Prelims in Focus, an IAS Abhiyan Initiative to quickly navigate through the important facts, current affairs, static portion to enrich aspirant’s knowledge base along with conceptual clarity. Our Prelims in Focus initiative will surely be an added advantage for UPSC Prelims Examinations. This initiative will help the aspirants to focus to the main points of a topic quickly at the same time. In this initiative, we will cover 10-15 important facts on a daily basis. Click here to Join our Telegram Channel to read these articles.  We will continue our Monthly Pre-Bits Flash Liner along with this initiative. 

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Prelims in Focus-Part-17

1. Pantala flavescens
   __________
   🔹 Migratory dragonfly Pantala flavescens has started arriving in swarms to the State of Kerala

   🔹Spotted at Vellayani Lake

   🔹Inter-continental migration of these dragonflies, known as Wandering Gliders, that cross oceans with the help of winds

2. 🔹Copernicus is the European Union’s Earth observation programme coordinated and managed by the European Commission in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), the EU Member States and EU Agencies.
3. ➖According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 28 ‘honour killings’ in 2014, 251 in 2015, and 77 in 2016 across India.

   ➖The 242nd Law Commission Report, too, sought a new law on ‘prevention of interference with the freedom of matrimonial alliances’.

4. The study revealed from National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO) that women accounted for 78% of living  organ donors in India whereas their share among the organ recipients was only 19%.

   ➖An analysis of past 20 years data revealed that the majority of the donors (75-80%) were women, whereas the same share of recipients were men. In comparison, 60% of the living organ donors were women in the same period.

5. ➖Peatlands are a type of soil made from organic matter such as wood and leaves.

   ➖Peatlands store a lot of carbon and play an important role in the carbon cycle.

6. ➖Critical tiger habitats were created under the Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA), 1972.

   ➖Protected Areas comprise wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and conservation reserves.

7. 📌 India is barely spending 0.5 per cent of the health budget on mental health.
8. 🔹 Nitrous oxide is a dangerous gas which has the third-highest concentration — after CO2 and methane — in our atmosphere among greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

   ➖N2O can live in the atmosphere for up to 125 years.

9. 🔹Some 0.34 million of the 1.9 million stillbirths globally in 2019 were in India, making it the country with the largest such burden, according to the first joint estimates released by a number of United Nations agencies.

   ➖A stillbirth means a baby born with no signs of life at 28 weeks of pregnancy or more.

   ➖India, along with five other countries — Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China and Ethiopia — accounted for nearly half of all stillbirths in the world

10. 🔹Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) are artificial restriction enzymes generated by fusing a zinc finger DNA-binding domain to a DNA-cleavage domain.

    ➖Alongside CRISPR/Cas9 and TALEN, ZFN is a prominent tool in the field of genome editing.