UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 18-02-2021

India-Mauritius CECPA

• India-Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) will be the first trade Agreement to be signed by India with a country in Africa.
• This limited agreement will cover Trade in Goods and Services, Rules of Origin, Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Dispute Settlement, etc.,
• It will also cover the Movement of Natural Persons, Telecom, Financial services, Customs Procedures and Cooperation in other Areas.
• It covers 310 export items for India, and Mauritius will benefit from preferential market access into India for its 615 products.
• Both have agreed to negotiate Automatic Trigger Safeguard Mechanism (ATSM) for a limited number of highly sensitive products within two years of the Signing of the Agreement.

e-Chhawani Portal

• It is an online multi-tenancy central platform.
• It aims to provide citizen-centric municipal services to the citizens across 62 Cantonment Boards.
• The residents of cantonment areas can register their complaints regarding civic issues and resolve them while sitting at home.
• People can get their documents like trade licence, sewerage connectivity applications can be made through the portal.

Cantonment Board

• A cantonment board, an urban local body, established for municipal administration for civilian population in the cantonment area.
• It is set up under the provisions of the Cantonments Act of 2006 – a legislation enacted by the Central government.
• It works under the administrative control of the Defence Ministry of the Central government.
• They are grouped into four categories on the basis of the civil population as - Above 50,000; 10,000 to 50, 000; 2500 to 10, 000 and below 2500.

Extinction Rebellion

• Extinction Rebellion (XR) was launched in the United Kingdom in 2018, as a response to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that declared,
  1. We only have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change and
  2. We have entered the 6th mass extinction event.
• It is a global movement to persuade the governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.
• It is a decentralised and politically non-partisan movement that uses,
  1. Non-violent Direct Action and
  2. Civil Disobedience.

• It asks the groups to rebel and self-organise, without the need for anyone’s permission, to come up with collective action plans that adhere to the group’s core principles and values.
• The group has “three core demands” to the governments around the world, in order to confront the climate and ecological emergency that the world is faced with.
• It wants governments to “Tell the Truth”, “Act Now”, and “Go Beyond Politics”.

Juvenile Justice Amendment Bill, 2021

• The Union Cabinet approved amendments to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015.
• As per the amendment, the district magistrates (DM) and additional district magistrates (ADM) will monitor the functioning of various agencies responsible for implementation of the JJ Act in every district.
• The DM can independently evaluate juvenile police unit, specialised Child Welfare Committees (CWC) and registered Child Care Institution (CCI).
• The district child protection unit will function under district magistrate.
• Before becoming a member of the CWC, background and educational qualification checks will be done.
• Before registration of a CCI, DM will conduct its capacity and background check, and submit recommendations to state government.
• The definition of “child in need of care” and protection of the JJ Act has been expanded to include,
  1. Child victims of trafficking and drug abuse and
  2. Children abandoned by their guardian.
• At present, the Act has three categories of petty, serious and heinous crimes. The amendment categorises certain previously undefined offences as 'serious offences' where the,
  1. Sentence is more than seven years but no minimum sentence is prescribed or
  2. A minimum sentence of less than seven years is provided.
• There is a proposal to appoint a nodal office in each embassy to monitor the child adopted abroad.

Mars Missions

• Three Mars missions - UAE’s Hope, NASA’s Perseverance and China’s Tianwen-1 - are set to land on Mars in the year 2021.
• Earth and Mars are at their closest distance relative to each other every 26 months and this is when Earthlings try to send missions to Mars.
• Currently, there are 10 spacecraft from five different space agencies, either orbiting or on the ground on Mars.
  1. NASA has a lander (Mars Insight), a rover (Curiosity), and three orbiters (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, MAVEN);
  2. India has an orbiter (Mangalyaan-1)
  3. European Union has 2 orbiters (Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter)
  4. UAE has an orbiter (Hope)
  5. China has an orbiter (Tianwen-1)  

Hope

• Hope Orbiter, the UAE’s Mars mission, underwent orbital insertion.
• The UAE became the fifth national space agency (after the US, EU, Russia, and India) to reach Mars.

• The UAE mission will study the Martian atmosphere.
• It will seek to address the question of how and why Mars lost its atmosphere.
• The loss of the atmosphere resulted in the loss of surface water, and possibly the environment hospitable to life.

Perseverance

• Perseverance Rover is NASA’s 4th generation Mars Rover.
• [NASA’s previous Mars Rovers were Sojourner (Mars Pathfinder Mission in 1997), Spirit and Opportunity (Mars Exploration Rover Mission in 2004), and Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory in 2012).]
• Perseverance is en route to Mars, and is set to land at Jezero Crater, which was likely filled with water in the past.
• In the dried up lake bed at Jezero Crater, it will look for fossils or some biosignatures.
• Also, it will produce oxygen on the Martian surface for the first time, using atmospheric CO2 from the Martian atmosphere.
• It will cache rock samples that will be returned to Earth by a subsequent European Space Agency/NASA mission.

Tianwen-1

• Chinese National Space Agency’s Tianwen-1 is the first mission from China to Mars.
• Tianwen-1 carries an orbiter, a lander, and a rover.
• Unlike NASA rovers, it will orbit Mars for few months before attempting to land in May, 2021 at Utopia Planitia.
• [Utopia Planitia was selected for landing, as it would possibly have ancient groundwater deposits.]
• It has a suite of instruments to address a range of scientific questions.
• It has a ground penetrating radar instrument to look for water under the Martian surface.

Starship Enterprise

• Starship Enterprise, a preparation for revolutionising Mars exploration, is being developed by the SpaceX in Boca Chica.
• [Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a private US-based company, has a long-range goal of starting a commercial service to transport passengers to Mars.]
• Starship represents the best shot at landing humans on Mars, which is not underwritten financially by government money.
• It promises to reduce mission costs by 95% to 99% by using innovations like refuelling the spacecraft in orbit, and manufacture of rocket fuel on Mars using materials that are found on Mars.

Source: PIB, The Indian Express, Times Now, Economic Times, Business Standard