Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 31 January 2021

::NATIONAL::

Environmental Minister has released Marine Mega Fauna Stranding Guidelines and the National Marine Turtle Action Plan in New Delhi.

Key highlights:

Actions to be taken for handling stranded animals on shore, in the sea or on a boat.
Management actions for improved coordination, reducing threats to marine species and their habitats,rehabilitation of degraded habitats,
Enhancing people's participation,
Advance scientific research and exchange of information on marine mammals and marine turtles and theirhabitats.
Indian coastline has significant nesting and feeding grounds for four species of marine turtles namely,

1. Leatherback- Vulnerable (IUCN status)

2. Green- Endangered

3. Hawksbill - Critically Endangered

4. Olive Ridley - Vulnerable

The Supreme Court appointed conservationist Nandita Hazarika as Member of a Technical Committee constituted by it to hear complaints by land owners against the action taken by the Nilgris Collector, which included sealing of their buildings and allegations about the “arbitrary variance in acreage of the elephant corridor.”
Recently Supreme Court upheld Tamil Nadu government's authority to notify an elephant corridor throughNilgiri biosphere reserve.
This corridor is situated in Masinagudi area in ecologically fragile Sigur plateau.
Sigur Plateau is located in the northern part of Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu.
The plateau connects Western and the Eastern Ghats.
It has the Nilgiri Hills on its southwestern side and the Moyar River Valley on its north-eastern side.

January 30th to Mark the Second Annual World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day.
Annual day designed to raise awareness and engage the general public in the urgent effort to #BeatNTDs.
The WHO Executive Board recommended support of World NTD Day, an important milestone in adding the day to the official global calendar.
The day will emphasize the critical need for partnerships and cross-industry collaboration to bring an end to this group of preventable diseases.
More than 300 partner organizations from 55 countries to participate, helping to mobilize greater attention, action, and investment on priority issues in the countries and communities most directly affected by neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).
Building on the spirit of global collective action, more than 60 landmarks across 40 cities and 24 countries will be lit up on World NTD Day.

Indian-American Bhavya Lal was appointed by NASA as the Acting Chief of Staff of the US space agency.
She served as a member of the Biden Presidential Transition Agency Review Team for the agency and oversaw the agency’s transition under the administration of President Joe Biden.
She was serving as a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defence Analyses Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) from 2005 to 2020.
She is an active member of the space technology and policy community, having chaired, co-chaired, or served on five high-impact National Academy of Science committees.
She served two consecutive terms on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Federal Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing and was an External Council member of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program and the Technology, Innovation and Engineering Advisory Committee of the NASA Advisory Council.

There are dozen of ways to pick stocks, but few have been as unconventional - or as successful - as the coordinated short squeeze deployed by Reddit's army of day traders.Now, Wall Street is examining the matter.

About:

Short squeeze is a term used by market participants to refer to a phenomenon where short sellers in a stock who have placed their bets on a stock’s fall, rush to hedge their positions or buy the stock in the event of an adverse price movement, in order to cover their losses.
This leads to a sharp rise in demand for the share, and huge rally in share prices.
In order to cover his loss, the trader who was initially short on the stock, starts buying the stock, which leads to a sharp rise in the share price of the stock.
This phenomenon, where the short seller is buying the stock to cover her loss, is referred to as short squeeze in market parlance.
It leads to a dramatic rise in share price, far beyond its fundamentals.

Recently, Indigenous Reference Material (RM) for chemical testing was synthesised.
RMs are used during dope testing for quality control purposes and therefore their availability remains criticalin sports dope testing globally.
RM is rarely available substance globally and would be used to strengthen anti-doping measures in allWorld Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)-accredited laboratories.