DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS + PIB -18th January 2020- IASbhai

EDITION : The fourth edition of  said the number of death sentences awarded for murders involving sexual offences in 2019 was at the highest in four years.

OBSERVATIONS

CASES AND CONVICTIONS

The trial courts in India imposed 102 death sentences in 2019, a significant drop from 162 death sentences in 2018. However, the percentage of sexual offences in these cases increased from 41.35 (67 out of 162) in 2018 to 52.94 in 2019 (54 out of 102 sentences).

This trend was also seen at the High Courts where 65.38% (17 out of 26) cases of confirmations of death sentences involved sexual offences along with murder, the highest in four years.

The Supreme Court in 2019 dealt with 27 capital punishment cases, highest number since 2001.

POCSO ACT AMENDMENT

It observed that the amendment to The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, introducing stringent mandatory minimum punishments and death penalty for penetrative sexual assault on children was a major development in this direction.

It added that the “rampancy and impunity of sexual violence and the fractures within the criminal justice system perpetuating this cycle has led to a public outcry for harsher punishments”.

“All warrants that were issued indicate a lack of compliance with the guidelines issued in the case of [wc_highlight color=”yellow” class=””]Shabnam vs. Union of India[/wc_highlight], which requires that a warrant for execution not be issued until reasonable time for exhausting all remedies under the law has lapsed and specifies procedures to be followed in issuing such warrant,”

Vision

To encourage reliable, affordable and efficient xEVs that meet consumer performance and price expectations through Government – Industry collaboration for promotion and development of indigenous manufacturing capabilities, required infrastructure, consumer awareness and technology; thereby helping India to emerge as a leader in the xEV Two Wheeler and Four Wheeler market in the world by 2020.

Target

There is an ambitious target to achieve 6-7 million sales of hybrid and electric vehicles year on year from 2020 onwards.

Cumulative sale is expected to reach 15-16 Million by 2020.

It is expected to save 9500 Million Liters of crude oil equivalent to Rs. 62000 Cr. savings.

Structure

An enabling mechanism has been set up for speedier decision making and for ensuring greater collaboration amongst various stakeholders. This consists of empowered bodies at the apex level in the form of National Council for Electric Mobility (NCEM) and the National Board for Electric Mobility (NBEM).

The Council comprises of Ministers from the key Central Ministries/Departments, eminent representatives from the industry and academia.

The NCEM is chaired by the Hon’ble Minister for Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises.

The Council will be aided by a 25 member National Board for Electric Mobility comprising of secretaries of stakeholder Central Ministries/Departments with representation from industry and academia.

The National Council and the National Board will be serviced initially by the NATRiP Implementation Society (NATIS) and later by the National Automotive Board (NAB).

It is a composite scheme using different policy-levers such as:

“This is going to be an important year for India-U.S. relations. Especially in the first half of the year, we expect to put into practice many of the decisions taken during the 2+2 talks,.

eAmerican security and administration officials are undertaking a series of reconnaissance visits over the next week

One of the major objectives of the 2+2 talks between Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper with Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh was furthering cooperation on a “free and open Indo-Pacific”.

Both countries had agreed to “promote practical cooperation in infrastructure development, counter-terrorism, cyber security and regional connectivity.”

BDN ‘rating mechanism’

To that end, the U.S. has launched a “Blue Dot Network” (BDN), which has already taken Japan and Australia on board to encourage private investment in infrastructure projects.

However, unlike the BRI, the BDN would not offer public funds or loans for the project.

“India has as much a role as it wants on the Blue Dot Network (BDN). It is as open as a Michelin standard for restaurants. We are hoping to build support for this initiative to [wc_highlight color=”yellow” class=””]grade infrastructure projects on debt, environmental standards, labour standards, etc.   [/wc_highlight]

Report summary:

Since 1970, the report said, 90% of the excess heat generated due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been absorbed by the ocean.

A new report, released on 13 January, now says that 2019 was the warmest year for the global ocean since record-keeping began.

The paper, Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019, published in Advances In Atmospheric Sciences, states that from 2016-19, each of the four years has been hotter than the last.

The heat is mostly trapped in the top 2,000m of the ocean, which is also home to the bulk of marine life forms.

Marine heat readings offer a more comprehensive idea of global heating, since surface temperatures are also affected by periodic weather systems like the El Niño effect.

Effects of Ocean Heat:

And with greater heating of the ocean comes greater risks.

These include catastrophic climate events like the recent Jakarta floods, or the Kerala floods last year.

A warmer ocean is a major contributor to Polar ice melt, which in turn contributes to sea-level rise.

The biggest immediate effect of a warming ocean, though, is the worldwide decline in coral reefs, as well as the loss of tiny marine organisms which form the bedrock of the global marine food chain.

Fish stocks worldwide have been falling, and as fish species migrate to cooler waters, livelihoods are affected.

BACKGROUND

“In the 18th and 19th centuries, Indian artists were employed mainly by the British East India Company, and, to a lesser extent, by other European East India companies to record picturesque sites, monuments, festivals, royalty, zenana and nautchkhana.

The effort of such exhibitions is to bring out the distinctive styles of these artists, instead of viewing them within the overarching umbrella of “Company paintings”—as Dalrymple mentioned in an interview to Lounge earlier, the artists had too much personality to be dismissed as a nameless group employed by rich patrons.

This style of painting came about as dusk began to settle on the Mughal empire, taking a toll on patronage of art.

PATRONS

Many of the artists flocked to newer patrons—the East India Company officials based in Delhi, Lucknow, Patna, Murshidabad, Kolkata, Trichy and other places.

This brought them under the influence of European counterparts such as Thomas and William Daniell, William Hodges, Johann Zoffany and Frans Balthazar Solvyns. Visual vocabulary transformed to include the use of perspective, the move from gouache to watercolour and softer palettes.

There is a documentary feel to the paintings as they faithfully chronicle lives and landscapes, creating an image of the “exotic India” that British officers so wanted to convey to their families back home.

“In some ways, there was a democratization of subjects from the earlier Mughal and Rajput painting, where the finest work was done for a maharaja or emperor and the topics tended to cover the court, zenana, hunts and battles.

The stories of artists such as Sewak Ram and Shaikh Muhammad Amir of Karraya lend insight into the lives of Company painters—the former, who worked from 1790-1826, used to be the most prolific and influential of the Patna painters.

“He seems to have had different styles of painting—on the one hand producing sets of trades and occupations, and, on the other, painting fine large paintings of processions and ceremonies.

In his larger compositions, like the two paintings in our exhibition, he is closer to European water colors , with the emphasis on modelling, transparency and neutral tones,”

The Diwan-i-Khas In The Red Fort At Delhi by Ghulam Ali Khan, for instance, was once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The colours in the work are believed to have inspired the fashion icon’s look for her 1962 trip to India as US first lady.

“These paintings are a magnificent record of a time when artists in India were open to different styles and techniques from Europe and built on the rich.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan. It was preceded by the Shanghai Five mechanism.

BACKGROUND

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Charter was signed during the St.Petersburg SCO Heads of State meeting in June 2002, and entered into force on 19 September 2003.

The historical meeting of the Heads of State Council of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was held on 8-9 June 2017 in Astana.

On the meeting the status of a full member of the Organization was granted to the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

OBJECTIVE

Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness among the member states;

Promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, the economy, research, technology and culture, as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, and other areas;

Making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region; and moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair and rational new international political and economic order.

Proceeding from the Shanghai Spirit, the SCO pursues its internal policy based on the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, mutual consultations, respect for cultural diversity, and a desire for common development, while its external policy is conducted in accordance with the principles of non-alignment, non-targeting any third country, and openness.

The Heads of State Council (HSC) is the supreme decision-making body in the SCO. It meets once a year and adopts decisions and guidelines on all important matters of the organisation.

The SCO Heads of Government Council (HGC) meets once a year to discuss the organisation’s multilateral cooperation strategy and priority areas, to resolve current important economic and other cooperation issues, and also to approve the organisation’s annual budget. The SCO’s official languages are Russian and Chinese.

MEMBERS

• The SCO comprises eight member states, namely the Republic of India, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan;

• The SCO counts four observer states, namely the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Republic of Belarus, the Islamic Republic of Iran and  the Republic of Mongolia;

• The SCO has six dialogue partners, namely the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, the Republic of Turkey, and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.

A file photo of Bru children at a refugee camp in Tripura

Who are the Bru refugees?

Reangs or Brus are the second largest ethnic group in Mizoram. Their exodus in 1997 was spurred by violent clashes in Mamith subdivision, a Reang-dominated area, when they demanded creation of an autonomous council that was vehemently opposed by Mizo groups.