DNA 08th July

Modi targets Pakistan at G20

• Naming Pakistan-based terror groups LeT and JeM, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said some countries were using terror as a tool to achieve political objectives and pressed for “deterrent” action collectively by the G20 members against them
•  Mr. Modi regretted that the international response to terrorism was weak and said more cooperation was needed to fight the menace.
• The Prime Minister presented an 11-point ‘Action Agenda’ which included suggestions for expediting extradition and concrete steps to choke funds and weapon supply
• The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and other mechanisms to choke sources of funds to terrorists should be strengthened, he said.
• In the pattern of FATF, an Explosives Action Task Force (EATF) should be constituted "so that the sources of deadly arms reaching the terrorists can be ended," he added.

Aadhaar not ‘totalitarian': Centre

• Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal objected to arguments made by petitioners that Aadhaar was driving India into a "concentration camp" even as the Supreme Court said the constitutionality of the scheme has to be decided "once and for all" and probably by a nine-judge Bench.
• Sparks flew at the hearing before a three-judge Bench, led by Justice J. Chelameswar, after senior advocate Shyam Divan, for the petitioners, said Aadhaar was reminiscent of1984, a work by George Orwell about the totalitarian state where everybody and everything is watched by the ‘Big Brother state.'

A hardy millet yields its genetic code

• In a first, Karnataka’s agricultural scientists have sequenced the genetic code of ragi, or finger millet, throwing light on the exact building blocks that make it drought-resistant and nutrition-rich.
• Scientists from the University of Agricultural Sciences-Bengaluru (UAS-B) achieved the sequencing of the plant, which, the scientists say, was first domesticated from a wild species in Western Uganda and the Ethiopian highlands before being introduced to India around 3,000 BC.
• Ragi occupies 12% of global millet cultivation area and Karnataka leads in its cultivation
• With a low glycemic index, ragi is no longer the poor man’s staple, and is preferred by diabetics.
• Genome sequencing identifies the order of DNA nucleotides in a genome.
• Potential gains to drought tolerance of rice and wheat through transfer of droughttolerant genes found in ragi are possible. 
• Karnataka Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said the scientific advance would help dry land farmers. Consumers would get a nutrient-rich food through research involving a nontransgenic process.

 Glycemic Index - is a number associated with a particular type of food that indicates the food's effect on a person's blood glucose (also called blood sugar) level. A value of 100 represents the standard, an equivalent amount of pure glucose.

SC stays HC verdict on Ganga status

The Supreme Court froze the status of "legal persons" accorded to rivers Ganga and Yamuna by the Uttarakhand High Court in March 2017.

 A Bench of Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar and D.Y. Chandrachud stayed the High Court verdict which held that the rights of the two major rivers “shall be equivalent to the rights of human beings and the injury/harm caused to these bodies shall be treated as harm/injury caused to the human beings.”

 The High Court had ordered the Director, Namami Gange project, for cleaning and rejuvenating the river, the Chief Secretary and the Advocate General of Uttarakhand to act as "legal parents" of the holy rivers and work as a human face to protect, conserve and preserve them and their tributaries.

These officers, the High Court had directed, would be bound to "uphold the status" of the two rivers and also promote their "health and well-being.

U.S. warplanes fly over disputed South China Sea

• U.S. warplanes have flown over the disputed South China Sea, the U.S. Air Force said, a move aimed at asserting freedom of navigation rights in the hotly-contested area.
• Beijing claims nearly all of the South China Sea, parts of which are also claimed by Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations including the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam. 
• China has rapidly built reefs in the area into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes. China also lays claim to tiny islands in the East China Sea between Japan and the Korean peninsula, and between Japan and Taiwan