Daily Current Affairs : 4th April

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Coral Bleaching
2. RTI and Supreme Court
3. Dark Matter
4. State of Global Air Report 2019
5. National Investment and Infrastructure Fund
6. Amicus Curiae

1 . Coral Bleaching

Syllabus : – General Studies 3 Environment

Context : The world’s southernmost coral reef has been hit by bleaching this summer, Australian scientists said on Wednesday, as they warned rising sea temperatures from climate change were affecting even the most isolated ecosystems. The corals off Lord Howe Island — some 600 km offshore from Sydney — were affected by elevated temperatures this summer, despite escaping severe bleaching that damaged the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017.

What is coral bleaching

• The stunning colours in corals come from a marine algae called zooxanthellae, which live inside their tissues. This algae provides the corals with an easy food supply thanks to photosynthesis, which gives the corals energy, allowing them to grow and reproduce.
• When corals get stressed, from things such as heat or pollution, they react by expelling this algae, leaving a ghostly, transparent skeleton behind. This is known as ‘coral bleaching’. Some corals can feed themselves, but without the zooxanthellae most corals starve.

Can coral recover from bleaching

• In some instances corals can recover from bleaching. If conditions return to normal, and stay that way corals can regain their algae, return to their bright colours and survive. However prolonged warmer temperatures and other stressors, like poor water quality, can leave the living coral in a weakened state. It can struggle to regrow, reproduce and resist disease – so is very vulnerable to coral diseases and mortality.
• It can take decades for coral reefs to fully recover from a bleaching event, so it is vital that these events do not occur frequently.  If we continue burning fossil fuels at our current rate then severe bleaching events are likely to hit reefs annually by the middle of the century. This would be devastating for coral reefs as they would have no chance to recover.

Causes

• Change in Ocean Temperature
• Runoff and Pollution
• Overexposure to sunlight
• Extreme low tides

2 . RTI and Supreme Court

Syllabus : – General Studies 2 Judiciary / RTI Act

Context : The Supreme Court, after losing legal battles before the Central Information Commission (CIC) and the Delhi High Court, finally had to appeal to itself to protect the collegium’s workings. After nine years, the appeal is now being heard by the Constitution Bench. It is hearing the broad question whether it would be deleterious to judicial independence to bring the collegium under RTI.

Arguments in favour of Supreme Court

• If RTI Act is applied to the collegium, its member judges would not be able to sit back and have a free and frank discussion for fear that their confidential views may later come into the public domain.
• Pushing the collegium under the public spotlight through RTI would “destroy” judicial independence.

3 . Dark Matter

Syllabus :- General Studies 3 Space

Context : Dark matter is not made up of primordial black holes smaller than a tenth of a millimetre, say scientists who have put the theory put forward by the late Stephen Hawking to its most rigorous test to date.

About Dark Matter & Dark Energy

• Galaxies in our universe seem to be achieving an impossible feat. They are rotating with such speed that the gravity generated by their observable matter could not possibly hold them together; they should have torn themselves apart long ago.
• The same is true of galaxies in clusters, which leads scientists to believe that something we cannot see is at work.
• They think something we have yet to detect directly is giving these galaxies extra mass, generating the extra gravity they need to stay intact. This strange and unknown matter was called “dark matter” since it is not visible.
• Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This means it does not absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot

Primordial Black Holes

• Black holes are often formed with the explosive death of massive stars, a process that can take hundreds of millions of years.
• Some black holes are thought to exist in the early universe, but there is likely not enough time for these objects to go through the normal formation process. Scientists have suggested that these early black holes may have formed through alternative processes such as those linked to the direct collapse of primordial gas and cosmic inflation.
• There were early suggestions that dark matter is composed of primordial black holes, which were formed in the universe’s first fraction of a second.

About the Findings

• Researchers led by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan used the gravitational lensing effect to look for primordial black holes between the earth and the Andromeda galaxy.
• In order to maximise the chances of capturing an event, the researchers used the Hyper Suprime-Cam digital camera on the Subaru telescope in Hawaii.
• From 190 consecutive images of the Andromeda galaxy taken over seven hours during one clear night, the team scoured the data for potential gravitational lensing events.
• If dark matter consists of primordial black holes of a given mass, in this case masses lighter than the moon, the researchers expected to find about 1,000 events. However, after careful analyses, they could only identify one case.

Gravitational Lensing

• A gravitational lens is a distribution of matter between a distant light source and an observer, that is capable of bending the light from the source as the light travels towards the observer. This effect is known as gravitational lensing, and the amount of bending is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

4 . State of Global Air Report 2019

Syllabus : General Studies 3 Environment

Context : The current high level of air pollution has shortened the average lifespan of a South Asian child by two-and-a- half years while globally the reduction stands at 20 months, according to a global study released on Wednesday.

About the Report : The State of Global Air 2019 annual report and accompanying interactive website are designed and implemented by the Health Effects Institute in cooperation with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Texas – Austin.

Details of the Report

• Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to over 1.2 million deaths in India in 2017. Worldwide, air pollution was responsible for more deaths than many better-known risk factors such as malnutrition, alcohol abuse and physical inactivity.
• In India, air pollution is the third highest cause of death among all health risks, ranking just above smoking; each year, more people globally die from air pollution-related diseases than from road traffic injuries or malaria.
• The study found that China and India together were responsible for over half of the total global attributable deaths, with each country facing over 1.2 million deaths from air pollution in 2017.
• Overall, long-term exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to nearly 5 million deaths due to stroke, diabetes, heart attack, lung cancer, and chronic lung disease in 2017.
• Out of these, 3 million deaths were directly attributed to PM2.5, half of which were from India and China together.
• The report also highlighted that nearly half of the world’s population were exposed to household air pollution in 2017. Globally, there has been progress but in India, 60% of the population still used solid fuels

Initiatives to address Pollution by the Govt

• India has initiated major steps to address pollution sources: the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Household LPG programme, accelerated Bharat Stage VI clean vehicle standards, and the new National Clean Air Programme.
• These and future initiatives have the potential — if fully implemented as part of a sustained commitment to air quality — to result in significant health benefits in coming years

5 . National Investment & Infrastructure Fund

Syllabus : – Prelims

Context : The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and global transport infrastructure operator Roadis on Wednesday said they would jointly set up a platform to invest up to $2 billion of equity in road projects in India. The platform would “target toll-operate-transfer models and acquisitions of existing road concessions”, they said in a statement.

About NIIF

• National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is a fund created by the Government of India for enhancing infrastructure financing in the country.
• NIIF was proposed to be set up as a Trust, to raise debt to invest in the equity of infrastructure finance companies
• NIIF is envisaged as a fund of funds with the ability to make direct investments as required. As a fund of fund it may invest in other SEBI registered funds.
• Its creation was announced in the Union Budget 2015-16.
• The NIIF is being operationalized by establishing three Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) under the SEBI Regulations. The proposed corpus of NIIF is Rs. 40,000 Crores (around USD 6 Billion). GOI’s contribution to the AIFs under the NIIF scheme shall be 49% of the total commitment. NIIF has mandate to solicit equity participation from strategic anchor partners, like overseas sovereign/quasi-sovereign/multilateral/bilateral investors.
  

Objective

• The objective of NIIF would be to maximize economic impact mainly through infrastructure development in commercially viable projects, both greenfield and brownfield, including stalled projects. It could also consider other nationally important projects, for example, in manufacturing, if commercially viable.

Functions of NIIF

The functions of NIIF are as follows:

1. Fund raising through suitable instruments including off-shore credit enhanced bonds, and attracting anchor investors to participate as partners in NIIF;
2. Servicing of the investors of NIIF.
3. Considering and approving candidate companies/institutions/ projects (including state entities) for investments and periodic monitoring of investments.
4. Investing in the corpus created by Asset Management Companies (AMCs) for investing in private equity.
5. Preparing a shelf of infrastructure projects and providing advisory services.
6. provides equity / quasi-equity support to those Non Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs)/Financial Institutions (FIs) that are engaged mainly in infrastructure financing. These institutions will be able to leverage this equity support and provide debt to the projects selected.
7. Invest in funds engaged mainly in infrastructure sectors and managed by Asset Management Companies (AMCs) for equity / quasi-equity funding of listed / unlisted companies.
8. provides Equity/ quasi-equity support / debt to projects, to commercially viable projects, both greenfield and brownfield, including stalled projects.

Types of Funds

• Master Fund – A fund focused on creating scalable sectoral platforms in core infrastructure and in collaboration with strong and reputed operating and financial partners.
• Fund of Funds – A fund focused on anchoring and investing in credible and reputed third party managers with a strong track record across diversified sectors within infrastructure services and allied sectors.
• Strategic Fund –
• A fund focused on investing in strategic assets and projects with longer term horizon across various stages of development.

6 . Amicus Curiae

Syllabus : – General Studies 2 Judiciary / General Studies 1 Geography

Context : The amicus curiae appointed by the Kerala High Court to assist it in flood-related cases informed the court on Wednesday that the sudden release of water simultaneously from different reservoirs during the heavy rain in August 2018 had aggravated the damage during the floods.

About Amicus Curiae

• In simple language, “amicus curiae” means “friend of the court”
• Supreme court has defined the term Amicus curiae under Supreme Court jurisdiction “If a petition is received from the jail or in any other criminal matter if the accused is unrepresented then an Advocate is appointed as amicus curiae by the Court to defend and argue the case of the accused.
• In civil matters also the Court can appoint an Advocate as amicus curiae if it thinks it necessary in case of an unrepresented party
• The Court can also appoint amicus curiae in any matter of general public importance or in which the interest of the public at large is involved

Details of the Report

• It appeared that dams in the State did not have an effective flood control zone and flood cushions. The flood cushion or flood control zone was a temporary storage space for absorbing high flow for alleviating downstream flood damage.
• None of the 79 dams in the State were operated or used for the purpose of flood control and moderation, despite the obligation to utilise them for flood control as per the stipulations under the National Water Policy, National Disaster Management Authority guidelines on flood and RTIO (real-time integrated operation).
• High reservoir storage and sudden release of water had resulted in worsening the floods. Various alerts (blue/orange/red) were issued not in accordance with the EAP (Emergency Action Plan) guidelines.
• No proper follow-up action and effective precautionary steps, especially for evacuating people and accommodating them in safe locations, were taken after the issue of red alert.

Emergency Action Plan

• The EAP was a written document prepared by the dam operator and is a formal plan that identifies potential emergency conditions at a dam and prescribes the procedures to be followed to minimize loss of life and property damage.
• An emergency in terms of dam operation is defined as a condition which develops unexpectedly, endangers the structural integrity of the dam and / or safety of lives and properties, at the dam site as well as in the areas downstream of the dam, and requires immediate responsive action.
• The EAP is the document that has to be used in case of an emergencies generated by either a dam break or to a significantly high release of water from gated or ungated spillways.
• It identifies the roles and responsibility of the Dam’s Owner and of the Authorities in charge to manage emergency situations and evacuate people from low-lying areas downstream. Furthermore, it specifies the actions to be implemented in different types of emergency conditions
• Emergency Classification – The assessment of degree of seriousness of unusual situation can be classified as: 1. Blue-Yellow (Emergency Level 1) 2. Orange (Emergency Level 2) 3. Red (Emergency Level 3)