• The Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare launched the National Tele-consultation Centre (CoNTeC) recently.

CoNTeC

• The project CoNTeC, an acronym for COVID-19 National Tele-consultation Centre, has been conceptualized by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and has been implemented by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
• The CoNTeC is a Telemedicine Hub established by AIIMS, New Delhi, wherein expert doctors from various clinical domains will be available 24x7 to answer the multifaceted questions from specialists from all over the country.
• It is a multi-modal telecommunications hub through which 2 way audio-video and text communications can be undertaken from any part of the country as well as the world at large.
• The modes of communication will include simple mobile telephony as well as two way video communications, using WhatsApp, Skype and Google Duo.
• The CoNTeC is also fully integrated with the National Medical College Network (NMCN) to conduct a full-fledged Video Conference (VC) between the 50 Medical Colleges connected through the NMCN with its National Resource Centre located at SGPGI, Lucknow.
• The patient management advice offered will be standardized as per the national guidelines supplemented protocols developed by the team at AIIMS, nominated by the Director, AIIMS.

National Mission on Himalayan Studies (NMHS)

• It is a Central Sector Grant-in-aid Scheme.

• It targets to provide much needed focus, through holistic understanding of system's components and their linkages, in addressing the key issues relating to conservation and sustainable management of natural resources in Indian Himalayan Region (IHR).
• The ultimate goal is to improve quality of life and maintain ecosystem health of the region to ensure long- term ecological security to the country.
• As the Mission specifically targets the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), the jurisdiction of NMHS includes 10 Himalayan states fully (i.e., Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand) and two states partially (i.e., hill districts of Assam and West Bengal).
• The Mission strategy is to focus on enhancing livelihoods of local communities, in line with the National Environment Policy, 2006 of the Government, with a basic premise that the most secured and effective basis for conservation is to ensure that people dependent on particular resources obtain better livelihoods from the act of conservation than from the degradation of the resources.

Implementation

• The Scheme will be implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), and it will have its nodal and serving hub with G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment & Development (GBPIHED) with a fully dedicated Project Management Unit for the NMHS.
• To guide the overall implementation, a Steering Committee, Chaired by the Secretary MoEF&CC, is in place.

Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region

• It spreads over 3,500 square kilometers across eight countries including India, Nepal and China.

8 National Missions under NAPCC

1. National Solar Mission
2. National Water Mission
3. National Mission for a Green India
4. National Mission on Sustainable Habitat
5. National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture
6. National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency
7. National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change
8. National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-system

• March 26, 2020 marked the 45th anniversary of the entry into force of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)

• Convention on the Bacteriological/Biological and Toxin Weapons, commonly known as the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) or Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) was opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force on 26 March 1975.
• It is a legally binding treaty.
• It is the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of weapons of mass destruction.
• It effectively prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, retention, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons.

Parties

• India is a party to this Convention.
• It currently has 183 states-parties, including Palestine, and four signatories (Egypt, Haiti, Somalia, Syria, and Tanzania).
• Ten states have neither signed nor ratified the BWC (Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Israel, Kiribati, Micronesia, Namibia, South Sudan and Tuvalu).

• The Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) has cancelled the 49th edition of IHGF – Delhi Fair Spring-2020in view of present status of COVID-19 in India and abroad.

Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH)

• It is a non-profit organization, established under the EXIM policy of Government of India in the year 1986-87.
• It works under the aegis of Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Ministry of Textiles, Government of India.
• It has created necessary infrastructure as well as marketing and information facilities, which are availed both by the member exporters and importers.
• The Council is engaged in promotion of handicrafts from India and project India’s image abroad as a reliable supplier of high quality handicrafts.
• The Council is run and managed by team of professionals headed by Executive Director.
• The Committee of Administration consists of eminent exporters, professionals.
• The Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts has a rarest distinction of being considered as MODEL COUNCIL that is self-sustaining and where all the promotional activities are self-financed.

• A recent study by scientists of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has proved that Himalayan Ibex is a distinct species from the Siberian Ibex.
• The genetic analysis conducted with the inclusion of the sequences available from all across the distribution ranges in Central Asia, Tajikistan, Altai Mountains, Mongolia and Russia provided first evidence to claim that Himalayan Ibex is genetically different from all other ranges of Siberian Ibex.

Himalayan Ibex

• It is distributed in the trans-Himalayan ranges of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.

Siberian Ibex (Capra sibirica)

• Siberian Ibex is a species of wild goat and is distributed in diverse habitats, ranging from cold deserts, rocky outcrops, steep terrain, high-land flats and mountain ridges to low mountains and foothills.
• From Mongolia, its distribution extends towards Altai, Hangai, Gobi-Altai, the Hurukh mountain ranges as well as Sayan Mountains near Russia and scattered populations in the small mountains of Trans-Altai Gobi.