare (ASW).
• The number of units being fielded by both navies in the bilateral exercise is the highest till date.
• The increased scale of participation signifies the importance attached to the exercise by both countries while the enhanced complexity is indicative of the interoperability between the two navies.
• Overall, the exercise underscores India's vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and shared objectives of the two countries towards ensuring good order in the maritime domain and solidarity with friendly and harmonious countries.
Infrastructure Developments
NuGen Mobility Summit 2019
Relevance IN - Prelims( about the summit) + Mains ( GS III infrastructure development - energy sector)
What's the NEWS
• The International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT) is organizing a NuGen Mobility Summit, 2019,
Know! about the summit
• The objective of the Summit is to share new ideas, learnings, global experiences, innovations and future technology trends for faster adoption, assimilation and development of advanced automotive technologies for a smarter and greener future.
• This event will help in building a platform for bringing together all stakeholders in the automotive industry to understand global advancements in technologies.
• The Summit is being organized in association with SAENIS, SAE INDIA, SAE International, NATRiP, DIMTS, Department of Heavy Industry, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, SIAM and ACMA. More than 2500 participants and over 250 exhibitors are expected to take part in the Summit.
• The event aims to bring together the automotive OEMs, professionals, researchers, academic experts, vehicle system suppliers, test equipment supplier, quality managers, product planners, component developers, SAE members and students from all over the world.
Know! about ICAT centre
• ICAT Centre-II is under brisk renovation to create a world-class state-of-the-art facility for organizing such significant and sizeable events for the automotive fraternity.
• Several kinds of tracks such as coast down track, oval track, abs track, hill track and flood track will be available for demonstrations and events.
• ICAT Manesar is a division of NATRIP Implementation Society (NATIS) under the Department of Heavy Industries, Government of India.
• It provides services for testing, validation, design and homologation of all categories of vehicles and has a mission to assist the automotive industry in adopting cutting edge technologies in vehicle evaluation and component development to ensure reliability, durability and compliance to the current and future regulations in new generation mobility solutions.
Environment Conservation
State of Global Air-2019 Report released
Relevance IN - Prelims (about the report released) + Mains (GS III environment conservation)
What's the NEWS
• Two US based institutes Health Effects Institute (HEI) and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) recently released a detailed report on quality of the global air with title, "State of Global Air-2019".
• Report indicates that India and China are collectively accounted for more than fifty percent of global 5 million deaths due to air pollution.
• State of Global Air 2019 report also said that in 2017, exposure to PM 2.5 pollution was found to be the third leading risk factor globally for Type 2 diabetes.
Know! about India specific findings
• A recent analysis by HEI found that major PM2.5 sources in India include household burning of solid fuels; dust from construction, roads, and other activities; industrial and power plant burning of coal; brick production; transportation; and diesel-powered equipment.
• An estimated 846 million people in India (60% of the population) and 452 million people in China (32% of the population) were exposed to household air pollution in 2017.
• Pollution Sources (GBD MAPS) project found that in India, household burning of biomass was responsible for about 24% of the total population-weighted PM2.5 concentrations in 2015.
Diabetes and Air Pollution
• According to the report by Health Effects Institute (HEI) and Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation Globally, such exposure contributed to about 2.76 lakh deaths and 15.2 million life years lost to disability in 2017.
• This burden was highest in India, where it accounted for 55,000 deaths and 2.7 million life years lost.
• The economic costs of diabetes are substantial - estimated as 1.8% of worldwide gross domestic product in 2015 and pose a growing challenge to health care systems in countries at all levels of development.
• Type 2 Diabetes represents a substantial, growing, and costly health burden. In 2017, the disease accounted for more than 1 million deaths globally and burdens have increased by 175% and 141%, respectively, since 1990.
Other findings
• In 2017, annual PM2.5 exposures were highest in South Asia, where Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan had the highest exposures.
• Bhutan's exposure level was the lowest in the region but was still above WHO's first interim target.
• The 10 countries with the lowest national PM2.5 exposure levels were the Maldives, United States, Norway, Estonia, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Brunei, and Finland.
• Ozone pollution is a continuing challenge in more developed countries and is increasing in less developed areas, posing new air quality concerns.
• Air pollution collectively reduced life expectancy by 1 year and 8 months on average worldwide, a global impact rivaling that of smoking. This means a child born today will die 20 months sooner, on average, than would be expected in the absence of air pollution.
Global measures to reduce household emission
• In China, the government banned the use of coal for household cooking and heating in municipalities around Beijing in favour of a switch to natural gas.
• The effort stemmed from the emissions benchmarks established in China's Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan, issued in 2013.
• Although households represent a relatively small proportion of China's overall coal use, in-home coal stoves lack the filtering systems used by coal-fired power plants, making homes an important contributor to coal-related emissions.
• In India, a sweeping government effort seeks to shift more households to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) instead of biomass fuels.
• While many families can afford subsidized LPG fuel, the fee for installing a household LPG hookup can be prohibitive. The government initiative, known as Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), provided LPG connections to 35 million poor families free of charge between 2016 and early 2018 and aims to provide 80 million connections by 2020.
Social Justice
Acute hunger affecting over 100 million people worldwide: UN, EU Report
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about the findings of the report)
What's the report
• The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and EU "Global Report on Food Crises 2019", shows that more than 100 million people worldwide are facing acute hunger and number is rising.
• Report finds that around 113 million people in 53 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2018, compared to 124 million in 2017.
• According to the report, from 2014 to 2020, the EU will have provided nearly 9 billion Euros for initiatives on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture in over 60 countries.
Know! the findings of the report
• The figure of 113 million people facing food crises is down slightly from the 124 million figure for 2017.
• However, the number of people in the world facing food crises has remained well over 100 million in the last three years, and the number of countries affected has risen.
• Moreover, an additional 143 million people in another 42 countries are just one step away from facing acute hunger.
• Nearly two-thirds of those facing acute hunger are in just 8 countries: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In 17 countries, acute hunger either remained the same or increased.
• Climate and natural disasters pushed another 29 million people into acute food insecurity in 2018. And 13 countries - including North Korea and Venezuela - are not in the analysis because of data gaps.
Know! about the report
• The Global Report is produced each year by the Global Network Against Food Crises, which is made up of international humanitarian and development partners.
• This year's report is being presented at a two-day high-level event, ‘Food and agriculture in times of crisis' that held at Brussels.
What is acute food insecurity?
• Acute food insecurity is when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger. It draws on internationally accepted measures of extreme hunger, such as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) and the Cadre Harmonisé.
What is chronic hunger?
• Chronic hunger is when a person is unable to consume enough food to maintain a normal, active lifestyle over an extended period. The FAO's most recent State of Food Security and Nutrition report, in September 2018, found that 821 million people on the planet are going hungry.
International Affairs
United Nations appoints investigation head for Myanmar
What's the NEWS
• The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres on April 2, 2019 announced the appointment of Nicholas Koumjian of the United States as the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar.
• International criminal justice lawyer Nicholas Koumjian will serve as the first head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism (IIM) for Myanmar, which was established by the Human Rights Council on September 27, 2018 and welcomed by the UN General Assembly in December 2018.
Know! the Objective of the Independent Investigative Mechanism (IIM)
• The United Nations has appointed the American prosecutor to lead the effort to collect and analyse evidence that Myanmar perpetrated crimes against humanity against Rohingyas- the ethnic minority community, over the last eight years.
• The IIM was established in September by the UN Human Rights Council to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011.
• The creation of the IIM followed earlier calls by UN investigators for Myanmar's military leaders to be prosecuted for genocide against the Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine state.
• The alleged atrocities committed against the members of this minority community by the Myanmar military has been in the talks ever since over 700,000 Rohingyas including many women and children fled the state to seek refuge in neighbouring nations such as Bangladesh in August 2017.
• The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently conducting a preliminary examination of Myanmar's alleged mass deportation of Rohingyas.
• While the IIM operates independently of any court, it will make its findings available in any case brought against Myanmar military leaders, whether it be by a national court or the ICC.
• Amnesty International on November 12, 2018 stripped Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of its highest honour, the ‘Ambassador of Conscience' award, over her indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military against and increasing intolerance of freedom of expression.
Economic Developments
Supreme Court strikes down RBI circular on debt resolution
What's the NEWS
• The Supreme Court of India on April 2, 2019 struck down the Reserve Bank of India's February 2018 order on non-performing assets, as a result of which all cases referred to or admitted under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) due to the RBI order would now be cancelled.
Know! more about the stuck down circular
• The apex court struck down the controversial RBI circular mandating resolution of loans of Rs 2,000 crore and above even for a single day as ultra vires.
• The judgement was pronounced on a batch of petitions filed by various industries including power, fertiliser and sugar, challenging the February order.
• Following the Supreme Court order, all the companies either referred or admitted for the resolution process, whichever stage of the proceedings they are, would be treated as they were never referred for insolvency.
• The decision would benefit various sectors that are facing stress including power, sugar and shipping and those companies, which were facing difficulties in honouring their loan commitments.
• However, power companies, including 34 stressed projects with a capacity of about 40,000 MW would be the biggest beneficiaries as it now provides both banks and power generators with more time to resolve their debt.
• The decision comes after several power companies including Essar Power, GMR Energy, KSK Energy, and Rattan India Power as well as the Association of Power Producers (APP) and Independent Power Producers Association of India (IPPAI) had moved the top court in August, challenging the constitutional validity of the February 12 RBI circular.
• The power sector had contended that they were not willful defaulters and were facing sectoral and market issues, including non-availability of fuel and power purchase agreement (PPAs) and non payment by state utilities issues. They had stated that this hampered their ability to generate revenue and maintain their loan repayment schedule with banks.
Know! about RBI Circular
• The February 12, 2018 RBI circular had asked banks and other lenders to either execute a resolution plan for big stressed accounts or file insolvency petitions against them in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
• As per the circular, 34 power companies were declared stressed by the standing committee on energy and some of them were referred for insolvency under the new bankruptcy code.
• The RBI had allowed 180 days for debt resolution, failing which the asset would have to be taken to NCLT for initiation of insolvency against them. The deadline for the same had been fixed for August 31, 2018.
Prelims Practise Questions
Consider the following statements
1. The third edition of AUSINDEX, an acronym for Australia India Exercise between the army of both countries is scheduled to commence at Visakhapatnam
2. The aim of the exercise is, "To strengthen and enhance mutual cooperation and interoperability between the IN and RAN, providing opportunities for interaction and exchange of professional views between the personnel of the two armies".
Find the correct statement from the option given below
a. 1 only
b. 2 only
c. Both
d. None
Consider the following statements about The International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT)
1. ICAT Centre-II is under brisk renovation to create a world-class state-of-the-art facility for organizing such significant and sizeable events for the automotive fraternity.
2. ICAT Manesar is a division of NATRIP Implementation Society (NATIS) under the Department of Heavy Industries, Government of India.
3. It provides services for testing, validation, design and homologation of all categories of vehicles and has a mission to assist the automotive industry in adopting cutting edge technologies in vehicle evaluation
Find the correct statement from the option given below
a. 1 only
b. 2 and 3
c. 1 2 and 3
d. None
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