Changangkha Lhakhang
Category: International
- For centuries, parents of newborn children in the Thimphu valley have visited the Changangkha Lhakhang (temple).
- Parents bring their babies as young as four or five days old to be blessed by its deity.
- But a surge of tourist inflows into Bhutan this year has left parents and pilgrims jostling for space in the temple’s small inner sanctum.
- The crowds have sparked a major debate across the country that could mean tougher regulations for tourists from the region, especially India.
Balsams
Category: Environment
- Between 2010 and 2019, botanists and taxonomists working on Impatiens — a group of plants commonly known as Balsams or jewel-weeds — discovered 23 new species from the eastern Himalayas.
- Consisting of both annual and perennial herbs, balsams are succulent plants with high endemism.
- Because of their bright beautiful flowers, these group of plants are of prized horticultural significance.
- Of the 83 species described, 45 are from Arunachal Pradesh, 24 from Sikkim and 16 species common to both states
- Other than high endemism, what sets Impatiens apart is their sensitivity to climate change.
Workers
Category: Economy
- If labour rules are simplified, the country will experience a boom in formal employment, says ISF.
- The number of people in formal employment in India will grow only if the country’s archaic labour regulations, that are irrelevant in today’s context, are fully scrapped, says Indian Staffing Federation (ISF), a staffing industry apex body.
- The country has a total workforce of 463 million and 94% of them are informal workers employed with small and micro firms.
- These enterprises prefer to remain tiny (below 20 people) in order to stay away from the burden of unrealistic labour compliance demands.
- We have some 44 Central labour rules in addition to over 100 State-specific laws. Most of these regulations were written for India of a different era and therefore currently are not in use or are irrelevant to today’s conditions.
Saturn
Category: Sc/tech
- Data given by Cassini probe during its last rendezvous with Saturn show that Saturn has five small moons located in and around its rings.
- These accrete ring material and have distinct shapes.
- The rings are much younger than the planet, giving clues and placing constraints on models of how they formed.
