DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS

Houthi attacks on tankers passing through the Bab-el-Mandeb has disrupted one of the busiest global shipping lanes, dragging the U.S. deeper into the conflict.

• Red Sea – A narrow strip of water extending for about 1,200 miles.
• Geography – It extends between the Mediterranean Sea, to the north-west, and the Indian Ocean, to the south-east.
  • In north, it separates into the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez and in south, it is connected to the Gulf of Aden, and the outer Indian Ocean, via the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb.
• 6 bordering countries – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti.
• Physiography – It lies in a fault depression that separates 2 great blocks, Arabia and North Africa and its height can reach more than 6,560 feet above sea level, with the highest in the south.
• Higher salinity – It has high evaporation, low precipitation and has no major freshwater inflow.
• Resources – It is high in nutrient, planktons and also has 5 major types of mineral resources (petroleum deposits, evaporite deposits, sulfur, phosphates, and the heavy-metal deposits).
• Sea Route – It is a part of an important trade route connecting Europe to Asia (through Suez Canal).

Bab-el-Mandeb

• It is a strait that separates the Arabian Peninsula from East Africa and is just 29-km wide at its narrowest point.
• It is a strategically important strait.
• Control – Throughout 19th and until mid-20th century, Britain protected it through the island of Perim (Mayyum) in the Strait but in 1990, it came under the control of Sana’a, the capital of the united country of Yemen.
• As Houthis captured Sana’a in 2015, they pose a greater threat due to their close proximity to Bab el-Mandeb strait.

It is also know by the names Gateway of Tears and Gatway of Grief.

Panama Canal

Two important shipping routes the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal are facing blockages.

• It is a lock-type canal, owned and administered by the Republic of Panama.

Lock-type canal is a system in which an enclosure or basin located in the course of a canal or a river (or in the vicinity of a dock) with gates at each end, within which the water level may be varied to raise or lower boats.

• The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama.

Panama Canal is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal.

• From its opening in 1914 until 1979, the Panama Canal was controlled solely by the United States, which built it.
• In 1979, however, control of the canal passed to the Panama Canal Commission, a joint agency of the United States and the Republic of Panama, and complete control passed to Panama in 1999.
• The Panama Canal lies at a latitude of 9° N, at a point where the North American Continental Divide dips to one of its lowest points.
• The canal does not cross the isthmus from east to west but runs due south from its entrance at Colón on the Atlantic side through the Gatún Locks to a point in the widest portion of Gatún Lake.

Traffic through the Panama Canal is a barometer of world trade, rising in times of world economic prosperity and declining in times of recession.

Suez Canal

• It is a sea-level waterway running north-south across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt to connect to the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
• The canal separates the African continent from Asia, and it provides the shortest maritime route between Europe and the lands lying around the Indian and western Pacific oceans.
• The canal extends between Port Said in the north and Suez in the south, with dredged approach channels north of Port Said, into the Mediterranean, and south of Suez.
• To the west of the canal is the low-lying delta of the Nile River, and to the east is the higher, rugged, and arid Sinai Peninsula.
• The Suez Canal is an open cut canal system without the locks system.

The Pir Panjal (South) in the Jammu sector has in recent months, witnessed more operational activity and presence of terrorists.

• It is located in the northern Indian subcontinent.
• The Pir Panjal Range is part of the Western Himalayas and is principally in the disputed Kashmir region.
• It extends from the Nilam (Kishanganga) River in the western Azad Kashmir area, through southwestern Jammu & Kashmir union territory, to the upper Beas River in northwestern Himachal Pradesh.

Azad Kashmir is an area administered by Pakistan.

• Rising sharply to an average elevation of more than 13,000 feet, it separates the Jammu Hills to the south from the Vale of Kashmir, beyond which lie the Great Himalayas.
• Passes - The major passes through the range include the Pir Panjal and Banihal.
• A highway tunnel near Banihal Pass makes the Vale of Kashmir accessible to traffic from the south, even in winter.
• The mountains extending to the north of the Nilam River in Pakistan are sometimes considered part of the range.

Recently, IFC-IOR marked its 5th anniversary and it also played key role in the backend in tackling vessel hijacking episode near Gulf of Aden.

• Established by – The government of India at Gurugram in 2018 and is hosted by the Indian Navy.

IFC-IOR is located within the premises of the Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC), the nodal agency for maritime data fusion.

• Tagline – Collaboration for Safety and Security.
• Aims – To strengthen maritime security in Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and beyond by acting as a maritime security information sharing hub for the region.
• Vision – To advance maritime safety through information sharing, cooperation and expertise development.
• Mission – To be a nodal centre of excellence for promoting maritime safety towards a peaceful, stable and prosperous IOR.
• Maritime domain – Piracy & Armed Robbery, Contraband Smuggling, IUU Fishing, Irregular Human Migration and other maritime incidents.
• Reports - Weekly, Half-Yearly, Annual, Weather Forecast and others.
• Collaboration – 43 organisations, 25 partner countries and 12 International Liaison Officers (ILO), now gearing up for expansion to eventually host 40 ILO.
• 67 linkages – It includes International Maritime Organisation (IMO), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA).
• Events – Regional Maritime Practitioner Programme (RMPP), Maritime Security Info-sharing Exercise (MARISX) and Shared Awareness Meeting (SAM).

The 3 major hotspots for piracy and armed robbery are South East Asia, Gulf of Guinea and Horn of Africa. There was a rise in numbers in South East Asia while there was a rise in intensity in the Gulf of Guinea.

Uttarakhand is all set to launch India's first-ever gyrocopter safari by the year's end to redefine the concept of adventure tourism in the state.

• It is a type of rotorcraft, uses a rotor that is not powered to generate lift.

A rotorcraft or rotary-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air aircraft with rotary wings, which generate lift by rotating around a vertical mast.

• The rotor looks similar to that of a helicopter, but it requires air flowing upwards across it to rotate.
• Types – It was traditionally an open cockpit 'Motorbikes of the sky' but, since late 2010, they are available as fully enclosed models.
• Economical – The operating cost of a Gyrocopter is one-tenth that of a helicopter, so it is comparatively cheaper, with an estimated cost of INR 200 per minute.
• Safer transport - As the engine is not connected to the rotors, it is not seriously affected if the engine stops in flight.
• It can fly lower and slower more safely than most other forms of flying machines and are also capable of flying in harsh weather conditions.

Gyrocopters in Uttarakhand’s Tourism

• It is a joint venture of tourism department with the civil aviation department of the state.
• Aim – To redefine the concept of adventure tourism in the state.
• Operation – The Gyros are coming from Germany and the pilots who will run the initial tests will be Germans.

This is the 1st time gyros will be used in India for the tourism sector.

• Gyrocopter safaris will also originate from Rishikesh, offering a bird's-eye view of the region's natural splendour.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has proposed the introduction of a T+0 facility for clearing and settlement of funds and securities.

• T+0 settlement cycle facilitates for clearing and settlement of funds and securities on T+o (same day) and instant settlement cycle on an optional basis.
• The facility will be in addition to the existing T+1 (trade plus one day) settlement cycle in the secondary markets for the equity cash segment.

SEBI has shortened the settlement cycle to T+3 from T+5 in 2002 and subsequently to T+2 in 2003.

• Phases - SEBI proposed to implement the system in two phases:
  1. Phase 1 – T+0 Settlement Cycle
  2. Phase 2 – Instant Settlement Cycle
• In Phase 1, an optional T+0 settlement cycle (for trades till 1:30 PM) is envisaged, with settlement of funds and securities to be completed on the same day by 4:30 PM.
• In Phase 2, an optional immediate trade-by-trade settlement (funds and securities) may be carried out.
• In the second phase, trading will be carried out till 3.30 pm.
• SEBI has suggested that to begin with, T+0 settlement shall be made available in the top 500 listed equity shares based on the market capitalisation.
• The surveillance measures applicable in the T+1 settlement cycle will also apply to securities in the T+0 settlement cycle.
• Securities under the trade-for-trade settlement will not be permitted for T+0.
• Benefits for clients - Provides flexibility in terms of faster payout of the funds against the securities to the sellers and faster payout of securities against the funds to the buyers.
• Benefits for securities market - Provides flexibility in terms of faster payout of the funds against the securities to the sellers and faster payout of securities against the funds to the buyers.

T+1 Settlement Cycle

• In T+1, settlement of trade takes place in one working day and the investor will get the money on the following day.
• In T+2, settlement of trade takes place in two working days. The broker who handles the trade will get the money on 2nd day, but will credit the amount in the investor’s account only on 3rd day.
• If a stock exchange opts for T+1 settlement cycle, it has to mandatorily continue with it for a minimum 6 months.
• Thereafter, if it intends to switch back to T+2, it can do so by giving one month’s advance notice to the market.

Recently INS Imphal was commissioned into the Indian Navy.

• INS Imphal (Pennant D68), the third of four warships of Project 15B that together form the Visakhapatnam class stealth-guided missile destroyers, is set to be commissioned into the Indian Navy.

The Visakhapatnam-class destroyers, also classified as the P-15 Bravo class, or simply P-15B, is a class of guided-missile destroyers currently being built for the Indian Navy.

• Built by - It is also known by the name Yard 12706 and was built by the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDSL).
• The propulsion system includes combined gas and gas (COGAG) configuration with four gas turbines.
• The maximum speed is 30 knots and range is 4000 nautical miles.

It is named after the city of Imphal, honoring the strategic and historical significance of the Northeast region.

Project 15B (P15B)

• Between 2014 and 2016, the Indian Navy commissioned three guided missile destroyers of Kolkata class under a project codenamed ‘15A’.
• Project 15 - These ships were a step ahead of their precursor Delhi class of ships.
• It included INS Delhi, INS Mysore and INS Mumbai, built under Project 15 and commissioned between 1997 and 2001.
• The lead ship of Project 15B, INS Visakhapatnam (Pennant No D66), was commissioned into the Indian Navy in November 2021 and the second ship INS Mormugao (D67) in December 2022.
• The fourth ship, D69, which when commissioned will be christened INS Surat, was launched in May last year.
• These ships will be equipped to carry and operate two multi-role helicopters.
• The Project 15B ships are 163 meters long and 17 meters wide, displace 7400 tonnes when fully loaded and have a maximum speed of 30 knots.
• The overall indigenous content of the project is approx. 75%.

The four ships of Project 15B are christened after major cities from all four corners of the country, Visakhapatnam, Mormugao, Imphal and Surat.

The Project 15A (P15A)

• It was launched in 1986 that was redesigned by Directorate of Naval Design including the modern stealth attributes.
• The Kolkata class or Project 15A, of guided missile destroyers is a successor to the Delhi class.
• The Kolkata class included INS Kolkata, INS Kochi and INS Chennai.

A ship class signifies a group of ships built with similar tonnage, usage, capabilities and weaponry.

In the first evidence of rapid evolution, scientists have discovered a flower growing in Paris, France is producing less nectar and smaller flowers to attract fewer pollinators.

Parisian pansies

• Scientific name - Viola arvensis; Common name - Field Pansy
• Habitat - It is a self-pollinating flower, native to Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa.
• It is an herbaceous annual plant with serrated leaves, and usually flowers with white all over, except the bottom petal and dehiscent capsules.

Herbaceous plants include plants that have either an annual, biennial, or a perennial life cycle. Annual herbaceous plants die completely at the end of the growing season or when they have flowered and fruited, and then new plants grow from seed.

• Recent studies have found that the ongoing convergent evolution of a Selfing Syndrome threatens plant pollinator interactions.

Selfing Syndrome

• Selfing syndrome refers to plants that are autogamous and display a complex of characteristics associated with self-pollination.

Autogamous species are those whose ovules are (predominantly) fertilized by pollen from the same flower.

• The term was first coined by Adrien Sicard and Michael Lenhard in 2011.
• However, it was first described in detail by Charles Darwin in his book The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876).
• The flowers of self-fertilizing plants are typically smaller and have little distance between reproductive organs.

The flowers of field pansies growing near Paris are 10% smaller and produce 20% less nectar than flowers growing in the same fields 20 to 30 years ago.

• Self-pollination - It is the process by which plants reproduce themselves.
• The behavior is contrary to the convention of angiosperms, which rely on insects to pollinate in order to reproduce, an interconnected relationship in nature.
• Plants produce nectar to attract insects, which collect nectar for food and transport pollen between plants in nature.
• The interlinked give-and-take relationship has evolved over 100 million years of coevolution.

What are important global space missions in 2024?

DART mission

NASA’s mission to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system in 2022, it collided with Dimorphos with such force that it actually changed its orbit to test a planetary defense technique called kinetic impact.

Europa

It is a moon of Jupiter that is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, with a surface made of ice and it likely harbours a saltwater ocean.

Volatiles

They are molecules that easily vaporize, like water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures and they could provide resources for future human exploration on the Moon.

SIMPLEx

It is NASA’s small, low-cost planetary missions which stands for Small, Innovative Missions for PLanetary Exploration.

Luna-25

Russia’s 1^st independent lunar mission crashed onto the lunar surface as it attempted to become the 1^st mission to land near the moon’s South Pole.

The Hakuto mission

The 1^st privately-led lunar mission (Tokyo based) in history, also crashed onto the moon after spending nearly 5 months in space.

• Synthesis gas (syngas) is a combustible mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, often containing carbon dioxide and methane.
• It's primarily used to produce methanol or ammonia, and can also be used as a fuel.

Syngas is derived from carbon-containing feedstocks like biomass, natural gas, heavy oil, and coal.

• Agadagidi is a traditional alcoholic beverage in Nigeria made from fermented overripe bananas or plantains.

The traditional process for preparing agadagidi involves microorganisms like yeasts and bacteria at various stages of fermentation.

• The labour welfare and skill development department has constituted the Tamil Nadu Platform Based Gig Workers Welfare Board recently.

It will cater to workers in e-commerce services including online food delivery and cab aggregators.

• Tansen Samaroh is a musical extravaganza celebrated near his tomb at Gwalior district, Madhya Pradesh.
• The festival is organized to pay tribute to the Great Indian Musical Maestro Tansen.
• Tansen popularised and improved the plucked rabab (of Central Asian origin).

He was among the Navaratnas (9 jewels) at the court of the Mughal Emperor Jalal ud-din Akbar who gave him the title Mian, an honorific, meaning learned man.

• Message in a bottle campaign is a campaign done by NASA, U.S.
• It invites people around the world to sign their names to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.
• The names will be on a microchip that will ride aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper mission as it explores Jupiter’s moon (Europa).

Europa is one of the largest and the 6^th-closest moon to the Jupiter.

• The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recently announced that its SLIM lander successfully went into lunar orbit.
• This is the 1^st Moon-landing attempt being made by Japan and the 5^th country to successfully soft land on the moon.
• SLIM would be the smallest and lightest spacecraft to land on the Moon.

The chosen landing site for SLIM is near a small crater named Shioli in the equatorial region of the Moon.

• Thakkar Bapa (1869 - 1951) was an Indian social worker and freedom fighter who worked to improve the lives of tribal people in Gujarat.
• Thakkar Bapa was a strong believer in universal education and the abolition of untouchability.
• He was the Chairman of the Excluded and Partially Excluded Areas Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly.

In 1922, he established the Bhil Seva Mandal and in 1949, he established the "Adim Jati Sevak Sangh".

• 2 jumping spider species - Afraflacilla kerala and Afraflacilla adavathurensis were discovered recently from Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively.
• Before the discovery of Afraflacilla kerala, only 3 species of the Afraflacilla genus had been found in India.
• Afraflacilla is a genus of jumping spiders (Salticidae).

Most species are found in Eastern to Northern Africa and Australia, with 2 species found in Europe.

• Pantoea Tagorei is a Gram-negative, short-rod, non-motile, facultatively anaerobic, potassium-solubilizing bacterium.
• The bacteria promotes plant growth and is being used in organic farming.
• It solubilizes potassium, replenishes nitrogen, and solubilizes phosphorus.

It was discovered by a team of microbiologists from Visva Bharati University and named after Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and his son, Rathindranath.

• JN.1 subvariant has a mutation in its spike protein, L455S, also called a “FLip” mutation.
• L455S and L455F are called “FLip” mutations because they switch the positions of amino acids F and L on the spike protein, increasing their transmissibility.
• This type of mutation is performed we use binary crossover.

• The Polar Wolf is considered one of the toughest prisons in Russia.
• The Polar Wolf is a high security corrective labor colony for men in the village of Kharp, Russia.

It's also known as FKU IK-3, which is part of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia.

• Basadi and Nishidis were a Jain shrine or temple in Karnataka.

‘Bhattarakas’ are the chiefs of Jain monasteries.

• Madan Mohan Malaviya was an Indian educationist, freedom fighter and the thrice president of Indian National Congress.
• He was born on 25 December 1861, Prayagraj and died on 12 November 1946.
• He was addressed as 'Mahamana', he was the founder of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) at Varanasi in 1916, also founded an English-newspaper, “The Leader”.

Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya was posthumously conferred with Bharat Ratna.

• National Mathematics Day was observed to commemorate the birth anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan every year on December 22.
• Ramanujan was born in Erode, Tamil Nadu was an Indian greatest mathematician given contributions to number theory, functions, infinite series and continued fractions.
• He was the 1^st Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

He also received a prestigious award from the King of England for his services to mathematics.