Prashant Mavani, is an expert in current affairs analysis and holds a MSc in Management from University of Surrey (U.K.). Above all he is a passionate teacher.

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Jadhav letter was sent to Pakistan, says India

• India has responded to Pakistan’s proposal allowing former Indian naval official Kulbhushan Jadhav to meet his wife on humanitarian grounds, a senior MEA official confirmed on Saturday.

• The confirmation of the Indian response came hours after Pakistan announced the receipt of the Indian letter, even as both sides prepared for the next date of the case in December at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

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Six LeT militants killed in J&K gunfight

• Six Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants were killed in an encounter in Bandipora on Saturday. One Indian Air Force (IAF) commando was killed and another soldier injured in the operation.

• “It’s a great success for the security forces. A total of six terrorists were eliminated in the operation. One of the terrorists named Owaid is the son of Zakir Rehman Maki and nephew of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of Mumbai terror attacks,” said Director-General of Police (DGP), J&K, S.P. Vaid.

• One IAF Garud personnel was killed and a soldier of 13 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) injured in the gunfight. These militants were trapped inside a house after a joint team of the army’s 13 RR, CRPF and the police’s special operation group (SOG) personnel cordoned off Hajin's ChandargeerJamia Mohalla.

• There were attempts by locals to disrupt the operation. One civilian was injured in the clashes.

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Rajnath asks J&K to review cases of child protesters

• Home Minister Rajnath Singh has asked the Jammu and Kashmir government to move all juveniles, arrested for throwing stones and other unlawful activities, from jails to remand homes and review their cases sympathetically, officials said.

• The decision is considered to be an attempt to reach out to the people of the State by the Centre after the appointment of Dineshwar Sharma as Special Representative to initiate talks with all stakeholders.

• The key issue was discussed in detail at Wednesday’s meeting of the core group on Kashmir, chaired by the Union Home Minister and attended by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, where it was decided to ask the Jammu and Kashmir government to work on the cases of juveniles.

• Mr. Sharma also briefed the group about the first round of talks he had with various sections of society there last week.

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Smart cities project unsustainable: expert

• “A rupee saved is a rupee generated.” That is how Ravikanth Joshi, a public finance expert with two decades of experience managing budgets for the Baroda Municipal Corporation previously, sums up the lessons he learnt on the job.

• Referring to some of the development proposals submitted by cities as part of the Centre’s flagship Smart Cities project, Mr. Joshi told The Hindu that the extravagant costs of the proposals, quoting expenditure of Rs9 lakh to Rs12 lakh per capita in cities such as Chandigarh, were financially unsustainable.

• He was speaking on the sidelines of the international conference on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at St. Philomena’s College here.

• Goal 11 of the SDGs pertains to sustainable cities. “The Area Development Component takes up 75% of the money intended for the project. This will be used to develop only specific areas of the city, with amenities like 24x7 water supply, nicely-paved roads, well-laid pavements, etc. Based on an analysis of 60 cities’ proposals under the project, I found that hardly 4% of the physical area of the city would be developed this way. That way, retrofitting the infrastructure for entire cities would remain a dream for over 20 years,” he said.

• Under the project, Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) are registered under the Companies Act with the State and the Centre investing equally. Private capital could be injected into the project comprising up to 48% as equity, he explained.

• However, in the process urban local bodies got sidelined. The constitution of board members to the SPVs fell short of local representatives; only the city commissioner was represented, he said.

• “Neither the local communities nor the local officials are involved in framing project proposals, and the decision-making is dominated by top bureaucrats,” he said, adding that this could be corrected.

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DSC prize for Arudpragasam

• Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam on Saturday took away the 2017 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his powerful novel The Story of a Brief Marriage.

• The award was announced at the closing ceremony of the three-day Dhaka Lit Fest in the Bangladesh capital and was a fitting end to a festival that saw a record turnout in the historic Bangla Academy campus.

• The book was given the award for its “intensity and rich detail,” said Ritu Menon, jury chair, who highlighted that it had been a tight contest.

• The other four short-listed works were equally acclaimed books — Anjali Joseph’s The Living, Aravind Adiga’s Selection Day, Karan Mahajan’s The Association of Small Bombs, and Stephen Alter’s In the Jungles of the Night.

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Government raises import duty on crude palm oil

• The government has raised import duty on crude palm oil from 15 per cent to 30 per cent.

• This has been done to curb cheaper shipments and boost local prices for supporting farmers and refiners.

• Similarly, import duty on refined oil has been hiked to 40 per cent from the present 20 per cent.

• In a notification, the Central Board of Excise and Customs said, import duty on soyabean has also been increased to 30 per cent from 17.5 per cent.

• India imports palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, soyabean oil from Latin America and Sunflower oilfrom Ukraine and Russia.

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1st Namami Barak Festival

• The first ever Namami Barak festival was inaugurated by Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal at Silchar today.

• The event is being organised at three locations in Barak Valley.

• Silchar is the main event area while the other two locations are Hailakandi and Karimganj district.

• Namami Barak festival is an attempt to pay tribute to the River Barak and to showcase its potential to emerge as a trading hub. The three-day programme will also see cultural programmes dedicated to Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi NazrulIslam and Bhupen Hazarika.

• The festival aims to explore and promote the socio-economic development of the Barak as also the rich cultural heritage surrounding the river. The cuisine, fauna and flora, and civic splendor will be showcased before a global audience during the festival. People will also get the opportunity to explore the trade hub Agrasar Barak, Crafts Zone, Food Zone, Museum, Kushiyara Eco Zone and Kids Zone.

• The Barak River is one of the major rivers of southern Assam and is a part of the Surma-Meghna River System. It is the biggest and the most important of all the rivers in the Manipur hill territory, from where it originates.

• Source of Origin : in the Manipur Hills of India, near Mao Songsang

• Drainage Area : Manipur, Mizoram, Assam, Bangladesh

• Tributaries : Jiri, Dhaleshwari (Tlawng), Singla, Longai, Madhura, Sonai (Tuirial), Rukni and Katakhal

• Dams : Tipaimukh Dam

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Miss World 2017

• Haryana-born Manushi Chhillar was today crowned Miss World 2017 in a grand finale in China.

• Edging out beauties from over 108 nations, the 20-year-old medical student, managed to win the coveted title. Miss World 2016 winner Puerto Rico's Stephanie Del Valle passed on the crown to Ms Chhillar in the beauty pageant.

• The crown was last won by an Indian 17 years ago.

• The coveted title was last won by Priyanka Chopra in 2000, In 1997, Diana Hayden had bagged the title, while Aishwarya Rai had the honours in 1994.

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• World Toilet Day is being observed today. The theme of the World Toilet Day 2017 is theme 'wastewater'. The Day is about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis.

• In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly officially designated November 19 as World Toilet Day. World Toilet Day is coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with governments and partners.

• Today, 4.5 billion people across the world live without a household toilet that safely disposes of their waste.

• By 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals aim to reach everyone with sanitation, and halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase recycling and safe reuse..

• For that to be achieved, we need everyone’s poo to be contained, transported, treated and disposed of in a safe and sustainable way. Today, for billions of people around the world, sanitation systems are either non-existent or ineffective. Human waste gets out and killer diseases spread, meaning progress in health and child survival is seriously undermined

• To achieve SDG 6, we need everyone’s poo to take a 4-step journey:

1. Containment. Poo must be deposited into a hygienic toilet and stored in a sealed pit or tank, separated fromhuman contact.

2. Transport. Pipes or latrine emptying services must move the poo to the treatment stage.

3. Treatment. Poo must be processed into treated wastewater and waste products that can be safely returned to the environment.

4. Disposal or reuse. Safely treated poo can be used for energy generation or as fertilizer in food production.

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Mind and medicine: Placebo and nocebo

• When a clinical researcher or a pharmaceutical company wants to check whether a new medicine or treatment (a pill, injection etc) works, they choose a large-enough set of patients for the clinical trial.

• They are divided into two groups. One of them is given the actual treatment (pill or the injection). The other is chosen as the control group; this is given not the actual treatment, but a “dummy” pill or injection. Neither group knows who gets what, but believes that they get the right one. The idea behind this comparative experiment, which lasts for 4- 6 weeks, is to check whether the treatment works, how safe it is and what side-effects it may have — positive or negative.

• “placebo”

• Some patients are taken in by the price factor.

• You can even mislabel a dummy pill as a brand-name drug, and some patients find that it works!

• Clinicians and researchers have also noticed the opposite of placebo occurring among some participants. Here the participant anticipates and feels adverse or negative reactions to a treatment. Dr. Walter Kennedy, who researched on this phenomenon coined the term “nocebo” in 1961, meaning “I shall harm you”, as the counterpart of placebo. Doctors mention that even telling the participants that a treatment might have some minor side effects — an itch or some pain — is sufficient for some to feel it.

• Professional medicine as a science is one side of the coin. The placebo–nocebo duality demands an understanding and allowing for the socio-psychological features of the patient, and this is the other side of the coin.

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Plant emissions higher than believed

• Researchers from the University of Minnesota in the US suggest that as the mean global temperature increases, respiration will also increase significantly.

• Such increases may lower the future ability of global vegetation to offset carbon dioxide emissions caused by burning of fossil fuels. "Plants both capture carbon dioxide and then release it by respiration.

• Changes to either of these processes in response to climate change have profound implications for how much ecosystems soak up carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels," said Chris Huntingford, lead author of the study. "In fact, this study provides the most up-to-date accounting of respiratory carbon releases from plants in terrestrial systems," said Peter Reich, from the University of Minnesota.

• The new findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, are based on the comprehensive GlobRespdatabase, which is comprised of more than 10,000 measurements of carbon dioxide plant respiration from plant species around the globe.

• Merging this data with existing computer models of global land carbon cycling shows plant respiration has been a potentially underestimated source of carbon dioxide release.

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India Japan moon mission soon

• With the success of Chandrayan -1, India is now gearing up for Chandrayan -2 which will be launched in Marchnext year.

• With this India has skyrocketed its ambition to explore the moon surface further. And now a joint collaboration with Japan can fulfill this aim Japan has already successfully launched its own moon mission a decade before India did, but now Japan is looking forward to jointly collaborate with India for another Lunar mission.

• Not only Japan but many Asia Pacific countries are looking at India as an emerging market for satellite making and launches. Making in India platform has open the doors for many Asia Pacific countries to look at India. India successfully launched a South Asia satellite with the SAARC countries, a similar project with the Asia Pacific countries could be a reality in future.

• In 2009, JAXA's lunar orbiter spacecraft Selene had impacted the lunar surface after successfully orbiting the moon for a year and eight months. Japan had also launched Hiten Spacecraft in 1990, the country's first lunar probe. India had launched its first lunar probe in 2008 through Chandrayaan-1, and is now gearing up for its next lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 in March next year.

• The 24th session of the space forum held here between November 14 to 17 was attended by over 600 delegatesfrom 35 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Heads of space agencies from India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Korea, Israel, Thailand, France and Russia had participated in the forum.

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• NASA to launch E. Coli into space to study antibiotic resistance

• E. coli is a common bacterial pathogen linked to urinary tract infections and food-borne illnesses.

• The E. coli Anti-Microbial Satellite (EcAMSat) mission is scheduled to launch to the ISS on Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft on Saturday along with a slew of other science experiments and supplies for the Expedition 53 crew.

• Antibiotic resistance could pose a danger to astronauts, especially since microgravity has been shown to weaken human immune response, NASA said. The E. coli Anti-Microbial Satellite mission will investigate spaceflight effects on bacterial antibiotic resistance and its genetic basis.

• The experiment will expose two strains of E. coli, one with a resistance gene, the other without, to three different doses of antibiotics, then examine the viability of each group.

• “Results from this investigation could contribute to determining appropriate antibiotic dosages to protect astronaut health during long-duration human spaceflight and help us understand how antibiotic effectiveness may change as a function of stress on Earth,” NASA said.

• Rather than being housed inside the space station, this experiment will take place in a 6U cubesat, a small satellite that has six times the volume of a single cubesat. The fundamental scenario of the experiment protocol will start four days after launch of the EcAMSat satellite by allowing an initial growth and then starvation period for E. coli bacteria contained in 48 microfluidic wells. The investigation aims to determine “the lowest dose of antibiotic needed to inhibit growth of Escherichia coli (E. coli), a bacterial pathogen that causes infections in humans and animals,” NASA officials wrote in a description of the experiment.

• .

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Answers

1. Admiral D K Joshi

2. Paika Bidroh/Rebells (1817)

3. गुल खिले तो स ांस लो "• 1- गुल -> गुल म वांश 2- खिले -> खिलजी वांश 3- तुम -> तुगलक वांश 4- स ांस -> सैयद वांश 5- लो -> लोधी वांश

4. Persian

Questions

1. Name three land locked countries of Africa that were recently in news.

2. Explain the selection process of a Judge for International Court of Justice. (Steps only)

3. What is the percentage of ASEAN in India’s total global trade?

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