The strange case of the Indian skimmer

• Indian skimmer is seen in huge flocks during winter in Coringa wildlife sanctuary (Kakinada).
• A thick, orange-yellow bill with a slightly longer lower mandible (jaw) is one of the most striking features of the Indian skimmer (Rynchops albicollis).
• The Indian skimmer grows to a length of 40-43 cm.
• More widespread in winter, the Indian skimmer is found in the coastal estuaries of western and eastern India.
• It occurs primarily on larger, sandy, lowland rivers, around lakes and adjacent marshes and, in the non-breeding season, in estuaries and coasts.
• About 20% of the total population of fewer than 2,500 birds nest along river Chambal.
• Its population is declining primarily because of the degradation of wetland and riverine habitats.
• The damming of the Chambal River, in upstream Rajasthan, has adversely affected its population at National Chambal Sanctuary, Uttar Pradesh, due to the dropping water levels allowing predators and livestock access to breeding islands.
• IUCN: Endangered
• In 2020, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) have initiated a ‘Guardians of the Skimmer’ programme, which is a community-based conservation initiative.
• BNHS in collaboration with Bird Count India have also initiated ‘Indian Skimmer Count’-a citizen science initiative.

Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity

• According to the Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity recent data only one in four people has been vaccinated with at least one dose in low and middle income countries as of November 9, 2022. In comparison, in high income countries, three in four people have got at least one dose of the vaccine.
• The Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity is a joint effort by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Oxford with cooperation across the UN system.
• It combines the latest data on the global roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines with the “most recent socio-economic information to illustrate why accelerating vaccine equity is not only critical to saving lives but also to driving a faster and fairer recovery from the pandemic with benefits for all”.
• Vaccine equity It means everyone in the world has the same access to vaccines.
• The COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership (COVAX), a collective international effort with ‘One Country Team’, ‘One Plan’, and ‘One Budget’.
• It was launched by WHO, UNICEF, and Gavi and the World Bank, to intensify country readiness and delivery support.
• It aimed at accelerating COVID-19 vaccination coverage in 34 low coverage countries, along with their governments.

WJP Rule of Law Index 2022 Global Press Release

• It was released by an international civil society organisation, World Justice Project (WJP).
• According to the report, the rule of law has declined globally for the fifth consecutive year.
• It says that the checks on executive power are weakening, and respect for human rights is falling.
• The top-ranked country in the WJP Rule of Law Index 2022 is Denmark, followed by Norway (2), Finland (3), Sweden (4), and the Netherlands (5).
• The bottom ranked countries are Venezuela (140), Cambodia (139), Afghanistan (138), the Democratic Republic of Congo (137), and Haiti (136).
• India has been ranked 77 out of 140 countries with a score of50 on the ''rule of law index''.
• Globally, India ranks 94 out of 140 as far as adherence to fundamental rights are concerned, 111 out of 140 in civil justice, 89 out of 140 in criminal justice and 93 out of 140 in absence of corruption.
• Bangladesh scored 0.39 in the 127th rank, Pakistan settled with a 0.39 score at the 129th rank, and China scored 0.47 in the 95th rank.
• Notably, Nepal has performed better than its neighbours, with a 0.52 score and 69th rank.
• The index is prepared by examining these four principles through eight factors- constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.
• The World Justice Project defines the rule of law as a durable system of laws, institutions, norms, and community commitment that delivers: accountability, just laws, open government, and accessible justice.
• The World Justice Project (WJP) is an independent, multidisciplinary organization working create knowledge, build awareness, and stimulate action to advance the rule of law worldwide.
• It was founded by William H. Neukom in 2006 as a presidential initiative of the American Bar Association (ABA).

Law and Order Index of 2022:

• The survey was conducted by a global analytics firm called Gallup.
• India has scored 80 points and has secured the 60th rank on the index that ranges from one to 100, a higher score indicating that more people feel secure in a country.
• It has declared East Asia as the most secure region in the world and Taliban-occupied Afghanistan as the least secured country for the third year.
• The first survey conducted by the firm was in 1938 in the United Kingdom.
• The survey evaluated around 120 countries based on the safety and security of the country''s citizens.

US Treasury removes India from its Currency Monitoring List

• India had been on the list for the last two years.
• China, Japan, Korea, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan are the seven economies that are a part of the current monitoring list.
• The countries that have been removed from the list have met only one out of three criteria for two consecutive reports.
• The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 of US requires its Treasury Department to report to the Congress in every six months if any country is manipulating its currencies to gain trade advantages over the US.
• One of the ways of manipulation involves any country artificially weakening its currency by selling it in exchange for a foreign currency, usually the US dollar.
• This artificial weakening of currency makes its own exports cheaper, thereby gaining an unfair trade advantage over another country’s exports.
• There are three criteria the US Treasury looks at in placing a country on the watch list:
  • Significant trade surplus with the US (at least $20 billion in 12 months)
  • A large current account surplus (at least 2 per cent of GDP over a 12-month period)
  • “Persistent", one-sided intervention (when net purchases of foreign currency totalling at least 2 per cent of the country’s GDP over a 12-month period are conducted repeatedly, in at least six out of 12 months).

The countries that meet two out of the three criteria are placed on the watch list.

DigiLocker users can now digitally store health records

• DigiLocker has successfully completed its second-level of integration with Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). The secure cloud-based storage platform of DigiLocker can be used now as a health locker for storing and accessing health records such as vaccination records, doctor prescriptions, lab reports, hospital discharge summaries etc.
• DigiLocker is a flagship initiative of Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) under Digital India programme.
• DigiLocker aims at ‘Digital Empowerment’ of citizen by providing access to authentic digital documents to citizen’s digital document wallet.
• The issued documents in DigiLocker system are deemed to be at par with original physical documents as per Rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries providing Digital Locker facilities) Rules, 2016.
• Benefits to Citizens:
  • Important Documents Anytime, Anywhere!
  • Authentic Documents, Legally at Par with Originals.
  • Digital Document Exchange with the consent of the citizen.
  • Faster service Delivery- Government Benefits, Employment, Financial Inclusion, Education, Health.

''Substantial'' pre-symptomatic monkeypox spread found

• The researchers have estimated that 53% of monkeypox virus transmission have occurred during the pre-symptomatic phase.
• Pre-symptomatic transmission of monkeypox virus will mean that many infections cannot be prevented by isolating peopleshowing symptoms. Also, the effectiveness of contact tracing and subsequent quarantine will not be sufficient to break the transmission chain since by the time all the contacts have been traced, they might have already spread the virus to other people.

Monkeypox virus:

• The monkeypox virus is an orthopoxvirus, which is a genus of viruses that also includes the variola virus, which causes smallpox, and vaccinia virus, which was used in the smallpox vaccine.
• Monkeypox causes symptoms similar to smallpox, although they are less severe.
• While vaccination eradicated smallpox worldwide in 1980, monkeypox continues to occur in a swathe of countries in Central and West Africa, and has on occasion showed up elsewhere.
• According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), two distinct clade are identified:
  • the West African clade and
  • the Congo Basin clade, also known as the Central African clade.
• Monkeypox is a zoonosis, that is, a disease that is transmitted from infected animals to humans.
• Cases occur close to tropical rainforests inhabited by animals that carry the virus.
• Monkeypox virus infection has been detected in squirrels, Gambian poached rats, dormice, and some species of monkeys.
• Human-to-human transmission is, however, limited. Transmission, when it occurs, can be through contact with bodily fluids, lesions on the skin or on internal mucosal surfaces, such as in the mouth or throat, respiratory droplets and contaminated objects.

Personalised cell ''editing'' used to treat cancer patients

• CRISPR is short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which is a reference to the clustered and repetitive sequences of DNA found in bacteria, whose natural mechanism to fight some viral diseases is replicated in this gene-editing tool.
• Its mechanism is often compared to the ‘cut-copy-paste’, or ‘find-replace’ functionalities in common computer programmes.
• A bad stretch in the DNA sequence, which is the cause of disease or disorder, is located, cut, and removed — and then replaced with a ‘correct’ sequence.
• And the tools used to achieve this are not mechanical, but biochemical — specific protein and RNA molecules.
• The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that uses a similar method to protect itself from virus attacks.

Tirupati''s megalithic burial sites in a state of neglect

• Anthropomorphic sites are those marked by a representation of human form above the megalithic burials.
• The most prominent one is the ‘pillared dolmen’ of the megalithic era, found at Mallayyagaripalle, nestling on a hillock between Chandragiri and Dornakambala, in Tirupati.
• The structure locally referred to as ‘Pandava Gullu’ or ‘Pandavula Banda’ in memory of the Pandavas, is estimated to be 2,500 years old.
• There is another endangered megalith monument in Palem village near Kallur, which resembles a bull’s horn. It is called locally as ‘Devara Yeddhu’.
• Another megalithic burial site in Venkatapuram is the ‘stone circle’, where the tomb is surrounded by round stones arranged in a circle.
• A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones.
• The word megalithic describes structures made of such large stones without the use of mortar or concrete, representing periods of prehistory characterised by such constructions.
• The construction of these structures took place mainly in the Neolithic period and continued into the Chalcolithic period and the Bronze Age.

Current account deficit likely to be lower at 3% this fiscal

• Balance of Payments (BoP):
  • The Balance of payments (BoP) records the transactions in goods, services and assets between residents of a country with the rest of the world.
  • There are two main accounts in the BoP –
    • the current account and
    • the capital account.
  • Current Account:
    • The current account records exports and imports in goods and services and transfer payments.
    • Trade in services denoted as invisible trade (because they are not seen to cross national borders) includes both
      • factor income (payment for inputs-investment income, that is, the interest, profits and dividends on our assets abroad minus the income foreigners earn on assets they own in India) and
      • non-factor income (shipping, banking, insurance, tourism, software services, etc.).
    • Transfer payments are receipts which the residents of a country receive ‘for free’, without having to make any present or future payments in return. They consist of remittances, gifts and grants. They could be official or private.
    • The balance of exports and imports of goods is referred to as the trade balance.
    • Adding trade in services and net transfers to the trade balance, we get the current account balance.

Treat for eyes as winter guests start arriving

• Delhi-NCR accounts for almost one-third of the total bird species found in India.
• The region has about 1,800 species of fauna out of which 446 are bird species.
• There are nine protected areas, including one national park, six wildlife sanctuaries, one reserve forest and one conservation reserve.
• There are eight important bird areas, including Okhla Bird sanctuary (Gautam Budh Nagar), Sultanpur National Park (Gurgaon), Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary (Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bijnor), Basai Wetlands (Gurgaon) etc. None of them are in Delhi.
• Some of the major migratory ducks are Northern shoveler, Gadwall, Greylag geese, Pallas’s gulls, brown-headed and black-headed gulls, coots, etc.
• India is a winter home for most of the Siberian birds such as the Siberian Cranes, Greater Flamingo, and Demoiselle Crane, also numerous species of birds from other regions of the world.
• They migrate to India every year during the winter and summer season for food, breeding, and nesting.

The major global flyways:

• Americas Flyway: three flyways that connect North America with Caribbean and Central and South America.
• African-Eurasian Flyway: three flyways that connect Europe and northern Asia with Mediterranean, Middle East, and Africa.
• Central Asian Flyway: connects northern Asia with southern Asia and Middle East.
• East Asian-Australasian Flyway: connects north-east Asia with south-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand.