Sloth bear

• Recently the first World Sloth Bear Day was observed on 12th October.
• To generate awareness and strengthen conservation efforts around the unique bear species endemic to the Indian subcontinent.
• It is small and usually black, with a long shaggy coat, especially over the shoulders.
• It has a distinctive whitish or yellowish chest patch in the shape of a wide U or a Y if the lower part of the white hairs extend down the chest.
• It is found in forested areas and in grasslands, predominantly at lower elevations.
• It is found in India and Sri Lanka but they have also been reported from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan.
• It is classified as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List.
• It is endemic to the Indian sub-continent and 90% of the species population is found in India.

NASA's Dragonfly Mission

• It is a rotorcraft scheduled to reach the Selk Crater region on Saturn’s moon Titan in the year 2034.
• First time NASA will fly a multi-rotor vehicle for science on another planet.
• It has eight rotors and flies like a large drone and will take advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere four times denser than Earth.
• Titan is the Saturn's largest moon and an icy world whose surface is completely obscured by a golden hazy atmosphere.
• It is the second largest moon in our solar system were Only Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger, by just 2 percent.
• It is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it’s the only world besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid, including rivers, lakes and seas, on its surface.
• Dragonfly took advantage of 13 years’ worth of Cassini data to choose a calm weather period to land, along with a safe initial landing site and scientifically interesting targets.

Cassini

• It is a joint NASA-European space agency mission.
• Cassini-Huygens is an unmanned spacecraft sent to the planet Saturn in 2004.
• It is the fourth space probe to visit Saturn (pioneer 11, Voyager1, Voyager 2) and the first to enter orbit.
• Its design includes a Saturn Orbiter and a Lander called “Huygens” for the moon Titan.
• This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer solar system.
• The spacecraft is heading into its final months; it begins its last journey orbiting the planet and its rings before its mission finally ends with a crash into Saturn’s atmosphere in September.

Section 66A Information Technology Act

• Recently, Supreme Court directed that no person should be prosecuted under Sec 66A of Information Technology Act.
• SC stated the section relating to restrictions on online speech was declared unconstitutional.
• Also stated on grounds of violating the freedom of speech guaranteed under Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution of India.
• The court directed that the Director Generals of Police and Home Secretaries of all States to ensure that reference to Section 66A is removed from all pending cases.
• Previously Under this act, it was said that a person posting offensive messages could be imprisoned for up to three years and also fined.
• The Supreme Court in its landmark judgment in 2015 in the matter of Shreya Singhal Vs. Union of India, had struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Article 19(1) in the Constitution of India 1949

• All citizens shall have the right

• 19(1) (a) to freedom of speech and expression.
• 19(1) (b) to assemble peaceably and without arms.
• 19(1) (c) to form associations or unions.
• 19(1) (d) to move freely throughout the territory of India.
• 19(1) (e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India.
• 19(1) (f) has been omitted now.
• 19 (1) (g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.

China plus-one strategy

• It is a strategy to avoid companies investing only in China and diversify their businesses to alternative destinations.
• Western companies have invested heavily in China, attracted by its low labour and production costs.
• Later grouping of 18 economies, including India, the US, and the European Union, unveiled a roadmap for establishing collective supply chains that would be resilient in the long term.
• The roadmap also included steps to counter supply chain dependencies and vulnerabilities as a part of the overall China-plus-one strategy.
• Apart from marginal gains in the machinery sector, India, however, did not significantly benefit from this trade diversion.
• India’s declining participation in global value chains has been one of the reasons.
• India has also been hesitant in forging preferential trade agreements and away from regional trading arrangements.
• India must reorient its trade policy to take advantage of the increasingly popular China-plus-one strategy.

Quantum Entanglement

• The idea of quantum entanglement dates back to the very foundations of quantum mechanics, which began with Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr and Erwin Schrodinge.
• Recently the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their work in quantum entanglement.
• It is a counterintuitive phenomenon that explains how two subatomic particles can be intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light years of space.
• Despite their vast separation, a change induced in one will affect the other, if both are quantum entangled.
• The most widely used application of quantum entanglement is in cryptography.
• It can be observed in subatomic particles such as photons, electrons, and neutrinos. 
• For more details – click here.