The government finally declared GENERALBIPIN RAWAT as the country’s first-ever Chiefof Defence Staff (CDS) or Triservice chief,

an announcement that came barely a few hours be-fore he completed his three-year-tenure as the Army

chief on December 31.Sources said the government believes Gen Rawat

— who will be the country’s fourth four-star generalafter the Army, Navy and IAF chiefs — fits the bill forthe new CDS post because “he can push the bound-aries to drive the desperately-needed integrationamong the Triservices”.

Roles and functions■ The CDS, of course, will also provide “single-point

military advice” to the government as well as func-tion as the military advisor to the PM-led Nu-

clear Command Authority. ■ Though the three Service chiefs will retainfull operational control over their forces, theCDS will clearly be the “first among equals”

in the hierarchy. ■ Better manage the country’s strate-gic resources and nuclear arsenal. ■ The dual-hattedrole of the CDS refers to: one of the permanent Chair-man of the Chiefs of Staff Committee which has thethree service chiefs as members, and the other of thehead of the newly-created Department of Military Af-fairs (DMA) in the ministry. The former is a militaryrole while the latter is a role in the government; it is,as the head of DMA, that his major responsibilitieswithin the ministry will be discharged.

1 KNOW MORE ABOUT INDIA’S FIRST-EVERCHIEF OF DEFENCE STAFF

General Manoj Mukund Naravane took charge as thechief of Army staff, succeeding General Bipin Rawat.General Naravane served as vice chief of the Armybefore taking charge of the 1.3-million strong Army.In his 37 years of service, he served in numerouscommand and staff appointments during peace, fieldand highly active counter-insurgency environments inJammu and Kashmir and the Northeast.

NARAVANE IS ARMY CHIEF

Beefing up surveillance, the IndianNavy has issued orders to BAN THEUSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA by its person-

nel to curb cyber snooping, after an espi-onage racket with alleged links to Pak-istan operating through Facebook, wasbusted on December 20.

Apart from banning the use of so-

cial media web-sites and Apps suchas the Facebook, Insta-gram and even WhatsApp, theNavy order bans the use ofsmartphones within the areaof all bases, and on ships anddockyards.

2 WHY DID THE INDIAN NAVY BANSOCIAL MEDIA?

THE REASON➤ The restriction was imposed to avoid Navypersonnel from becoming the target of honeytraps run by spies on the social network, andin the process, compromising on sensitive infor-mation pertaining to national security.➤ Recently, seven Navy personnel and a hawalaoperator were arrested for allegedly passing on sensi-tive information like locations of naval ships to a Pakistani han-dler. All seven sailors had fallen prey to a honey trap on FB in 2018.

You know the news,but did some terms puzzle

you? On this page, we explain theterms used in news or by our

newsmakers. Figure out why thenames, places and terms became

the actual newsmakers this week.

NAMES, PLACES & TERMS4 AUSTRALIA’S HELLISH HEAT WAVE AND

WILDFIRES, EXPLAINED

Ocean cir-culation,years of

drought, and climate changeare fueling AUSTRALIA’S RECORD

HEAT AND DEADLY FIRES. Australiaended 2019 amid yet another spike

in heat, with temperatures topping105 degrees Fahrenheit in Sydney and

triple-digit temperatures throughoutmuch of the country.

The effectThe fires have already killed at least 10people, torched in excess of 11.3 millionacres of crops, and destroyed more than900 homes since September. The blazesmade breathing the air in Sydney as badas smoking 37 cigarettes and have killed480 million animals.

The reasonThere were unique patterns in rain,temperature, and wind that con-

verged this year to scorch thecontinent, factors that scien-

tists were able to detect in ad-vance. But Australia is also

deep in the throes of the ac-celerating climate cri-

sis, facing not justextreme heat

b u t

changes in rain-fall patterns. Thecountry itself spans a re-gion from the tropics in thenorth to more temperate cli-mates in the south, with desertsin the middle. It also sits betweentwo major oceans and is buffeted bythe shifting circulation patterns ofboth. So the weather over the conti-nent can change drastically year toyear and become hard to predict.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a sen-ior lecturer at the Climate Change Re-search Centre, says there were warningsigns that this year’s summer in Aus-tralia would get brutally hot. One signalwas that the Indian Ocean Dipole, thecycle of the temperature gradient be-tween the eastern and western parts ofthe Indian Ocean, was in its positivephase this year. That led to much lessrainfall over Australia as prevailingwinds pushed moisture gatheringabove the Indian Ocean away fromthe continent in the spring. Atthe same time, there werelonger-term factors at work– severe drought, spurredby three winters in arow with little pre-cipitation.

Two students of Class X inPune have designed a lampthat runs on gravitation en-

ergy. What’s new about it? Thegravitational lamps operate withthe use of stones and soil and thelight energy is generated by con-ducting their movement throughgravitational energy.

The lamp has been designed

by Aniket Ghisad and NachiketMendki of Dr Kalmadi ShamaraoHigh School in Ganeshnagar,Pune, and is now being marketed.Their efforts got a special recog-nition from President Ram NathKovind. Later, the two were invit-ed to attend a special boot camporganised in Mumbai for ATAL TINKERING LABS.

3 ATAL LAB: CLASS X KIDS INVENTBUDGET GRAVITATIONAL ENERGY LAMP

Atal InnovationMissionAtal Innovation Mission (AIM)is Government of India’sflagship initiative to promotea culture of innovation andentrepreneurship in thecountry. Major initiatives areas follows:

1Atal Tinkering Labs: Creating problem solving mindset acrossschools in India.

2Atal Incubation Centers: Fostering world-class startups andadding a new dimension to the incubator model.

3Atal New India Challenges: Fostering product innovations andaligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministeries.

4Mentor India Campaign: A national mentor network in collabo-ration with public sector, corporates and institutions, to sup-

port all the intiatives of the mission.

5Atal Community Innovation Centre: To stimulate communitycentric innovation and ideas.

ATAL TINKERING LAB:With a vision to ‘Cul-tivate one Millionchildren in India asNeoteric Innovators’,Atal Innovation Mis-sion is establishingAtal Tinkering Labo-ratories (ATLs) inschools across India.The objective of thisscheme is to foster cu-riosity, creativity andimagination in young minds; and inculcate skills such asdesign mindset, computational thinking, adaptive learn-ing, physical computing etc.

KEY FEATURES OF ATL: ATL is a work space whereyoung minds can give shape to their ideas through ahands-on, do-it-yourself mode; and learn innovationskills. Children will get a chance to work with toolsand equipment to understand the concepts of STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). ATLwill have educational and learning ‘do it your-

self ’ kits and equipment on science, electron-ics, robotics etc.

According to the India State ofForest Report 2019: Union Min-ister Prakash Javadekar on De-

cember 30, 2019, released a report de-picting forest cover in India. Accord-ing to this report, the forest area inthe country has increased by 5,188square km in the last two years. It hasalso mentioned inthe report that this

green area covers about 25% of the to-tal geographic area of the country. Ac-cording to the report, the three stateswhere forest area has grown the mostinclude Karnataka (1,025 km), AndhraPradesh (990 km) and Kerala (823 km).

WHICH STATE HAS THE LARGEST FOR-EST COVER IN INDIA? The largest for-est cover states of India includes

Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal radesh,Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maha-

rashtra.

WHICH STATE HASTHE LOWEST FOREST COV-

ER IN INDIA? India has aforest area of 697,898 sq

km, with a percentage of21.235%. Punjab, Haryana,

Rajasthan, UP, Gujarat and Bihar havethe lowest percentage of forests in

India. These 6 states along with Daman& Diu has a forest percentages lessthan 10%. The report says the forestarea of the northeastern states hasdecreased except in Assam.

5 GREEN COVER INCREASED BY 5,188SQUARE KM IN TWO YEARS

❚ A MISSION: Prime MinisterNarendra Modi highlighted Isro’sproposed mission to send a satel-

lite to study the Sun’s coronain his radio address Mann

ki Baat. The mission,dubbed Aditya, is part

of the Indian Space Re-search Organisa-

tion's (Isro) ambi-tious 2020 pro-gramme, as itseeks to bounceback from theill-fated Chan-d r a y a a n - 2mission.❚ WHAT IS IT?M i s s i o nA d i t y a

seeks to place a satellite to earth’slow earth orbit (around 800 km)in such an orientation (halo or-bit) that it has a continuous vi-sion of the Sun, uninterruptedby occultation or eclipses. Thesatellite would be of 400 kg classand be launched by the PSLV-XLfrom Sriharikota. Its objective isto study the Sun’s corona, the out-er layers extending to thousandsof km.❚ UNLIKE NASA’S: To put it in con-text, Mission Aditya is less am-bitious than Nasa’s Parker SolarProbe. Launched in August 2018,the Parker Solar Probe aims toorbit around the Sun, coming asclose as 6.1 million kilometres toits surface.

6 MOON BEHIND, ISRO TO GAZE AT SUN

EXPLAINER02 “What people are looking for is someone to explain life tothem. But there is no explanation and nothing to explain.”Marty Rubin