Guillotine Motion

• In legislative parlance, to “guillotine” means to put together and fast-track the passage of financial business.
• After the Budget is presented, Parliament goes into recess for about 3 weeks.
• During this time, the House Standing Committees examine Demands for Grants for various Ministries, and prepare reports.
• After Parliament reassembles, the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) draws up a schedule for discussions on the Demands for Grants.
• Given the limited time, the House cannot take up the expenditure demands of all Ministries.
• The BAC therefore identifies some important Ministries for discussions.
• Once the House is done with these debates, the Speaker applies the “guillotine”.
• This is to put to vote at once, all the other outstanding demands for grants that have not been discussed.
• This usually happens on the last day earmarked for the discussion on the Budget.
• The purpose is to ensure timely passage of the Finance Bill, marking the completion of the legislative exercise with regard to the Budget.

Recently, Uttar Pradesh Forest Department relocate a missing sarus crane from Mandka village in Amethi to Raebareli’s Samaspur Bird Sanctuary.

Sarus Crane

• The Sarus crane is the tallest flying bird in the world.
• It has three distinct populations in the Indian sub-continent, south-east Asia and northern Australia.
• In the Indian subcontinent, it is found in northern and central India, Terai Nepal and Pakistan.
• It is the official state bird of Uttar Pradesh.
• It is omnivorous, feeding on fish and insects, as well as roots and plants.
• It is India’s only resident breeding crane, as per the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI).
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has marked it as ‘vulnerable’ in its list of threatened species.
• It is currently listed in the Schedule IV of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
• The population of the Sarus crane, a bird distinguishable by its red upper neck and white collar, has gone up by 15-20% as compared to 2021-22 census in Ahmedabad.

The Australian government recently took a historical step with the referendum to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders recognition in the constitution.

Torres Strait

• Torres Strait, passage between the Coral Sea, on the east, and the Arafura Sea, in the western Pacific Ocean.
• To the north lies New Guinea and to the south Cape York Peninsula, Australia.
• It has many reefs and shoals dangerous to navigation, and its larger islands are inhabited.
• Discovered (1606) by the Spanish mariner Luis Vaez de Torres, its existence was kept secret until 1764, the strait that still bears his name.
• The second European to sail the strait (1774) was Capt. James Cook.
• The Australia–Papua New Guinea boundary is about 3 mi from the New Guinea shore.

Population

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a unique place in Australia as the original inhabitants of the land.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold distinctive rights as Australia’s First Peoples, set out in international law.
• Australia gave its formal support to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2009.
• However, despite some improvements in recent years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to be one of the most vulnerable groups in Australia.

“Naatu Naatu,” the musical centerpiece of the Telugu-language blockbuster RRR is just one example of “dappankuthu”.

Teen maar & Dappankuthu

• Dappankuthu (or simply Kuthu) is a folk dance and music genre with an emphasis on percussion performed in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
• Unlike classical Indian dances such as bharatanatyam or kathakali, dappankuthu is relatively informal in that it has no structured.
• It shares its emphasis on percussion with older folk dances of Tamil Nadu, such as kummi and kolattam.
• The genre has its origins in street music, when Dalit musicians in both cities played the frame drum at a fast pace to accompany festivals, funerals, or weddings.
• An instrument called Tharai thappattai in Tamil, without the jingles, is often used for dappankuthu or similar dance forms.
• Unlike normal tambourines, this requires a wooden stick to play.
• The crisp sound of the parai (Tamil) or daf (Telugu) frame drum is important for its performance.
• The rhythm of the dappankuthu is often signified by a mix of beat patterns layered and flowing into one another.
• Teen Maar dance is known since more than 100 years.
• It is a percussive form of dance music with roots in Hyderabad.
• It is a kind of music specially during drums (dappu) which is famous in Telangana.
• The genre has its origins from street music and was called as Dappankuthu in Tamil Nadu.

According to a new research, the terminator could be a good spot for hosting extra-terrestrial life.

Terminator zones

• In various exoplanets, which are outside our solar system, one side always continues to face the star around which they orbit and the other side remains permanently in darkness.
• The astronomers, in their study, found that there is a band around these planets.
• There is a possibility that the bands are harbouring liquid water which is the main ingredient for life.
• This band is called the Terminator Zone where the terminator acts as the dividing line between the day side and night side of the exoplanet.
• The scientists said that the water is likely to remain frozen on the cold night side and is likely to evaporate due to heat on the light dayside.
• On Earth, the terminator moves around over the course of a day, but on some planets it’s fixed in place called tidally locked planets.
• In Tidally locked planets, the same side always faces its star.