Mount Ibu, Elephant Census, Jolfa Region

• The lion-tailed macaque (Macaca Silenus) has been forced to rummage through urban waste and grab food from houses, while they are supposed to be a shy and largely frugivorous primate.
• Lion-tailed macaques have silver-white manes contrasting with shiny coats of black fur and tufted tails.
• It is an arboreal primate endemic to select rainforests of the Western Ghats. They prefer upper canopies of rainforests.
• The lion-tailed macaque was reassessed and classified as an ‘endangered’ species in the IUCN Red List in 2020.
• About 2,500 mature individuals are distributed in the Western Ghats hill ranges between the Kalakkad Hills in the south and Sirsi-Honnavara in the north.
• The Wildlife (Protection) Act, of 1972 gives it the highest conservation priority by listing it under Schedule I.

Tamil Nadu Endangered Species Conservation Fund with a corpus of ₹50 crore. The lion-tailed macaque is one of the species to be covered under the fund.

Dig Deeper: What are the implications of losing fear among Lion-tailed Macaque to come closer to human Habitat?

• A synchronised elephant population estimation will be held across South India.
• The field assessment forms a key aspect of the resolutions put forth by the inter-State Coordination Committee, comprising Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, aimed at addressing human-wildlife conflict through joint action and intelligence sharing.
• Andhra Pradesh too will join in the collaborative exercise.
• The heads of the Forest departments of the four States decided methodology.
• Last year’s estimation block count and dung count methods recorded 1,920 and 2,386 elephants, significantly lower than the counts in 2017 (3,322 and 5,706 respectively).

The Forest Department, which maintained that its findings in 2023 were more precise than those recorded in the previous surveys, attributed this decline to migration patterns influenced by climate and the 957 km of shared borders among Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Dig Deeper: Read about the new elephant corridor report released by the central government which showed a 40 per cent increase in elephant corridors across 15 elephant range states in India.

• Critical priority pathogens present major global threats due to their high burden, and ability to resist treatment and spread resistance to other bacteria, noted the latest Bacterial Pathogens Priority List (BPPL) updated by the World Health Organization (WHO), first published in 2017.
• This includes gram-negative bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to the antibiotic Rifampicin.
• The list features 15 families of antibiotic-resistant bacteria grouped into critical, high, and medium categories for prioritisation.
• The WHO stated that high-priority pathogens, including salmonella and shigella, are of particularly high burden in low and middle-income countries, along with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, which pose significant challenges in healthcare settings.
• Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites no longer respond to medicines, increasing the risk of disease spread, illness and death. AMR is driven in large part by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials.
• Other high-priority pathogens such as antibiotic-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Enterococcus faecium, present unique public health challenges.

Dig Deeper: Read about various initiatives in India and world stage to halt increasing Antimicrobial Resistance.

• The heads of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Interpol, and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have called for the need to urgently step up efforts to target the huge illicit profits generated by transnational organised crime that facilitate conflicts, fund terrorism, and negatively impact vulnerable populations.
• The issue was raised at a side event of the 33rd Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Vienna.
• It would positively impact all goals of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, including financial stability, inclusive economic growth, and strengthening institutions and governance.

The leaders of three organisations also laid stress on accelerated policy reforms and capacity building ahead of the UN 2026 Crime Congress, to be hosted by the United Arab Emirates. Dig Deeper: Read about the nexus between illicit funds generated from organised crime, drugs, arms trade and wars in the world.

• An accident happened to the helicopter carrying the President of Iran in the Jolfa region of Iran’s western province of East Azerbaijan.
• The accident happened in the mountainous forest area of Dizmar.
• He inaugurated a dam project with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliev, on the border between the two countries.

Dig Deeper: Study various regions of war zone countries through maps.

• Stellar nucleosynthesis is the process by which stars forge elements inside their cores.
• The only element not formed in this way is hydrogen, the most abundant and lightest element in the universe. It was formed in the initial aftermath of the Big Bang.
• The cores of stars have crushing pressures and temperature (Millions of degrees Celsius).  In these harsh conditions, the nuclei of atoms undergo nuclear fusion.
• The hydrogen nucleus is just one proton. Inside the core, these nuclei form helium nuclei (two protons and two neutrons). This is the p-p (short for proton-proton) process.

Dig Deeper: Read about Supernova and the Big Bang.

• Mt. Ibu on the remote Indonesian island of Halmahera, erupts spectacularly, spewing a grey ash cloud 4 km into the sky as streaks of lightning flash around its crater.
• It is a Composite Volcano and the second most active Indonesian volcano after Mount Merapi.
• Mt. Ruang of Indonesia erupted recently forcing largescale displacement. 
• Mt. Ibu’s eruption follows a series of such outbursts from different volcanoes in Indonesia, which sits on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ and has 127 active volcanoes.

Dig Deeper: Study the location of recent volcanic eruptions in the Pacific Ring of Fire on a map.