{FORMERLY TIMES IAS ACADEMY}

CURRENT AFFAIRS DAILY

COMPILATION

PRELIMS – 06.07.2020

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 INDEX

S.No News Source

CHINA MAKES NEW CLAIM IN EASTERN The Hindu

1
BORDER WITH BHUTAN

MOON IS MORE METALLIC THAN THOUGHT Indian Express

2
BEFORE

STATES’ GRAIN OFFTAKE FOR APRIL-JUNE The Hindu

3
DOUBLES

ISSUE COMPULSORY LICENSES FOR The Hindu

4
REMDESIVIR

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1. CHINA MAKES NEW CLAIM IN EASTERN BORDER WITH BHUTAN
• With China making new territorial claims in its eastern border with Bhutan, there is
considerable disquiet in Delhi.
• Beijing made this claim while
objecting to a request to develop
the Sakteng wildlife sanctuary in
eastern Bhutan’s Trashigang
district at an online meeting of the
Global Environment Facility
(GEF).
• Set up in 1992, GEF is a US-based
global body to finance projects in the environment sector.
• Bhutan objected to the Chinese claim, and the GEF council passed the project for
funding. The GEF, according to sources, rejected the Chinese claim and approved the
project — but the views of both parties were reflected in the minutes.
• Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary is an integral and sovereign territory of Bhutan and at
no point during the boundary discussions between Bhutan and China has it featured as
a disputed area.
• The sanctuary, located in the easternmost part of Bhutan, covers 650 sq km, and has
not been disputed by China in the past.
• The boundary between China and Bhutan has never been delimited. There have been
disputes over the eastern, central and western sectors for a long time, and there are no
new disputed areas.
• China always stands for a negotiated package solution to the China-Bhutan boundary
issue.
• Bhutan and China had disputed areas in only two points — north and west.
• This has been widely known, as per the 24 rounds of border talks between 1984 and
2016.
• There hasn’t been any meeting between the two countries since 2017 when the Doklam
border stand-off put it off.
• Since India already has a border dispute with Nepal on the Kalapani area, many in
Delhi see this as China opening a new front.

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 • Sakteng was not in disputed areas identified and jointly surveyed by Bhutan and
China in western and central sectors.

Global Environment Facility

✓ The Global Environment Facility was established in October 1991 as a pilot

program with the World Bank to assist in the protection of the global
environment and
to promote
environmental
sustainability
development.
✓ It was restructured
and become a
permanent,
separate
institution in
1992 during the
Rio Earth Summit with objectives to help tackle our planet’s most pressing
environmental problems.
2. MOON IS MORE METALLIC THAN THOUGHT BEFORE
• In a new milestone in lunar exploration, NASA said that it’s Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft had found evidence that the Moon’s subsurface might have
greater quantities of metals such as iron and titanium than thought before.
• The metallic distribution was observed by the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF)
instrument aboard the LRO.
• In order to understand the origins of the Moon, scientists have for years explored the
presence of metal deposits on the satellite comparative to Earth.
• Out on a mission to look for ice in polar lunar craters, the LRO’s Mini-RF instrument
was measuring an electrical property within lunar soil in crater floors in the Moon’s
northern hemisphere.
• The property, known as the dielectric constant, is the ratio of the electric
permeability of a material to the electric permeability of a vaccum.

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 • The Mini-RF team observed that the level of this property increased as they surveyed
larger craters, and kept rising in crater sizes up to 5 km in diameter.
• The dielectric constant increased in larger craters because the meteors that created
them dug up dust containing iron and titanium oxides from beneath the Moon’s surface.
• Dielectric properties are directly linked to the concentration of these metal minerals.
• The Mini-RF findings were backed by metal oxide maps from the LRO Wide-Angle
Camera, Japan’s Kaguya mission and NASA’s Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which
showed that larger craters with their increased dielectric material were also richer
in metals.
• The maps suggested that more quantities of iron and titanium oxides were dug up
from 0.5 to 2 km below the Moon’s surface as compared from the first 0.2 to 0.5 km.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

✓ NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has observed water molecules

moving around the dayside of Moon, an advance that could help us learn
about the accessibility of water that can be used by humans in future lunar
missions.
✓ Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP), the instrument aboard LRO
measured sparse layer of molecules temporarily stuck to the Moon’s surface,
which helped characterise lunar hydration changes over the course of a day.
3. STATES’ GRAIN OFFTAKE FOR APRIL-JUNE DOUBLES
• Relief measures being implemented in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have
paved the way for States and Union Territories in the country to draw more than
double the quantity of rice for distribution during April to June this year, compared
to the corresponding period last year.
• In the corresponding three months of 2019, the total amount of rice lifted by the States
and Union Territories from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) under the Centre’s
various schemes was 90.71 lakh tonnes.
• After the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central government had announced
that Priority Household (PHH) and Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) cardholders
in the country, regarded as the poor, would receive free additional entitlement of 5 kg
per person per month, initially for three months (April to June) and now up to
November.

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 • This was in addition to their entitlement under the National Food Security Act
(NFSA).
• The Centre also came up with a scheme for providing wheat and rice to ration
cardholders not covered under the NFSA or non-priority household (NPHH)
cardholders at the rate of ₹21 per kg and ₹22 per kg respectively.

National Food Security Act

✓ The enactment of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on 5th July 2013
marks a paradigm shift in
the approach to food
security from welfare to a
rights based approach.
✓ The Act legally entitled upto
75% of the rural population
and 50% of the urban
population to receive
subsidized food grains under
the Targeted Public
Distribution System.
✓ Under it, the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY - launched in 2000) households,
which constitute the poorest of the poor, continue to receive 35 Kgs of
foodgrains per household per month.
✓ Households having Priority Households (PHH) ration cards are issued 8 kgs
i.e. 5 and 3 Kgs of rice monthly per beneficiaries at the rate of Rs.3 and Rs.15
respectively.
✓ 5 kgs is Central Scheme under National Security Act-2013 and 3 kgs is the
state scheme.
✓ It targets the poor and vulnerable sections of the society such as landless
laborers, marginal farmers and wage earners of the informal sections of the
economy.

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4. ISSUE COMPULSORY LICENSES FOR REMDESIVIR
• The Polit Bureau of the CPI (Marxist) said the government should issue compulsory
licences for the manufacture of a generic version of Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug
being used to treat COVID-19 patients.
• The government should invoke Clause 92 of the Patent Act that allows it to issue
compulsory licences so that Indian manufacturers can produce a more affordable
generic version.
• The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had sped up the approval process for
using Remdesivir, with the U.S. buying up the stocks and the high cost.
• India is one of the largest generic drug manufacturers in the world, there should be
no reason why this drug cannot be made available rapidly and at affordable prices to
the Indian people.

Compulsory Licensing

✓ Compulsory Licensing (CL) allows governments to license third parties (that

is, parties other than the patent holders) to produce and market a patented
product or process without the consent of patent owners.
✓ Any time after three years from date of sealing of a patent, application for
compulsory license can be made, provided:
o Reasonable requirements of public have not been satisfied;
o Patented invention is not available to public at a reasonably affordable
price;
o Patented inventions are not carried out in India.
✓ Compulsory Licencing is regulated under the Indian Patent Act, 1970.
✓ The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS
Agreement) does not specifically list the reasons that might be used to justify
compulsory licensing.
✓ However, the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health confirms that
countries are free to determine the grounds for granting compulsory
licences, and to determine what constitutes a national emergency.

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