9 PM Current Affairs Brief – February 17th, 2020
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Sammakka Saralamma Jatara

News:Sammakka Saralamma Jatara is being celebrated in the State of Telangana.

Facts:

About the festival:

  • Sammakka Saralamma Jataraalso known as Medaram Jatara is a tribal festival held biennially in the state of Telangana.It is a State Festival of Telangana.
  • The festival commemorates the fight of a mother and daughter, Sammakka and Saralamma, with the reigning rulers against an unjust law.
  • It is believed that after Kumbh Mela,the Medaram jatara attracts the largest number of devotees in the country.

Additional information:

Note:Medaram is a remote place in the Eturnagaram Wildlife Sanctuary, a part of Dandakaranya, the largest surviving forest belt in the Mulugu.

BioAsia Summit 2020

News:The Government of Telangana is hosting the Bio-Asia Summit 2020 in Hyderabad.

Facts:

About the summit:

  • Aim:To create business paradigms for the ever-evolving needs of the Life Sciences industry.
  • Theme:Today for Tomorrow

Genome Excellence Award:

  • Genome Valley Excellence Award was constituted in 2004 by the Government of Telangana.
  • The award aims to recognize and honour eminent individuals and organizations for their exceptional contribution to the Life Sciences research and public health.

India’s first ‘darknet’ narcotics operative held

News:The Narcotics Control Bureau(NCB) has arrested the country’s first ‘darknet’ narcotics operative under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances(NDPS) Act.

Facts:

About Darknet:

  • Darknet refers to the deep hidden internet platform that is used for narcotics sale and other illegal activities by using the secret alleys of the onion router(ToR) to stay away from the surveillance of law enforcement agencies.
  • Owing to its end-to-end encryption, darknet is considered very tough to crack when it comes to investigating criminal activities being rendered over it.

Deep web:

  • The dark net is part of the greater deep web.The deep web encompasses all unindexed sites that don’t pop up when you do an Internet search.

About Narcotics Control Bureau(NCB):

  • NCB was constituted by the Government of India in 1986 under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act,1985.
  • It is the apex coordinating agency under the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Asur Tribe

News:The Asur tribe has been using mobile radio to transmit local news and songs which is helping them revive the dying tribal language.

Facts:

About the tribe:

  • Asur Tribe are an Austroasiatic ethnic group living primarily in the Indian state of Jharkhand.
  • They are included in the list of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups(PVTG’s).
  • They speak the Asuri language which is on the verge of extinction with less than 8,000 people speaking it.
  • The main festival of the tribe includes Sarhul, Phagua, Navakhans among others.

New species of urban lizard found in Guwahati

News:According to the research paper published in Zootaxa,researchers have discovered a new species of lizard – the urban bent-toed gecko in Guwahati, Assam.

Facts:

About the species:

  • The zoological name of the news species of Lizard is Cyrtodactylus urbanus.It is the 12th recorded gecko from the Northeast.
  • The species falls within the khasiensis group.However, it differs from other members of this group in mitochondrial sequence data as well as aspects of morphology.

Additional information:

About Gecko:

  • Geckos are more than 1,000 species of lizards making up 6 families of the suborder Gekkota.They are mostly small, usually nocturnal reptiles with soft skin.
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