Krishonnati Scheme

• The “Green Revolution – Krishonnati Scheme” aims to bring together under one umbrella 11 agricultural schemes besides their effective monitoring.
• These schemes look to develop the agriculture and allied sector in a holistic and scientific manner to increase the income of farmers by enhancing production, productivity and better returns on produce.
• The major schemes are Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH), National Food Security Mission (NFSM), National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation (SMAM) and Integrated Scheme on Agricultural Marketing (ISAM).
• The other schemes are Submission on Agriculture Extension (SMAE), Sub Mission on Seeds and Planting Material (SMSP), Sub Mission on Plant Protection and Plant Quarantine (SMPPQ), Integrated Scheme on Agriculture Census, Economics and Statistics (ISACES), Integrated Scheme on Agricultural Cooperation (ISAC) and National e-Governance Plan (NeGP-A).
• The schemes are aimed at creating and strengthening of infrastructure for production, reducing production cost and marketing of agriculture and allied products.

KALIA Scheme: Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation

• Odisha govt announces Rs 10,000 crore scheme for development of farmers under the KALIA Scheme.
• In this scheme, all the small and marginal farmers of the state (over 30 lakh) will be covered under the scheme.
• The KALIA scheme also has a component for livelihood support for landless households.
• Ten lakh landless households will be supported with a unit cost of Rs 12,500 to take up activities like goat rearing units, mini layer units, duckery units, fishery kits for fishermen and women, mushroom cultivation and bee keeping.
• The landless households will have the option of selecting any of the units.
• The scheme will particularly benefit scheduled caste and scheduled tribe households.
• The KALIA scheme also includes life insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh and additional personal accident cover of Rs 2 lakh will be provided to both cultivators and landless agriculture laborers covering about 74 lakh households.

Asiatic Lion Conservation Project

• Ministry of Environment has recently launched Asiatic Lion Conservation Project.
• It aims to protect and conserve the world’s last ranging free population of Asiatic Lion and its associated ecosystem.
• Habitat improvement, scientific interventions, disease control and veterinary care supplemented with adequate eco development will be carried out under the project.
• The project will be funded from the Centrally Sponsored Scheme – Development of Wildlife Habitat (CSS-DWH) with 60:40 share ratio of Central and State government.
• Asiatic Lion that once ranged from Persia (Iran) to Palamau in Eastern India were almost driven to extinction by hunting and habitat loss.
• According to 2015 census, it is found in Gir Protected Area Network that includes Gir National Park, Gir Sanctuary, Pania Sanctuary, Mitiyala Sanctuary adjoining reserved forests, protected forests.
• It is included in 21 critically endangered species for recovery programme and financial assistance under the species recovery component of CSS-DWH.

Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats (IDWH)

• The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has recently approved continuation of the IDWH beyond the 12thPlan period from 2017-18 to 2019-20.
• It is a centrally sponsored umbrella scheme consists of Project Tiger, Development of Wildlife Habitats and Project Elephant.
• The schemes would result in overall strengthening/ consolidation of tiger, elephant and wildlife conservation in the country.
• Besides, it would also address the Man-Animal conflict effectively and benefit the communities relocating from core protected areas.
• The implementation of the schemes would be done through the respective States in designated Tiger Reserves, Protected Areas and Elephant Reserves.

Pokkali paddy

• Pokkali paddy variety is a saltwater-tolerant paddy grown in the coastal fields of Alappuzha, Ernakulam and Thrissur districts of Kerala.
• It is endemic to Kerala and was given Geographical Indication (GI) tag.
• The single-season paddy is raised in saltwater fields between June and November followed by a season of fish-farming.
• After the harvest, the paddy stubble in the fields acts as food and shelter for shrimp and small fish.
• Fish excreta and scales, along with the decomposed stubble, provide excellent natural manure for another season of Pokkali.
• The cultivation is labor intensive and this farming tradition is under threat due to lack of labor.

Agni-IV

• Agni-IV is the fourth in the Agni series of missiles which was earlier known as Agni II prime.
• The missile is light-weight and has two stages of solid propulsion and a payload with re-entry heat shield.
• Capable of striking targets in nearly all of China (including Beijing and Shanghai) if launched from northeastern India.
• Agni-IV missile is equipped with advanced Avionics, 5th generation On Board Computer and distributed architecture.
• Recently India successfully tests fired its nuclear-capable long-range ballistic missile Agni-IV with a strike range of 4,000 km.

Albino orangutan

• Recently, the world’s only known rare “Albino orangutan” has been released back into the jungle more than a year after she was found emaciated and bloody in a remote corner of Borneo, in Indonesian.
• Borneo Islands is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia.

Types of Orangutan

• The orangutans are three extant species of great apes native to Indonesia and Malaysia.
• Three Extant species are-
  (a) Bornean orangutan 
  (b) Sumatran orangutan 
  (c) Tapanuli orangutan
• Orangutans currently inhabit lowland forests on Borneo, an island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, and Indonesia’s island of Sumatra.
• It is Critically Endangered as per IUCN status.
• This critically endangered species lost due to habitat shrink drastically over the past few decades largely due to the destruction of forests for logging, paper, palm oil, and mining.

International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography

• Union Minister for Earth Sciences will inaugurate the newly constructed UNESCO Category 2, International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean) Complex in the INCOIS campus at Hyderabad.
• The UNESCO Category 2 Centre established as a training facility at INCOIS will give an opportunity to the South Asian and African states bordering the Indian Ocean and the small island nations in the Pacific to benefit from the expertise and experience of INCOIS in the areas of ocean science and management.
• INCOIS is already playing its part as a leading operational oceanography institute in the region. 
• Tsunami early warnings from the institute are delivered to 25 countries on the Indian Ocean Rim on a real-time basis, since IOC/UNESCO designated the Centre as Regional Tsunami Service Provider (RTSP) in October 2012.
• Under the aegis of Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES), INCOIS is also providing ocean state forecast and other related warnings to 5 countries (Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Madagascar, and Cameroon).

iGOT (Integrated Government Online Training Programme)

• The Union Minister of State Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr. Jitendra Singh launched the iGOT (Integrated Government Online Training Programme).
• It is developed by the Department of Personnel and Training, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions.
• It will augment the existing training mechanism with online module-based training coupled with certification.
• This will make training inputs available to government servant on site and on flexitime basis.
• The initiative aims at “Competent Civil Services for Good Governance”.
• They also launched Hybrid Course on Administrative Laws developed by DoPT in collaboration with the premier law school, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru.
• The National Training Policy-2012 mandates that all civil servants will be provided with training to equip them with the competencies for their current or future jobs.
• The e-Learning mode provides unparalleled opportunities for training to a large number of civil servants scattered all over the country.
• The online training programme through the Massive Online Open Courses mechanism would be a platform to bring together the numerous Government and other training institutions for providing a single point of access to the repository of training resources.
• This will provide a broad training eco-system creating synergies across various premier training institutes of the country and will cater to the training needs which can encompass all the officials in the entire hierarchy of Central and State Governments.
• The training courses under this programme will be accessible through DoPT’s web portal.

New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)

• It is a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation with the formal name of Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.
• It was signed on 8 April 2010 in Prague, and, after ratification, entered into force on 5 February 2011.
• It is expected to last at least until 2021.
• New START replaced the Treaty of Moscow (SORT), which was due to expire in December 2012.
• Under terms of the treaty, the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers will be reduced by half.
• A new inspection and verification regime will be established, replacing the SORT mechanism.
• It does not limit the number of operationally inactive stockpiled nuclear warheads that remain in the high thousands in both the Russian and American inventories.