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13th January 2021
More wildlife in Aravallis at Faridabad, Gurgaon than at Asola, need better protection: Study
- According to a recent study, the wildlife corridor of the Aravallis in Gurgaon and Faridabad harbours a richer “variety of mammals” than the Asola Wildlife Sanctuary.
- The 25th Amendment to the US Constitution is primarily designed to clarify the presidential order of succession. Impeachment is a provision that allows Congress to remove the President of the United States.
- The fourth section of the amendment provides a multistep process for the vice president and a majority of the officials who lead executive agencies — commonly thought of as the cabinet — to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
- That process ultimately requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress.
- The Twenty-fifth Amendment was an effort to resolve some of the continuing issues revolving about the office of the President; that is, what happens upon the death, removal, or resignation of the President and what is the course to follow if for some reason the President becomes disabled to such a degree that he cannot fulfill his responsibilities.
- Under the US Constitution, the House of Representatives (Lower House) has the “the sole power of impeachment” while the Senate (Upper House) has “the sole power to try all impeachments”. The Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court has the duty of presiding over impeachment trials in the Senate.
- In the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the 25th Amendment was proposed by Congress on July 6, 1965, and ratified by the states on February 10, 1967.
- Grounds for impeachment: The President can be removed from office for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.
- China has held its third multilateral dialogue virtually with 5 countries from South Asia (Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) except India, Bhutan and the Maldives.
- All three dialogues have been attended by Pakistan and Nepal.
- It aims to take forward closer cooperation on fighting COVID-19 and coordinating their economic agendas, reflecting a new approach in China’s outreach to the region.
- It brought together every country in the region barring, and was aimed at “anti-epidemic cooperation and poverty reduction cooperation”.
- The two virtual meets appear part of China’s growing engagement in the region, in the wake of the global pandemic.
- The arising geopolitical turbulence is unpredictable. There is a transition from multilateralism to unilateralism, from cooperation to competition.
- In July 2020, at quadrilateral dialogue with Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan, China proposed to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan.
- It also proposed taking forward an economic corridor plan with Nepal, called the Trans-Himalayan Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network.
- China is the largest overseas investor in the Maldives, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s China Global Investment Tracker, it has committed around 100 billion USD in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
- China was a part of the trilateral China-Pakistan-Afghanistan foreign ministers dialogue to facilitate Afghan domestic political reconciliation, enhancing regional connectivity, and improving regional common development.
- China and Bangladesh pledged to deepen “defense industry and trade, training, equipment and technology” areas together.
- Sri Lanka handed over Hambantota port (geostrategically located on the Indian Ocean) on a 99-year lease to China to repay its loan back to China.
- The meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry was held on the subject "New Foreign Trade Policy 2021-26".
- During the meeting, it was informed that that the new Foreign Trade Policy-FTP will come into effect from 1st April 2021 for a period of five years. District Export Hubs initiative will form an important component of the new FTP.
- The policy will strive to make India a leader in the area of international trade and channelize the synergies gained through merchandise and services exports for growth and employment with a goal to make India a 5 trillion dollar economy.
- The FTP 2015-20 came into effect on 1st April 2015 and the same was extended by one year till 31 March this year due to Covid-19 pandemic.
- Telangana Municipal Administration launched the free drinking water scheme in Rahmat Nagar and nine lakh families would stand to gain from it.
- In Hyderabad, water was being supplied from the Krishna and Godavari rivers .
- The government would bear an expenditure of ?400 crore to ?500 crore towards it.
- Even as the State dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, welfare measures including rice to the poor, pension payments, Rythu Bandhu and the 2BHK scheme had witnessed minor delay.
- Recently, data has been released by National Statistical Office (NSO) (Ministry of Statistics) which shows that India’s retail inflation decelerated to 4.59% in December 2020, from 6.93% in November, dipping below 6% for the first time since March 2020 as food prices cooled.
- It also showed that a nascent industrial recovery, which had begun in September, retreated in November as industrial output shrank 1.9%.
- The lowest consumer price inflation (CPI) print in 14 months was due to sharp slowdown in food price inflation, which eased to 3.4% in December.
- India’s index of industrial production (IIP) for November gets lower by mining and manufacturing, which both shrank.
- Electricity production grew, rising 3.5% year-on-year. The NSO also revised upwards the index for the preceding three months by incorporating more production data. As per the final data for August 2020, the IIP had shrunk 7.1% in the month, narrower than the 8% estimated earlier.
- In September, industrial output had edged up 0.5% — higher than the 0.2% growth estimated earlier — after shrinking for six months. Industrial output grew 4.19% in October, higher than the 3.6% quick estimate.
- The November data once again shows that the uptick witnessed in the month of September and October was due to a combination of festive and pent-up demand and the recovery is still shallow and fragile. The unevenness and fragility of the current recovery is evident with only 10 out of 23 industry group showing positive growth in November.
- Vegetable prices witnessed a 10.4% deflation in December, compared with inflation of 15.5% inflation in November. An accompanying moderation in the inflation rates for meat and fish, eggs and pulses, helped the consumer food price index record its slowest pace of increase in 16 months at 3.4%.
- Core inflation too eased marginally to 5.5% in December, helping overall inflation moderate after having remained above the central bank’s tolerance band for price gains — of plus or minus two percentage points from its medium-term target of 4% — for a prolonged period.
POSTED ON 13-01-2021 BY ADMIN
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General Studies
Political Science and International Relations
Some Reference Essays
List of previous year essay topics (1997-2019)
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