Prelim Bits 11-09-2018

Nomadic Elephant

• It is an annual Indo-Mongolia joint military exercise.
• The 2018 edition of the exercise will be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
• It aims to improve the tactical and technical skills in counter insurgency and counter terrorist operations in rural and urban scenario.

MILEX – 2018

• MILEX is a military field exercise of countries of BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi Sectoral Technological and Economic Cooperation).
• Its aim is to practice the BIMSTEC nations in planning and conduct of counter terrorist operations.
• The exercise focusses on counter-terrorism operation in semi-urban setting.
• The countries of BIMSTEC organisation are Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
• The headquarters is in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Door Step Delivery Scheme (DSD)

• The scheme is launched by the Delhi government.
• It aims to provide 40 essential government services at the door step of the people.
• The residents of Delhi will get delivery of various government services, including driving licence, marriage certificate and ration card, at the place of their choice.
• In the first phase, 40 services will be provided for a nominal charge of Rs 50.
• Customers will have to dial helpline and mobile sahayaks will be deployed by the service providers to households for collection of required documents and biometric data.
• The required services once ready, will be delivered through speed post.

Human Rights Council

• The 39^th session of UN Human Rights Council is going to be held in Geneva.
• It is expected to adopt a resolution on the human rights situation in Myanmar.
• The session follows the report by the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, which detailed crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide by Myanmar’s security forces in Rakhine State.
• UNHRC  is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system, responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world.
• It has 47 seats with tenure of 3 years.
• Members are elected by UN General Assembly by two-third majority vote and no member may occupy a seat for more than 2 consecutive terms.
• It is a separate entity from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), but the council works closely with the OHCHR.
• It accesses human rights situation in all 193 UN member states periodically.
• It published a report on human rights situation in Kashmir and urged Indian government to repeal Armed Forces (Jammu & Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990. But Indian government  rejected the report.

WMO report on El Nino

• World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), has recently forecasted a 70% chance of an El Nino developing by the end of this year.
• WMO also quoted that the anticipated El Nino may not be as powerful as the 2015-16 event but will have considerable impact.
• WMO was created in 1950 as an intergovernmental organization.
• It became a specialized agency of the United Nations, in 1951, for meteorology (weather and climate), operational hydrology and related geophysical sciences.
• WMO is the UN system‘s authoritative voice on weather, climate and water.
• Its secretariat is in Geneva, Switzerland and is headed by the Secretary-General.
• Through its members, WMO provides forecasts and early warnings to nations, which help prevent and mitigate disasters.
• WMO monitors and forecast the transport of chemical and oil spills, forest fires, volcanic ash, haze and nuclear isotopes.
• It also draws world attention to the depletion of the ozone layer.
• Indian Meteorological Department, Pune has recently been recognized as the Regional Climate Centre for providing regional climate services to South Asian countries.

Exoplanet

• An exoplanet is a planet which orbits a star outside the solar system.
• An exoplanet twice as big as the Earth, Wolf 503b, was discovered with the help of NASA’s Kepler space telescope.
• Exoplanet Wolf 503b is located in the Virgo Constellation.
• It is about 145 light years away from Earth and orbits its star every 6 days.
• Investigating the nature of this exoplanet will help to understand about the structure and diversity of planets in the milky way galaxy.

Kepler Telescope

• The Kepler telescope was originally launched in 2009 as part of NASA’s Discovery Program.
• It is an observatory in space dedicated to finding planets outside our solar system.
• It targets particularly alien planets that are around the same size as Earth in the “habitable” regions of their parent star.
• Kepler was the first telescope to find a planet (Kepler-69c) approximately the size of Earth in the habitable region of a star.
• It examined the TRAPPIST-1 system which likely has multiple Earth-sized planets in it between December 2016 and March 2017.
• After the Kepler space telescope, TESS is the second spacecraft which will search for planets outside our solar system, including those that could support life.

Source: PIB, The New Indian Express