• UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has added reggae to its list of cultural institutions worthy of protection and preservation.

• Each year, UNESCO adds to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and Jamaica submitted reggae for consideration earlier this year. 

• The genre now joins a list of over 300 cultural traditions, including numerous musical ones such as Dominican merengue, Slovakian bagpipe music and Vietnamese xoan singing.

• Reggae is Jamaican music originating from marginalized groups, mainly in Western Kingston. 

 

 

 

• The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has predicted that there is a 75-80% chance of a weak El Niño weather pattern forming by February and a slightly lower likelihood that it will continue through the northern hemisphere winter of 2018-19.

• ENSO is nothing but El Nino Southern Oscillation. As the name suggests, it is an irregular periodic variation of wind and sea surface temperature that occurs over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. 

• ENSO affects the tropics and the subtropics. The warming phase of ENSO is called El Nino, while the cooling phase is known as La Nina.

• An El Niño – a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically happens every few years – last occurred in 2015-2016 and caused weather-related crop damage, fires and flash floods.

 

 

 

• The International Labour Organization (ILO) has released Global Wage Report 2018-19.

• As per the report, women are paid the most unequally in India, compared to men, when it comes to hourly wages for labour. On average, women are paid 34% less than men.

• The gender wage gap has remained unchanged at 20% from 2016 to 2017.

• In advanced economies (G20), real wage growth declined from 0.9 per cent in 2016 to 0.4 per cent in 2017, meaning near stagnation. By contrast, in emerging economies and developing G20 countries, real wage growth dipped marginally from 4.9 per cent in 2016 and 4.3 per cent in 2017.

• Inequality is higher in monthly wages, with a gap of 22 per cent.

• Overall, real wages grew just 1.8 per cent globally (136 countries) in 2017.

• In most countries, women and men differ significantly in respect of working time – specifically, that part-time work is more prevalent among women than among men.

 

 

 

• Climate Vulnerable Forum meeting is being held in Marshall Islands. This is the first entirely online Heads of Government level intergovernmental meeting.

• Leaders at the Climate Vulnerable Forum have called on world’s governments to raise the ambition of their climate targets by 2020 in order to save vulnerable nations threatened by warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.

• The CVF was founded by the Maldives government before the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which sought to increase awareness of countries considered vulnerable.

• The CVF was formed to increase the accountability of industrialized nations for the consequences of global climate change.

• Afghanistan, Nepal and Bhutan are its members, whereas India is one of the observer states.

 

 

 

• The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) Plenary 2018, was held in Brussels, Belgium, from 12th-16thNovember 2018.

• EU handed over the Chairmanship of KPCS to India from 1st January, 2019.

• India is the founding member of KPCS and is actively involved in KP activities to ensure that almost 99% of the diamond trade in the world is conflict free.

• The next Intercessional session is slated to be held in India as Chair. Botswana and the Russian Federation will serve as Vice-Chair during the period of 2019-2020.

 

 

 

• The Democratic Republic of Congo`s deadly Ebola outbreak is now the second largest in history, behind the devastating West Africa outbreak that killed thousands a few years ago, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

• Dr Peter Salama, WHO`s emergencies chief, called it a "sad toll" as DR Congo`s health ministry announced the number of cases has reached 426.

• The latest outbreak is the tenth in DR Congo since Ebola was first detected there in 1976.

 

 

 

• Delegates from nearly 200 nations began two weeks of talks to tackle deep political divisions at the most important United Nations meeting on global warming since the landmark 2015 Paris deal to shift away from fossil fuels.

 

• Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama declared the UN climate summit open yesterday and handed over the presidency of the talks to Michal Kurtyka, Poland`s deputy environment minister.

 

• The COP24 climate summit will see nations try to agree on ways of implementing the promises they made in the 2015 Paris treaty to limit temperature rises to avert runaway global warming.

 

 

 

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi met FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who gifted him a football jersey with his name on its back. 

• Mr Modi, who met Infantino on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires on Saturday, shared a picture of the blue jersey, with his name on the back on twitter.

• FIFA, which describes itself as an international governing body of association football, is responsible for organising major international soccer tournaments, notably the World Cup.

 

 

 

• Qatar has announced its decision to leave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) from January next year and focus more on the production of natural gas. 

• Qatar has plans to increase its annual exports of liquified natural gas, LPG from 77 million tons of gas per year to 110 million tons. 

• Qatar is the world`s largest exporter of LPG. 

 

 

 

• External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will co-chair the 12th session of the India-UAE Joint Commission Meeting for Economic and Technical Cooperation with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister of the UAE.

• Along with the Foreign Minister of the UAE, Mrs Swaraj will also inaugurate a Gandhi-Zayed Digital Museum in Abu Dhabi to mark the celebrations of 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth and centenary celebrations of the birth of Shaikh Zayed, founder of the modern UAE. 

• She is also scheduled to interact with the Indian community in Abu Dhabi. 

• India and the UAE enjoy strong bonds of friendship. With nearly 50 billion US Dollar bilateral trade, the two countries are one of the largest trade partners for each other and have made robust investments bilaterally. 

• UAE is the sixth-largest source of India`s oil imports and hosts a 33 lakhs strong Indian Community.

 

 

 

• The annual observance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities Day was proclaimed in 1992, by a United Nations General Assembly resolution.

• International Day of Persons with Disabilities aims to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.

• The theme for this year is Empowering persons with disabilities and ensuring inclusiveness and equality. 

• The United Nations will launch the first-ever flagship report on disability and development "UN Flagship Report on Disability and Development 2018 - Realizing the SDGs by, for and with persons with disabilities".

 

 

 

• The 80th Session of the Policy Commission of the World Customs Organization (WCO) will commence in Mumbai. The Session is being organized by the WCO and hosted by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), India.

• The Indian delegation will be headed by Chairman, CBIC, S Ramesh, along with Member PK Das and their team of senior officers.

• Some of the important topics to be discussed during the meeting include trade facilitation, controlling illicit financial flow, performance measurement, challenges of small island economies, etc.

 • 80th Session of the Policy Commission of the World Customs Organization (WCO) was held recently in Mumbai. The Session was organized by the WCO and hosted by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).

• The World Customs Organization (WCO), established in 1952 as the Customs Co-operation Council (CCC) is an independent intergovernmental body whose mission is to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of Customs administrations.

• As the global centre of Customs expertise, the WCO is the only international organization with competence in Customs mattersand can rightly call itself the voice of the international Customs community.

• The WCO has divided its Membership into six Regions. Each of the six Regions is represented by a regionally elected Vice-Chairperson to the WCO Council.

 

 

• CIMON is a small robot endowed with artificial intelligence (AI) launched on a two-day trip to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule.

• CIMON was developed by the European aerospace company Airbus on behalf of the German space agency. The robot’s AI is IBM’s famous Watson system.

• CIMON is roughly spherical and weighs 11 lbs. (5 kilograms). The robot can converse with people, and it knows whom it’s talking to thanks to facial-recognition software.

 

 

 

• NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission is all set to reach the Bennu asteroid – a rock that may predate the solar system – where its primary mission is to hover just above it, grab a sample of rock and dust and bring it back to Earth.

• The launch of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission took place on September 8, 2016. Since then, the spacecraft has been two years travelling through space to reach its target, primitive asteroid Bennu, in October, 2018.

• OSIRIS-Rex stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.

• OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program, which previously sent the New Horizons spacecraft zooming by Pluto and the Juno spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter.

• The aim of the mission is to collect a sample of regolith- the loose, soil-like material which covers the surface of the asteroid.

• Additionally, Bennu is a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). Every 6 years, Bennu’s orbit brings it within 200,000 miles of the Earth, which means it has a high probability of impacting Earth in the late 22nd Century.

 

 

 

• Russia has begun allowing some ships to enter Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov, signalling an easing of tensions in the flashpoint area. 

• Ukraine`s infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said, ships have begun heading through the Kerch Strait again towards key Ukrainian ports. 

• Berdyansk and Mariupol ports have been partially unblocked. The functioning of the two main Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov is crucial for the country`s exports.

• Ukraine had accused Moscow of blocking merchant vessels from entering and leaving the ports. 

• In late November, the situation escalated when Russia seized three Ukrainian navy ships and arrested 24 sailors in the first open military conflict between the countries since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014. after the military confrontation last month, Ukraine put its forces on and imposed martial law in its border regions.

 

 

 

• French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Tuesday announced a six-month suspension of a fuel tax rise which has led to weeks of violent protests. 

• Mr Philippe said that people`s anger must be heard, and the measures would not be applied until there has been proper debate with those affected.

• The protests have hit major French cities, causing considerable damage for the past three weekends.

• The planned new tax was to increase gasoline price by 4 euro cents per litre from January next year. Gasoline currently costs about 1.42 euros a litre in Paris, slightly more than diesel.

 

 

 

• Thousands of women in Israel went on strike to protest what they see as the government`s inadequate response to domestic violence against women.

• Hundreds of institutions, organizations and schools across Israel have allowed their employees to join the nationwide demonstrations, which blocked the traffic in Tel Aviv.

• The protesters demanding that the government allocate $67 million for the emergency program to prevent violence against women. As many as 24 women have reportedly been killed in Israel this year by a partner, a family member, or somebody they knew.

 

 

 

• The Centre and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed an 85 million dollar loan to improve skill development eco-system in Odisha. 

• An advanced skill training center, the World Skill Center (WSC) will also be established in Bhubaneswar with the help of a loan.

• The Odisha Skill Development Project agreement was signed by Additional Secretary in the Finance Ministry Sameer Kumar Khare and Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission Kenichi Yokoyama in New Delhi.

• The project will help over 1.5 lakh people learn skills in priority sectors, including manufacturing, construction and services for formal employment. The Skill Centre will deliver eight training courses for 13 thousand students and provide training to five thousand teachers.

 

 

• A Soyuz rocket carrying Russian, American and Canadian astronauts took off from Kazakhstan and has reached orbit, in the first manned mission since a failed launch in October.

• The Soyuz (SAW-yooz) is a Russian spacecraft. Astronauts and cosmonauts travel to the International Space Station on the Soyuz.

• The Soyuz transports crews to the International Space Station and returns them to Earth after their missions.

• The Soyuz is like a lifeboat for the space station. At least one Soyuz is always docked at the space station. If there is an emergency, the station crew can use the Soyuz to return to Earth.

• The Soyuz is the only means of reaching the ISS since the U.S. retired the space shuttle in 2011.

 

 

• United States has warned Russia that it will withdraw from a major Cold War treaty limiting mid-range nuclear arms, if Moscow does not dismantle missiles within 60 days. 

• US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Brussels yesterday that the US will no longer be bound by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, unless Moscow withdraws a new system that has threatened to trigger an arms race. 

• The US and NATO say Russia`s 9M729 system, also known by the designation SSC-8, violates the INF treaty, which banned ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

 

 

 

• Globally, 1.4 million patents were granted in 2017. China’s patent authority led the world in the number of patents granted with 420,144 and was followed by the US with 318,829, according to the WIPO.

• The number of patents granted by India shot up by 50% in 2017, keeping up a trend of steep increases. The patents granted by India increased from 8,248 in 2016 to 12,387 last year.

• Of the patents granted last year, 1,712 went to entities and individuals based in India, and 10,675 to foreigners.

• While India ranked 10th in the number of patents given last year, no Indian company or university figures in last year’s global list of the top 50 patent applicants.

• The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is one of the 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations.

• India is a member of WIPO and party to several treaties administered by WIPO.

 

 

 

• Scientists have discovered a cache over 100 new exoplanets using data from NASA’s Kepler Space telescope as well as ground-based observatories. 

• The diverse planets are expected to play a large role in developing the research field of exoplanets and life in the Universe.

• The Kepler Space Telescope has been officially retired by NASA. Its successor space telescope, called TESS, has already started collecting data.

• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA mission that will look for planets orbiting the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. 

• It was led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with seed funding from Google.

 

 

• India has deeply regretted the failure of the Fourth Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (RevCon) to adopt a report by consensus and reiterated its determination to persist with efforts to bring countries together and bridge differences.

• There are daunting challenges ahead such as the discovery of new toxic chemicals, advancements in deployment and dissemination techniques.

• There is an increasing threat of use of chemical weapons by non-state actors such as IS and other terror outfits.

• The growing complexity of the global security environment calls for greater vigilance and continued efforts by both OPCW and the member states towards achieving general and complete chemical disarmament.

• Despite best efforts, there has been an increase in allegations and incidents of use of chemical weapons in different parts of the world such as Malaysia, UK and Northern Ireland, the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq.

• The OPCW is an independent, autonomous international organisation with a working relationship with the United Nations.

• The organisation was awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize “for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons”.

 

 

 

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as the most popular global leader on social media platform Instagram with 14.8 million followers.

• According to a list published by online platform twiplomacy, Mr Modi is closely followed by Indonesian President Joko Widodo with 12.2 million followers.

• With 10 million followers, US President Donald Trump is at the third position on photo-sharing platform.

• The picture of newly married Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli and his wife, actress Anushka Sharma meeting the prime minister has become the most liked picture posted by any world leader.

 

 

 

• The day is observed annually on 5th December to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and advocating for the sustainable management of soil resources.

• The theme for this year`s World Soil Day is - `Be the Solution to Soil Pollution`.

• According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Soil holds three times as much carbon as the atmosphere and can help meet the challenges of a changing climate.

• It said, 815 million people are food insecure and 2 billion people are nutritionally insecure, but it can be mitigated through soil. 95 per cent of food comes from soil and 33 per cent of the global soils are already degraded.

 

 

• Elon Musk-led SpaceX has successfully launched 64 small satellites into low Earth orbit onboard of its reusable and preflown Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This has set new record in United States of launching satellites in single go.

• Space X It is private US space agency. It was founded by Elon Musk on May 6, 2002 who is its current CEO of Space X.

• Its main purpose for its establishment was to reduce cost of space transport and establish human habitation on Mars house. Space X has developed series of Falcon Rockets.

 

 

 

• The UN General Assembly has failed to pass by two-thirds majority a US-sponsored resolution condemning Hamas and its rocket attacks against Israel. 

• The vote on the resolution to condemn Hamas was 87-57 with 33 abstentions, below the two-thirds requirement. 

• The resolution also would have supported a "just, lasting and comprehensive peace" between the Israelis and Palestinians in accordance with all other United Nations resolutions on the issue.

• The latest violence in Gaza erupted on Monday after a Hamas commander was killed in a covert Israeli operation. Since then, Gaza militants have fired at least 460 rockets at Israel, and Israeli forces have carried out air strikes on 160 targets in Gaza.