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GS:1
Art and Culture:
Saora paintings travel from tribal homes to living rooms overseas(The Hindu)
Saora paintings, lately sought by art lovers for living rooms around the world, have their origin in the mud walls of aboriginal Lanjia Saora tribal homes in Odisha. Selling fast at tribal art fairs and handicraft outlets, painting lots are also exported regularly to Germany, France and the U.S. The paintings, which are pleasing to the eye and widely admired for their artistic excellence, now offer a sustainable source of livelihood.
Society related issues:
We don’t need no thought control(The Hindu Opinion)
Today, in India, models of educational excellence that were adapted from the best universities in the world are under serious threat from the government
GS: 2
International relations:
India-China ties see a ‘Xiamen reboot’(The Hindu)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s telephone call to Chinese President Xi Jinping after his election for a second term was part of the ‘Xiamen process’ — a calibrated effort to rebuild ties that had been jolted last year by the Doklam military stand-off.
Indian Constitution and Polity:
Cauvery panel may concede Karnataka demand(The Hindu)
A draft cabinet note detailing the structure of the Cauvery Management Board has been prepared by the Union Water Resources Ministry and is likely be circulated to other Ministries before being put up for clearance by the Union Cabinet.
is euthanasia verdict tough to implement?(The Hindu)
In a judgment on March 9, the Supreme Court said people suffering from a terminal illness had a right to a dignified death, as part of the right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. The judgment restricts itself to the withdrawal or withholding of life-support, which it refers to as “passive euthanasia.”
Dalit group seeks review of SC verdict(The Hindu)
A Dalit group here on Saturday sought a review of the Supreme Court judgment on March 20 diluting the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, while affirming that the court had not taken into account the high acquittal rate in the cases under the statute.
GS:3
Science and Technology:
Choosing the right surgery(The Hindu Opinion)
Lack of awareness and training about cervical cancers is the primary reason for suboptimal surgeries
A fourth of Indian TB patients are drug resistant(The Hindu Opinion)
The first-ever survey of drug-resistant (DR) tuberculosis (TB) has found that over a quarter of patients in India could be resistant to one or more drugs that can cure them. India is home to 2.8 million TB patients, the largest in the world.
Reaching the unreached(The Hindu Opinion)
The government recently passed a gazette notification making the non-reporting of tuberculosis (TB) cases a punishable offence, with even a jail term of up to two years. The move comes against the backdrop of the Prime Minister’s call to end TB in India by 2025, ushering in a ‘mission mode’ approach to defeat the disease.
IIT Guwahati develops silk scaffold for bone regeneration(The Hindu)
A scaffold made of silk composite functionalised with copper-doped bioactive glass to facilitate faster bone regeneration has been developed by researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. The scaffold seeded with stem cells was found to differentiate into bone cells, facilitate growth of blood vessels and successfully integrate the newly formed bone cells with the native bone.
Nanomotors for targeted cancer therapy(The Hindu)
Research on nanomotors for various medical applications is an emerging field in nanoscience and researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have had a measure of success.
Bizarre ‘alien’ skeleton was of human foetus: study(The Hindu)
A six-inch skeleton discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert belongs to a human foetus, and does not have extraterrestrial origins, scientists say. After five years of deep genomic analysis, researchers from the Stanford University and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the US have pinpointed the mutations responsible for the anomalous specimen. They found mutations in not one but several genes known to govern bone development, researchers said.
Environment:
Do Olive Ridley turtles reach the Odisha coast using magnetic power?(The Hindu)
One of the magnificent sights to behold in India is the arrival and nesting of tens of thousands of Olive Ridley turtles on the Gahirmatha seashore of Odisha every year as clockwork. They traverse thousands of kilometres northwards on the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka, land, nest and produce baby turtles, and after a while, return. The temperature, the season, the natural environmental resources all fit perfectly for this grand continuity of life.
Yesterday’s current affairs material by Forum IAS
7 PM Editorial: Data protection in India: An overview