The Daily Brief – 15th November 2019

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accepted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to become the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations in 2020. Modi has reached Brazil to attend the 11^th BRICS Summit. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was the chief guest in 2019. In 2018, the leaders of 10 ASEAN nations attended the event as chief guests. Bolsonaro is the 38^th President of Brazil.

Assam government launched a mobile app called ‘Sishu Suraksha’ to register complaints of child abuse and violation of child rights online on the occasion of Children’s Day on 14^th November, 2019. The Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (ASCPCR) reported that there has been an increase of 55% in the number of child trafficking cases in the state in 2019.

Reliance Chairperson, Mukesh Ambani’s wife Nita Ambani has been named as an honorary trustee of New York’s 149-year-old Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the first Indian to be elected to the post. Nita Ambani, 57, has been promoting Indian art and culture around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors at its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world.

Secretary of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change represented India at the 7^thRegional Conservation Forum organized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Islamabad, Pakistan. More than 500 representatives from different countries, corporate sector and NGOs participated in the forum. As per the report of the forum, 36% glaciers in the regions of Himalayas and Hindu Kush are to vanish by 2100. The shrinking glaciers are the biggest challenge to the policy makers.

Ravi Prakash, an Indian PhD scholar of the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Bangalore, has won the 25,000 US Dollar BRICS-Young Innovator Prize for inventing an affordable indigenous milk chilling unit for smaller and marginal rural dairy farmers. He was a part of a 21-member delegation sent to Brazil by the Department of Science and Technology for the 4^th BRICS-Young Scientist Forum (YSF), 2019.

India kicked-off a USD 43 million project to boost climate resilience that may positively impact over 10 million people living on the coastlines of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. The project is funded by the Green Climate Fund, established within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assist developing countries.

The first edition of Dhaka Global Dialogue to be held from 11^th November to 13^th November, 2019 in Bangladesh was inaugurated by the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina. The three-day long programme is being jointly organised by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), India and the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS). Over 150 delegates from 50 countries are participating in the conference to discuss some of the most pressing global imperatives in the context of the Indo-Pacific region.

A five-judge Constitution bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices NV Ramana, DY Chandrachud, Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna upheld the 2010 judgement of Delhi High Court that the office of the Chief Justice of India is a public authority under the Right to Information Act. In 2010, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ordered the SC Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs) to provide information on personal assets possessed by the judges of the SC, which was challenged at the Delhi HC, which ruled that the SC and Chief Justice of India have a statutory duty to furnish information regarding administration and functioning of the SC.