Table of Contents
Can Trump ‘roll back the Persians’?
- Sanctions will hit almost all of Iran’s vital business sectors: energy, shipbuilding, shipping and banking
- Iran nuclear deal has never been famous amongst conservatives in USA and its allies like Israel & Saudi Arabia.
- What if Iran will become economically powerful? It will be a tough situation for Israel & Saudi.
- France’s Total, Italy’s ENI and Germany’s Daimler have already announced plans to pull back from projects in Iran.
- Catch-22 situation
- A year after the revolution, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, backed by Gulf monarchies and the West, attacked Iran.
- They expected the war to overthrow the revolutionary regime; instead, it helped the Ayatollahs consolidate their position within the country.
- Doctrine of forward defence: launched to overcome its conventional power deficit.
- Hezbollah in Lebanon
- a regime in Syria that’s completely dependent on it
- influential political allies in Iraq
- Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen
- Cornering Iran may lead to hardliner coming in power.
‘We should be free’
- A total of 1.5 million Indian troops served in the Indian Army during the First World War.
- The Indian Army in fact served in what are now some 50 countries, more than any other army of 1914-18.
- A tiny minority of the Indian soldiers did write diaries and memoirs of their war.
- In the 1970s, a team led by the American historian, DeWitt Ellinwood, interviewed a number of the last surviving Indian veterans of the First World War.
- “We were slaves, ”
Protect the little helpers
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- Across India’s agrarian plains, plantations and orchards, millions of birds, bats and insects toil to pollinate (परागण करना) crops.
- However, many of these thousands of species may be in dangerous decline.
- Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES):
- pollinators lead to huge agricultural economic gains
- contribution in India to be $0.831-1.5 billion annually for just six vegetable crops
- Nearly 70% of tropical crop species are dependent on pollinators for optimal yields.
- Effects of disappearing pollinators
- JnK apple production
- North India mustard production
- 2014-15, the U.S. had established a Pollinator Health Task Force and a national strategy that focussed on increasing the monarch butterfly population and planting native species and flowers in more than 28,000 sq km to attract pollinators.
- Around the same time, the U.K. developed 23 key policy actions under its National Pollinator Strategy.
- Apart from promoting organic farming and lowering pesticide usage, landscape management is key.
- The EU Pollinators’ Initiative adopted in June can provide pointers to India, particularly a policy of direct payment support to farmers to provide buffer strips for pollinators for nectarand pollen-rich plants.
- India has millions of hectares of reserve forests, some of which have been converted to pulpwood plantations. Much of this can be restored to become thriving homes for pollinators.
- The same can be done in gram panchayat levels. Fallow areas and government land can be used to plant flowering species for pollinators.
Ripples of discord
- On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) made the Nobel prize winning detection of gravitational waves.
- These waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time, arising from the merger of a pair of black holes in distant space, and their detection had been a longtime pursuit of physics.
- Science makes progress — in leaps and bounds, with thoughtful critiques and interventions in between.
Important News
- Kerala deportee reveals IS secrets
- Blasts rock Chhattisgarh red zone on poll eve, BSF SI dies
- Rajapaksa joins SLPP, weakens Sirisena-led SLFP
- Burial urn of Megalithic era unearthed in Kerala
- Findings would shed light on life in the prehistoric era on the western side of the Western Ghats.
- The urn is said to be the largest one unearthed from the region so far.
- Burial urns belonged to 1,00 BCE and 500 BCE.
Financial News
- RBI seeks time to reply to CIC notice
- Slapped with a show cause notice to its Governor Urijit Patel from the CIC, the Reserve Bank of India has sought time till November 26 from the commission for furnishing its response.
- Lend more to industry: Jaitley
- Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday asked public sector banks to step up lending to the industrial sector as it is their ‘primary responsibility,’ besides ‘partnering infrastructure creation’.
- ‘We are working towards making Odisha global hub for industries in some sectors’
- Claiming to have achieved all-round development over the last 20 years, Odisha has invited global investors to invest in the eastern State and benefit.
- Inaugurating the five-day second edition of the Make In Odisha Conclave in Bhubaneswar, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said, “Come and discover the enormous business and growth opportunities that Odisha offers and the allround development of the State in the last two decades.
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