Partners’ Forum
- Fourth Partners’ Forum is being held at New Delhi.
- India, in association with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), is hosting Partners’ Forum to improve the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents.
- Partners’ Forum is a global health partnership launched in 2005 to accelerate efforts to reduce child and maternal mortality, improve adolescent, child, newborn and maternal health.
- This partnership is an alliance of more than 1,000 plus members, across 10 constituencies in 92 countries.
- This is the second time India is hosting the Partners’ Forum.
- PMNCH’s mission is to support the global health community to work successfully towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the health related SDGs.
Vision of a New India
- The Ministry of Commerce & Industry is creating a plan to bolster India’s march towards becoming a USD 5 trillion economy before 2025.
- The focused plans will be on boosting services sector contribution to USD 3 trillion, manufacturing to USD 1 trillion and Agriculture to USD 1 trillion.
- The Ministry has created a corpus of USD 1 billion to boost 12 champion sectors in services.
- The share of India’s services sector in global services exports was 3.3% in 2015 compared to 3.1% in 2014. Based on this initiative, a goal of 4.2 % has been envisaged for 2022.
- The share of services in Gross Value Added (GVA) was about 53% for India in 2015-16 (61 % including construction services). A goal of achieving a share of services in GVA of 60 % (67% including construction services) has also been envisaged by the year 2022.
- The Commerce Ministry has formulated India’s first ever Agricultural Export Policy with a focused plan to boost India’s agricultural exports to USD 60 billion by 2022.
Eco-Sensitive Zones
- The Supreme Court directed the Union Environment Ministry to declare 10 km area around 21 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across the country as ‘eco-sensitive zones’.
- The parks and sanctuaries are the
- Pobitora sanctuary in Assam;
- Hemis and Kishtewar national parks, Changthang, Hokersar,
- Trikuta sanctuaries in Jammu and Kashmir;
- Jogimatti, Thimlapura and Yadahalli Chinkara sanctuaries in Karnataka;
- Deolgaon Rehekuri and Thane Creek Flamingo sanctuaries and the Malvan marine sanctuary in Maharashtra;
- Siroi National Park and Khongjaingamba Ching sanctuary in Manipur;
- Baghmara Pitcher Plant sanctuary in Meghalaya;
- Fakim and Puliebadze and Rangapahar sanctuaries in Nagaland;
- Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar bird sanctuary and Pilibhit sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh and
- the Jorepokhri sanctuary in West Bengal.
OSIRIS/Bennu
- OSIRIS-REx, which flew last week within a scant 19 km of the asteroid Bennu some 2.25 million km from the earth, found traces of hydrogen and oxygen molecules — part of the recipe for water and thus the potential for life — embedded in the asteroid’s rocky surface.
- The probe, on a mission to return samples from the asteroid to earth for study, was launched in 2016.
- Bennu orbits the Sun at roughly the same distance as the earth.
- OSIRIS-REx will pass later this month just 1.9 km from Bennu.
- The spacecraft will later fly back to the earth, jettisoning a capsule bearing the asteroid specimen in September 2023.
Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action
Dozens of top fashion industry firms have pledged at the UN climate talks to reduce their combined greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030.
Oil
India is the third largest consumer of crude oil
