Events of National & International Importance
Economic Development -
Indian e-commerce sector to hit $15 b by 2016: Study
Environment & Ecology
More crop yields adding more CO2 to atmosphere
Cabinet clears 3 projects to end power outages; Also approves pacts with
SAARC
1.
The Cabinet has approved three big power projects of worth 81,000 crore
rupees to strengthen the power distribution and transmission in the Urban and
rural areas in the country.
2.
These projects are aimed at to provide 24x7 electricity across India by
2019.
3.
These projects are the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, Integrated
Power Development Scheme and the North Eastern Region Power System Improvement
Project.
4.
The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, which is targeted at the
rural areas, entails a total investment of 43,033 crore rupees.
5.
The Cabinet also approved signing and ratifying SAARC pacts on Railway,
Motor Vehicles and Energy during the forthcoming 18th SAARC summit scheduled to
be held at Kathmandu, Nepal on 26-27 November.
Oscar winning director, Mike Nichols dies at 83
1. Mike
Nichols, who won an Oscar for directing the 1967 film The Graduate, has died
aged 83.
2. Nichols
was one of only 12 winners of all four major US entertainment awards, an Emmy,
Grammy, Oscar and Tony. His
last film was 2007's Charlie Wilson's War.
Indian e-commerce sector to hit $15 b by 2016: Study
1. With 100
million Indians expected to shop online by 2016, e-commerce sector in the
country will grow to be a $15 billion market in two years.
2. “The consumer
confidence to shop online has grown significantly in the last year and a half.
3. About 8
million people were shopping online in 2012 and the number this year is
expected to be 35 million. By 2016, online shopper base will grow almost three
times to 100 million, and over 50 million new buyers will come from tier I and
II cities.
4. “Women buyers
are set to become the most significant contributor to the growth of online
shopping and there is a huge opportunity waiting to be unlocked in this user
segment.
HRD Ministry planning ‘Think in
India’ drive
1. In line with
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign, the HRD Ministry is
planning to come up with a ‘Think in India’ drive to encourage students and
researchers to come up with innovations and new ideas and to keep the talent
back home from leaving abroad.
2. Union Minister
for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani said this at an event organised by
the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).
3. “We have
initiated a programme Global Initiative
for Academic Networks called GIAN, where we are seeking to invite very
celebrated academicians and industry experts from across the world.
4. They
will come and teach at least one semester in India at the cost of Government of
India, so that our students and faculty members benefit.
CO2
emissions must be nil by 2070 to prevent disaster: U.N.
1.
The world must cut CO2
emissions to zero by 2070 at the latest to keep global warming below dangerous
levels.
2.
By 2100, all greenhouse gas
emissions — including methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, as well as CO2 — must
fall to zero.
What is Finite carbon budget?
1.
The UNEP report published on
Wednesday is based on the idea that the planet has a finite ‘carbon
budget’.
2.
Since emissions surged in the
late 19th century, some 1,900 Gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 and 1,000 Gt of other
greenhouse gases have already been emitted.
3.
Leaving less than 1,000 Gt of
CO2 left to emit before locking the planet in to dangerous temperature rises of
more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
Measures to be taken-
1.
According
to report, there is requirement of negative CO2
emissions in the second half of the century.
2.
It can be through technologies
such as carbon capture and storage
or, possibly, the controversial, planetary wide engineering of the climate
known as geo-engineering.
3.
UNEP is
extremely interested and also planning a report in the months ahead.
We should also consider giving compensatory schemes for investors in fossil fuels companies.
We should also consider giving compensatory schemes for investors in fossil fuels companies.
Rights Issues and Social Justice
Protecting
the rights of stateless persons
1.
International human rights law
can play a significant role in protecting the rights of stateless persons.
2.
It can be done by by
encouraging states to reform their nationality laws, improve birth
registration, and so on.
3.
Hannah Arendt articulated this
problem in the wake of the First and Second World Wars.
4.
Universal human rights matter
most to those who have nothing but their mere existence as human beings to
protect them.
5.
The stateless may be
technically protected under international law, but they lack enforceable rights
without the corresponding protection of a state.
6.
International law recognizes
the right of states to determine who they recognize as citizens, and this is a
fundamental component of state sovereignty.
7.
States are thus permitted to
deny citizenship and its corresponding rights to persons fleeing war, disaster,
and tyranny who seek shelter within their borders.
8.
Lacking the normal rights
of citizens, refugees are subject to the caprice of the host nation.
9.
Paradoxically, the very ideas
of nationality and citizenship deprive human beings of their rights the moment they
leave their own polity.
International agreements-
1.
The 1954 Convention on the
Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness
seem to offer some level of protection for the right less.
2.
No one should believe that
international law will convince the
government of Myanmar, for example, to provide
an acceptable level of rights to all of the Rohingya people, much less
citizenship.
Major concerns and action
taken–
1.
Without the existence of a
right to belong to a political community, the “right to have rights,” there can
be no lasting solution to the problem of statelessness.
2.
Yet Western nations continue to
erect ever greater barriers to entry for asylum seekers and refugees.
3.
In 1998, the European Union
adopted a policy to contain migrants and asylum seekers from the “Middle East,
China and Black Africa” by offering development aid to countries in exchange
for their cooperation in discouraging emigration.
4.
The EU now encourages the
relocation of asylum seekers to countries outside the eurozone, where
protections are lax and constitutional guarantees for the right of asylum are
non-existent.
5.
Australia, for its part, has
convinced outlying Pacific islands like Nauru and Manus Island to “detain and
process” refugees in exchange for development aid.
6.
The Australian legislature has
also sought to make it more difficult for asylum seekers to reach the border in
order to deny them the ability to make asylum claims under Australian law.
7.
The United States
responded to a massive influx of Honduran migrants, many of whom were
unaccompanied children, by actually lowering its refugee quotas for
the region.
Action to be taken -
1.
The fundamental solution to the
problem of refugees cannot be found within the current confines of the
international legal order.
2.
The fundamental solution to the
problem of refugees cannot be found within the current confines of the
international legal order.
3.
Particular refugee crises may
be solved or ameliorated, but there will always be a crisis of statelessness as
long as these political structures remain in place.
4.
The solution to the problem of
the stateless lies outside the paradigm of the nation-state.
5.
Only an international system,
or group of polities, that guarantees full political and social rights to
residents of a given community, regardless of nationality, can solve the
political component of the refugee crises.
6.
The attempt to create a system
of states based on unitary, isolated “nations” failed to account for the
complexity and diversity of actual political life.
7.
Changing this system would
entail a serious reconsideration of some of the most basic foundations of the
modern state, including notions like citizenship.
8.
But the first step might not be
so difficult. It simply requires the recognition that all human beings deserve
to have rights.
Bio - Diversity & Climate Change -More crop yields adding more CO2 to atmosphere
1.
The sharp rise in food
production to meet the demands for rising population accounts for as much as 25
per cent of the seasonal increase in carbon dioxide (CO2).
2.
The carbon dioxide absorbed by
plants during spring and summer as they convert solar energy into food is
released back to the atmosphere in autumn and winter.
3.
It is not that crops are adding
more CO2 to the atmosphere; rather, if crops are like a sponge
for CO2, the sponge has simply gotten bigger and can hold and
release more of the gas.
4.
This is another piece of
evidence suggesting that when we (humans) do things at a large scale, we have
the ability to greatly influence the composition of the atmosphere.
5.
With global food productivity
expected to double over the next 50 years, the findings should be used to
improve climate models and better understand the atmospheric CO2 buffering
capacity of ecosystems.
6.
The area of farmed land has not
significantly increased, the production efficiency of that land has. Intensive
agricultural management over the last 50 years has had a profound impact.
Science & Technology
Flash memory breaches
nanoscales
1. A team of
scientists from Glasgow has proposed a way to harvest molecules and construct
nano-sized non-volatile (permanent) storage devices, also known as flash memory
devices.
2. It is a
great challenge to reduce the size of conventional MOS flash memories to sizes
below ten nanometres.
3.
This poses a problem when one tries to build small flash
memory devices.
4. They have
found a suitable candidate in the polyxometalate molecules.
5. When such
a molecule is doped with the selenium derivative [(Se(IV)O3)2]2- a
new type of oxidisation state (5+) is observed for the selenium.
6. This new
oxidation state can be observed at the device level, and this can be used as a
memory
Editorial
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