Prelim Bits 16-03-2018

Antibiotic resistance in vultures

• Escherichia coli, a pathogen in over 90% of Egyptian vultures that migrate to northwest India to spend the winter, tend to show significant difference in resistance to antibiotics within a single season reveals a study report.
• The findings of the study are significant because migrating wild birds can spread drug-resistant pathogens and cause disease.
• The vultures that use human-dominated landscapes as part of their life cycle were likely to act as “reservoirs and melting pots of bacterial resistance”
• Guidelines to restrict antibiotic use in both humans and animals by one country or region alone will be inadequate when wild birds can spread drug-resistant bacteria.
• Global collaboration and coordination is the need of the hour to restrict the usage of antibiotics in both humans and animals to tackle these resistances in vultures.

Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2017

• The survey was carried out by the NGO Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.
• It broadly looks at urban planning and design, capacity and resources of Urban Local Bodies, the degree of empowerment of the civic body, and processes for transparency and citizen participation.
• The survey uses 150 parameters to judge 23 cities, which has placed Pune at the top and Bangalore at the bottom of the rankings.
• Under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation or Smart City program, Surat, Ahmedabad and Pune shored up revenues and implemented better auditing.
• The reasons behind Bengaluru’s low rank are lack of citizen’s charter, low per-capita expenditure and absence of sanitation plans.

UN Commission on Status of Women (CSW)

• Rural entrepreneur Sunita Kashyap from India was hailed as a symbol of women’s empowerment at inaugural session of 62^nd   UN’s CSW meet, 2018.
• Kashyap founded Mahila Umang Producers Co., an organization in Uttarkhand run by women farmers and producers to market their products and it also runs a micro-credit program.
• The priority theme for this year meet is challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls.
• The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.
• It is a functional commission of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) established in 1946.

A report on Impact of Climate Change

• A recent report in Climate Change journal cautions that up to half the species in 33 biodiverse areas, including Amazon and Madagascar are at risk of localized extinction within decades due to global warming.
• The 33 biodiverse areas host some of the world’s richest and most unusual terrestrial species, including iconic, endangered, or endemic plants and animals.
• Spatially, the regions include southern Chile, the eastern Himalayas, South Africa’s Fynbos ecoregion, Borneo, Sumatra, the Namibian desert, West Africa, southwest Australia, coastal east Africa, and southern Africa’s Miombo Woodlands.
• It also states that limiting warming to 2 C would enable many species to continue inhabiting the areas they currently occupy.
• Extinction is not simply about the disappearance of species but about profound changes to ecosystems that provide vital services to hundreds of millions of people.

World Happiness Report 2018

• The report is released by U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network's (SDSN).
• It ranked 156 countries according to their scores for things such as GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, social freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.
• The report also focused on emerging health problems such as obesity, depression and the opioid crisis.

• The 2018 top-10, as ever dominated by the Nordics, is: Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.
• India ranked 133rd in the global list of the happiest countries which is lower than other SAARC countries rank.
• India has been consistently falling in the happiness index since 2014.

SIPRI Report

• The recently released report stated that India was the world’s largest importer of major arms in 2013-17.
• The U.S. recorded a growth in its arms exports to India, recording over 550% growth in 2013-17 compared with the previous five years.
• U.S. became the second largest arms exporter to India next to Russia.
• Russia accounted for 62% of India’s arms imports between 2013 and 2017.
• India’s arms import accounted for 12% of the global total.
• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.
• Click here to know more about SIPRI

Map of the Day

Europe Rivers

• The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed.
• Danube is the second largest river in Europe which is navigable in nature.
• The Danube is navigable by ocean ships from the Black Sea to Braila in Romania and by river ships to Kelheim, Bavaria, Germany.
• Main-Danube Canal, also called Europa Canal, is a commercial waterway in the southern German state of Bavaria permitting traffic to flow between the North Sea and the Black Sea.
• River main is tributary of Rhine River.
• Volga-Don Canal is linking the lower Volga River with the Don River at their closest point in southwestern Russia.

Source: PIB, The Hindu, Business Standard, Economic times