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- Why in News?
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his East Asia tour with a two-day visit to Japan for the 15th Annual Summit with Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba, before heading to Tianjin for the SCO Summit. The last such meeting took place in India in 2022.
- Key Provisions:-
- This year’s discussions produced around a dozen agreements with a “Next-Gen” focus, covering areas such as economic security, mobility, green technology, and security cooperation. Japan pledged $68 billion in investments and signed 170 MoUs with Indian partners. The two leaders expanded their 2008 security pact to include annual NSA-level talks, Quad engagement, and Indo-Pacific cooperation. Highlights included plans for resilient supply chains, semiconductor manufacturing, and collaboration on India’s Bullet Train project. They jointly condemned North Korea’s missile tests and cross-border terrorism. Against a backdrop of U.S. tariffs and regional tensions, both leaders signalled that India-Japan ties remain strong, strategic, and anchored in shared geopolitical concerns.
- Why in News?
- Scientific research runs on precision and timeliness, making funding delays particularly damaging. Reports that 75 women selected for the Department of Biotechnology’s Biocare programme have received neither sanction letters nor salaries highlight a chronic weakness in India’s research administration.
- Key Provisions:-
- Young scientists already face scarce lab space, complex bureaucracy, and modest pay, which deter talent and erode morale. Biocare was meant to provide an independent start, yet delays deepen insecurity.
- India’s ambitions in health, energy, agriculture, and climate innovation demand efficient funding systems. The Treasury Single Account may improve transparency, but execution must not disrupt livelihoods. Experiments depend on aligned facilities, collaborators, and seasonal conditions; missed windows can be irretrievable. Schemes that look progressive on paper risk losing credibility if benefits fail to materialise. Women scientists and early-career fellows are hit hardest. Administrative maturity, contingency planning, and accountability are essential if India’s scientific aspirations are to match its rhetoric.
- Why in News?
- The Mashco Piro, an uncontacted tribe in the Peruvian Amazon, were recently spotted near a village, sparking fears over logging activities infringing on their territory.
- About the Mashco Piro
- Also called Mascho Piro, Cujareño, or Nomole, they are nomadic hunter-gatherers living in the remote rainforests of southeast Peru, close to Brazil and Bolivia. Historically, they retreated deep into the jungle during the Amazon Rubber Boom of the late 1800s to escape enslavement and violence. Today, they inhabit the banks of the Las Piedras River within Alto Purús National Park, moving seasonally between palm-leaf riverbank huts and forest shelters.
- Speaking a dialect of the Piro language, tribe members wear minimal clothing and adorn themselves with cloth and bands. They are medium in stature, with long black hair, and hunt using bows, arrows, and spears. The Peruvian government prohibits all contact to protect them from diseases to which they have no immunity.