Trade Policy Review (TPR)

• It is an important mechanism under the WTO‘s monitoring function.
• It was an early result of the Uruguay Round.
• The objectives of the TPRM, as expressed in Annex 3 of the Marrakesh Agreement, include facilitating the smooth functioning of the multilateral trading system by enhancing the transparency of Members’ trade policies.

• All WTO Members are subject to review under the TPRM.
• The Annex mandates that the four Members with the largest shares of world trade (currently the European Union, the United States, Japan and China) be reviewed each three years, the next 16 be reviewed each five years, and others be reviewed each seven years.
• A longer period may be fixed for least developed country Members.
• Reviews are conducted by the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB) on the basis of a policy statement by the Member under review and a report prepared by economists in the Secretariat’s Trade Policy Review Division.

• Arunachal Pradesh is likely to become India’s prime producer of vanadium.
• Exploration being carried out by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) has placed the eastern Himalayan State on the vanadium map of the country.

Vanadium

• It is a high-value metal used in strengthening steel and titanium.
• India is a significant consumer of vanadium, but is not a primary producer of the strategic metal.
• It is recovered as a by-product from the slag collected from the processing of vanadiferous magnetite ores (iron ore).
• India consumed 4% of about 84,000 tonnes of vanadium produced across the globe in 2017.
• China, which produces 57% of the world’s vanadium, consumed 44% of the metal.

TOI-561b

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered an exo-planet in the Milky Way galaxy.
• Researchers believe it is 10 billion years old, more than twice as old as our Sun.
• The planet named TOI-561b orbiting outside our solar system is 1.5 times the size of the Earth, has more mass than Earth, but almost the same density.
• The planet orbits around its sun, which is located in the galactic thick disk, very quickly and completes it in about 12 hours.

Transiting Exo-planet Survey Satellite (TESS)

• It is an MIT-led NASA mission to spend two years discovering transiting exo-planets by an all-sky survey.
• TESS has four identical, highly optimized, red-sensitive, wide-field cameras that together can monitor a 24 degree by 90 degree strip of the sky.

India’s Artic Policy

• India has unveiled a new draft Arctic policy that and is committed to expanding scientific research, sustainable tourism and mineral oil and gas exploration in the Arctic region.
• The draft policy discusses the importance of understanding the impact of climate change in the Arctic region and its connection with India’s monsoon, which is crucial for its economy.
• India also proposes to focus on vast resources of the Arctic region including hydrocarbons, minerals and renewable power to ensure its energy security.
• The policy is cautious in framing its involvement in the Arctic as common heritage of mankind but its priorities are similar to that of other non-Arctic states.
• This policy roadmap draft rides on five pillars:
  1. Science and research activities,
  2. Economic and human development cooperation,
  3. Transportation and connectivity,
  4. Governance and international cooperation, and
  5. National capacity building.

• The first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons has entered into force.
• It is an historic step marred by the lack of signatures from the world’s major nuclear powers.

Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)

• In July 2017, the UN negotiating conference had adopted the legally binding Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
• As its name suggests, the treaty limits signatories to not develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive device.
• When the treaty was approved, more than 120 approved it.
• But none of the nine countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel supported it, and neither did the 30-nation NATO alliance.
• Japan, the world’s only country to suffer nuclear attacks, also does not support the treaty.
• Japan on its own renounces the use and possession of nuclear weapons, but the government has said pursuing a treaty ban is not realistic with nuclear and non-nuclear states so sharply divided over it.
• With the UN nuclear ban treaty entering into force, India also reiterated that it is neither party to nor bound by any obligations of the international pact.

• The Framework for Strategic Partnership was signed between the International Energy Agency (IEA) members and the Government of India.
• The development comes at a time when international energy markets have been volatile and amid rising tensions between China and India, the world’s second and third largest crude oil importers.

Strategic Partnership Framework

• It will strengthen mutual trust and cooperation & enhance global energy security, stability and sustainability.
• This partnership will lead to an extensive exchange of knowledge and would be a stepping stone towards India becoming a full member of the IEA.
• The contents of the Strategic partnership will be jointly decided by IEA members and India.

Sudden Stratospheric Warming

• The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere from around 10 km to 50 km above the Earth’s surface.
• It is a rapid warming (up to about 50 °C in just a couple of days), between 10 km and 50 km above the earth’s surface.
• SSW is related to the behaviour of the stratospheric polar vortex, a fast blowing band of winds that forms over the Arctic region during the winter due to reduced solar radiation.
• During SSW the winds in the stratosphere can reverse from westerly to easterly.
• Thus, SSW are a natural atmospheric fluctuation, not caused by climate change.
• The weather in the atmospheric layers above the stratosphere mesosphere and thermosphere also get affected by SSW.
• This is a cause of concern for satellite navigation and other space based human endeavours.
• SSW doesn’t happen every year, and it doesn’t always affect weather when it does.

Introduction of Cheetah in the Wild

• The translocation of African Cheetah is a part of Government of India to reintroduce the fastest land animal in India after extinction of the Asiatic cheetah in the 1950s.
• A Supreme Court-appointed committee has found following sites for translocation of cheetahs because of an appropriate geophysical feature of forests.

1. Kuno National Park, Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary and Gandhi Sagar-Chittorgarh in Madhya Pradesh
2. Bhainsrogarh Sanctuary in Rajasthan.

• The areas are well protected and have well-managed grassland.
• The cheetah will be introduced on an experimental basis in the best suitable habitat to see whether it can adapt to Indian conditions.

Department of Official Language

• It was set up in June 1975 as an independent Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
• It was created with a view to ensuring compliance of the constitutional and legal provisions regarding official language and to promote the use of Hindi for the official purposes of the Union.

• The United Kingdom abolished 5% Value Added Tax (VAT) on women’s sanitary products, often referred to as the tampon tax in 2021.
• It now joins the list of countries which have already eliminated this tax, which includes India, Australia and Canada.
• India scrapped its 12% tax on all sanitary products in 2018.
• In 2020, Scotland became the first country in the world to make period products free of cost to those who need them.

Click here to download Monthly Prestorming Compilation of January 2021