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The High Court of Karnataka on Wednesday quashed the State Government’s 2019 notification of handing over Yelahanka Puttenahalli Lake Bird Conservation Reserve to the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for maintenance.

ABOUT THE LAKE

• 10-hectare water body
• On Doddaballapur Road
• Managed by Forest Department
• Houses many Trees
• Famous for the migratory birds roosting at the lake
• Upstream merges with Attur Lake and down stream Yelahanka Lake Wet land between the Puttenahalli and Yelahanka
• Provide ample food for the birds.
• Natural purifier for the water that reaches the Yelahanka Lake.
• Prominent because more than 7,000 birds can be sighted during the breeding season
• 'Avifauna' of this lake also includes some of the endangered and migratory birds from the Northern Himalayas and Siberia.
• Many species which are listed under threatened category of (IUCN) find this lake as their favorite abode during breeding season.

WHAT DID COURT SAY -  Chief Wildlife Warden is the competent authority to control, manage and maintain the bird conservation reserve

HOW DOES CHIEF WILDLIFE WARDEN GET POWER - Wildlife Protection Act

SALIENT FEATURES OF WILDLIFE PROTECTION ACT

• Provides for the protection of a listed species of animals, birds, and plants, and also for the establishment of a network of ecologically-important protected areas in the country.
• Provides for the formation of wildlife advisory boards, wildlife wardens, specifies their powers and duties, etc.
• Helped India become a party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
• A comprehensive list of the endangered wildlife of the country was prepared.
• Prohibited the hunting of endangered species.
• Scheduled animals are prohibited from being traded as per the Act’s provisions.
• Provides for licenses for the sale, transfer, and possession of some wildlife species.
• Establishment of wildlife sanctuaries, national parks, etc.
• Provisions paved the way for the formation of the Central Zoo Authority. This is the central body responsible for the oversight of zoos in India. It was established in 1992.
• Created six schedules which gave varying degrees of protection to classes of flora and fauna.
• Provided for the establishment of the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

'Grama One' service was launched in 100 villages in Karnataka's Davanagere district as a pilot project and now it is expected to be launched in more villages by the e-governance department and revenue department.

 ABOUT THE SCHEME

• Similar to ‘Bangalore One’ and ‘Karnataka One’ centres
• Will be opened at various villages in the state to provide government services under one roof in villages
• Launched in 100 villages in Davanagere district as a pilot project in November last year and now it is expected to be launched in more villages by the e-governance department and revenue department.
• People can avail services at Grama One offices by eliminating middlemen.
• Envisaged to be a single-point assistance centre for all citizen-centric activities at the village level which include G2C services, banking services, RTI queries and so on
• Serve as a platform for registration for skill development training for youth.

ENVIRONMENT & GEOGRAPHY

• Nuclear Energy is the energy in the nucleus or core of an atom
• Nuclear energy is released
  • By splitting the atom - Nuclear Fission
  • By joining 2 atoms to one – Nuclear Fusion​

NUCLEAR ENERGY TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY

• A nuclear reactor
  • Is a power plant that can control nuclear fission to produce electricity
  • Uranium is used as fuel.
• Atoms of uranium are split, which creates fission products which cause other uranium atoms to split, thus creating a chain reaction
• The energy from this chain reaction is released in the form of heat. This heat is used to warm the nuclear reactors cooling agent, which results in the formation of steam.
• This steam turns the turbines, which drive the engines or generators to produce electricity.
• Argonne National Laboratory was the first nuclear reactor to produce electricity, it was located in Idaho, USA. It was in the year 1951.​

BACKGROUND

• Interest groups claim nuclear energy is emission-free
• Austrian consulting firm ENCO looked favorably at the possible future role of nuclear in the Netherlands.
• The main factors for its choice were reliability and security of supply, with no CO2 emission
• At COP26, environmental initiative Scientists for Future (S4F) said “Taking into account the current overall energy system, nuclear energy is by no means CO2 neutral,”​

IS NUCLEAR POWER A ZERO-EMISSIONS ENERGY SOURCE

• Nuclear energy is also responsible for greenhouse gas emissions
• In fact, no energy source is completely free of emissions, but more on that later.
• Uranium extraction, transport and processing produces emissions.
• Long and complex construction process of nuclear power plants also releases CO2, as does the demolition of decommissioned sites.
• Nuclear waste also has to be transported and stored under strict conditions — here, too, emissions must be taken into account.​

HOW MUCH CO2 DOES NUCLEAR POWER PRODUCE

• Results vary significantly
• Factors need to be considered - process of electricity generation the entire life cycle of a nuclear power plant.
• A report released in 2014 by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, estimated a range of 3.7 to 110 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (kWh).
• Nuclear plants generate an average of 66 grams of CO2/kWh
• New power plants, for example, generate more CO2 during construction than those built in previous decades, due to stricter safety regulations.​

HOW CLIMATE-FRIENDLY IS NUCLEAR COMPARED TO OTHER ENERGIES

• If the entire life cycle of a nuclear plant is included in the calculation, nuclear energy certainly comes out ahead of fossil fuels like coal or natural gas.
• According to new but still unpublished data from the state-run German Environment Agency (UBA) as well as the WISE figures, nuclear power releases 3.5 times more CO2 per kilowatt-hour than photovoltaic solar panel systems.
• Compared with onshore wind power, that figure jumps to 13 times more CO2. When up against electricity from hydropower installations, nuclear generates 29 times more carbon.​

NUCLEAR ENERGY TO HELP STOP GLOBAL WARMING?

• Nuclear power plants are called “modern and clean.”
• Plant construction times are too long and the costs too high to have a noticeable effect on climate change. It takes too long for nuclear energy to become available.
• Nuclear power plants are about four times as expensive as wind or solar, and take five times as long to build
• 15-to-20 years of lead time for a new nuclear plant
• World needed to get greenhouse gases under control within a decade
• In the next 10 years, nuclear power won’t be able to make a significant contribution
• Combination of excessive costs, environmental consequences and lack of public support were all arguments against nuclear power.
• Due to the high costs associated with nuclear energy, it also blocks important financial resources that could instead be used to develop renewable energ
• In addition, nuclear energy itself has been affected by climate change. During the world’s increasingly hot summers, several nuclear power plants have already had to be temporarily shut down or taken off the grid. Power plants depend on nearby water sources to cool their reactors, and with many rivers drying up, those sources of water are no longer guaranteed.

SPORTS

Lionel Messi won Ballon d’Or award

ABOUT

• The Ballon d'Or - "Golden Ball"- is an annual football award presented by French news magazine France Football that is one of the oldest and generally regarded as the most prestigious individual award for football players
• Awarded since 1956, although between 2010 and 2015
• An agreement was made with FIFA, and the award was temporarily merged with the FIFA World Player of the Year (founded in 1991) and known as the FIFA Ballon d'Or. However, the partnership ended in 2016, and the award reverted to the Ballon d'Or, while FIFA also reverted to its own separate annual award The Best FIFA Men's Player.
• The recipients of the joint FIFA Ballon d'Or are considered as winners by both award organisations.
• Conceived by sports writer Gabriel Hanot, the Ballon d'Or award honours the male player deemed to have performed the best over the previous year, based on voting by football journalists, from 1956 to 2006

World AIDS Day is observed across the globe on 1st December every year since 1988.

DETAILS

• Celebrated by UNAIDS
• Theme for the 2021 - “ Ending the HIV Epidemic: Equitable Access, Everyone’s Voice ”
• Activities
  • Entire day is dedicated to people with HIV/AIDS
  • Awareness creation campaigns, media events, health walks and marathons by various agencies.
  • The ubiquitous global representation of HIV/AIDS is in the form of a crossed red ribbon.
  • Volunteers carry out many marches by wearing the red ribbons as a show of support for the victims.​

MAHITI FOR PRELIMS

AIDS

• Deadly condition in which the affected person’s immune system fails, leading to the spread of life-threatening infections and cancers in his body.
• Demolishes a particular type of WBC (White Blood Cells) and the T-helper cells(also known as CD4 cells)
• The average survival period for a person affected  without treatment is nine to eleven years, subject to the subtype of HIV.
• Occur by the transference of blood, breast milk, vaginal fluid, semen, or pre-ejaculate.
• A weak immune system makes a person prone to opportunistic infections and cancer.
• It becomes difficult for a person infected with this virus to recover from even a minor injury or sickness. By receiving treatment, a severe form of HIV can be prevented.

• Karnataka Forest Department has deployed a sniffer dog to detect wildlife crimes in Biligiri Ranganathaswamy Temple (BRT) Tiger Reserve in Chamarajanagar. The German Shepherd named Jhansi underwent a seven-month training at Chandigarh by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force.
• Gujarat has pipped Maharashtra to emerge the largest manufacturing hub in the country
• The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has formulated a scheme “SMILE – Support for Marginalized Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise”, which includes sub-scheme – “Comprehensive Rehabilitation of persons engaged in the act of Begging”. This scheme covers several comprehensive measures including welfare measures for persons, who are engaged in the act of begging. The focus of the scheme is extensively on rehabilitation, provision of medical facilities, counseling, basic documentation, education, skill development, economic linkages and so on.
• As part of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ – to celebrate 75 years of Independence, REC Limited, a public infrastructure finance company under the Ministry of Power organized a ‘Bijli Utsav’ yesterday in Sonapur village of Kamrup district and adjoining villages in Assam