UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 02-08-2020

Contempt of Court

• Contempt of court is a concept that seeks to protect judicial institutions from motivated attacks and unwarranted criticism, and as a legal mechanism to punish those who lower its authority.
• Article 129 of the Constitution conferred on the Supreme Court the power to punish contempt of itself.
• Article 215 conferred a corresponding power on the High Courts.
• It is one of the restrictions on freedom of speech and expression under Indian Constitution
• The punishment for contempt of court is simple imprisonment for a term up to six months and/or a fine of up to Rs. 2,000.
• Civil contempt is committed when someone willfully disobeys a court order, or willfully breaches an undertaking given to court.
• Criminal contempt consists of three forms:

1. Words, signs and actions that “scandalize” or “lower” the authority of any court.
2. Prejudices or interferes with any judicial proceeding.
3. Interferes with or obstructs the administration of justice.

• Fair and accurate reporting of judicial proceedings and fair criticism on the merits of a judicial order after a case is heard and disposed of will not amount to contempt of court.
• The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 was amended in 2006 to introduce truth as a valid defence against a charge of contempt, if it was in public interest and was invoked in a bona fide manner.

Barakah Nuclear Power Plant

• Barakah is the Arab world’s first nuclear reactor started by UAE.
• Barakah, means “blessing” in Arabic, it was built by a consortium led by the Korea Electric Power Corporation.
• Recently the power plant achieved its criticality, the first step towards power production.
• Criticality of a nuclear power plant - A nuclear reactor is said to be critical when the nuclear fuel inside a reactor sustains a fission chain reaction.
• Each fission reaction releases a sufficient number of neutrons to sustain a series of reactions.
• Heat is produced in the event, which is used to generate steam that spins a turbine to create electricity.

Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme

• The Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme was rolled out in May as part of the Centre’s Aatma-nirbhar package in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
• It has a corpus of Rs. 41,600 crore and provides fully guaranteed additional funding of up to Rs. 3 lakh crore.
• Eligibility – As of February 29,2020, MSMEs which have an annual turnover up to Rs. 100 crore and with outstanding loans of up to Rs. 25 crores.
• Union government has recently decided to expand the scheme, to cover enterprises with a turnover up to Rs. 250 crore, with outstanding loans up to Rs. 50 crore.
• It aims to cover loans given to larger firms, as well as to self-employed people and professionals who have taken loans for business purposes.
• Individual beneficiaries include both professionals such as doctors, lawyers and chartered accountants, as well as self-employed people such as vendors or taxi drivers.

High Impact Community Development

• HICDPs constitute an important dimension of the dynamic development partnership between India and the Maldives.
• Under HICDP, India and Maldives have committed to execute projects under a total grant of USD 5.5 million.
• These projects are driven by the needs of communities on the islands.
• They will be implemented by City and Local Councils.
• It will enhance the capacities of locally-elected representatives and support the decentralization efforts of the Government of Maldives.
• Recently, India and Maldives signed a contract for setting up Neighborhood Fish Processing Plants at two of the islands in the neighboring country.

• These fish-processing plants are the first in a series of High Impact Community Development projects.

Nag River

• The Nag River is flowing through the city of Nagpur in Maharashtra.
• Nagpur city derives its name from the Nag River.
• It originates in Lava hills near wadi, forming a part of the Kanhan-Pench river system.
• The river serves as drainage for Nagpur and as a result its ecosystem is heavily polluted by urban waste from the city.
• In 2019 the Nag River Rejuvenation was cleared by National River Conservation Directorate.

Lonar Lake

• Lonar Lake is a saline and alkaline lake located in Maharashtra.
• It was created by an asteroid collision with earth impact during the Pleistocene Epoch.
• It is one of the four known, hyper-velocity, impact craters in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth.
• The other three basaltic impact structures are in southern Brazil.
• It is a notified National Geo-heritage Monument, situated inside the Deccan Plateau.
• Recently, the lake turned red/pink due to lowered water levels and high salinity caused growth of Halo bacterium and increased Carotenoid levels.

Haloarchaea

• Halophiles are a group of microorganisms that can grow and often thrive in areas of high salt (NaCl) concentration.
• Halo archaea or halophilic archaea is a bacteria culture which produces pink pigment and is found in water saturated with salt.
• Because of the biomass of Halo archaea microbes, the surface of Lonar Lake turned red or pink.
• As the biomass subsides, the color will disappear.
• Halo archaea microbes were ingested by Flamingos.
• These microbes acted as carotenoid (pigment) rich food for the birds.
• Flamingos get their red-pink color from special coloring chemicals called pigments found in the algae and invertebrates they eat.

Geo-Heritage Monument

• Geo-heritage refers to the geological features which are inherently or culturally significant offering insight to earth’s evolution or history to earth science or that can be utilized for education.
• Geological Survey of India (GSI) is the parent body which is making efforts towards identification and protection of geo-heritage sites.

Source: The Hindu, Times of India, Air News