Troops of Indian and Chinese security forces are locked in a standoff near Bishing in Arunachal Pradesh.
The standoff is firmly within Indian Territory, about 4 km from the McMahon Line.
The standoff began after Indian troops involving the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Indian Army were informed by local villagers that a Chinese road-building team had entered India with bulldozers.
CFC and ozone depletion
Chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs) are long-lived man- made chemical compounds that eventually rise into the stratosphere.
There they are broken apart by the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, releasing chlorine atoms that go on to destroy ozone molecules.
Recent findings proved an international ban on CFCs, has resulted in about 20% less ozone depletion.
The Montreal Protocol and its amendments have banned the use of ozone destroying chemicals and the rate of ozone depletion seems to have slowed.
Scientists used data from the Aura satellite to determine how ozone and other chemicals have changed year to year.
Aura is a NASA mission to study Earth's ozone, air quality, and climate and conduct research on the composition, chemistry, and dynamics of Earth's atmosphere.
Nayachar Islands
Nayachar is a newly emerged island with mangrove ecosystem in the middle estuary of the Hooghly River in West Bengal.
This land mass was created in the Indian Sunderbans by river silt deposits, and remained largely submerged, rising occasionally above the water level.
Till 1990 it was completely barren, with hardly any plant or animal species, at present there are 151 animal species on the island, making it a rare case in ecology.
The natural succession of species on the island has been aided by the inundation of water during tides, and the soil brought from other places by fishermen.
Labelling organic products
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) had issued regulations that required food companies selling organic produce to get certified from either one authority.
Certificate issuing authorities will be National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) or the Participatory Guarantee System for India (PGS-India).
Companies could also get a voluntary logo from the FSSAI that marked its produce as ‘organic.’
It will be implemented from July 2018, any company that claims to sell organic food and not sticking to standards can be prosecuted.
NPOP
Organic farming certification had been done through a process of third party certification under the NPOP.
This is a top- down mechanism run by the Ministry of Commerce used for certifying general exports.
Nearly 24 agencies were authorised by the NPOP to verify farms, storages and processing units and successful ones got a special ‘India Organic’ logo.
PGS-India
The PGS-India programme had been working from 2015, it involves a peer-review approach.
Here, farmers play a role in certifying whether the farms in their vicinity adhered to organic-cultivation practices.
This programme was implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture through the National Centre of Organic Farming.
NASA’s Mission to explore Ionosphere
NASA has announced two missions to explore the little-understood area of 96 km above Earth’s surface.
The two missions Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) and Ionospheric Connection Explorer(ICON) will team up to explore the ionosphere.
ICON will be in low-Earth orbit, at 560 km above Earth, like a close-up camera while GOLD will be in a geostationary orbit over the Western Hemisphere, about 35,398 km above the planet’s surface.
It will help in full-disk view of the ionosphere and the upper atmosphere beneath it every half hour.
Ionosphere
The ionosphere is defined as the layer of the Earth's atmosphere that is ionized by solar and cosmic radiation.
It lies 75-1000 km (46-621 miles) above the Earth, the thickness of the ionosphere is quite tiny compared with the size of Earth.
Due to high energy from the Sun and from cosmic rays, the atoms in this area are “ionized,” and are therefore positively charged.
These are the layers of near-Earth space and are home to radio signals used to guide airplanes, ships and Global Positioning System satellites.
Jal Mahotsav
Third Jal Mahotsav has been celebrated in Hanuwantiya Island in Khandwa district under the aegis of Indira Sagar Dam project (that forms the largest reservoir in India).
It is India’s biggest water carnival through which is organised every year in Hanuwantiya.
Jal Mahotsav promotes rural economies, and transforms hinterlands towards local economic development.
US Special Watch list
US places Pakistan on ‘Special Watch List’ for ‘severe violations’ of religious freedom, by this Pakistan was the first country to be put under the newly-formed list.
US has a separate list for the countries which violates International religious freedom act known as ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ (CPC).
The Special Watch List is for countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom but may not rise to the level of the CPC.
The Special Watch List designation is being seen as a step below designating it as Country of Particular Concern, which would have automatically kicked in economic and political sanctions.
