Drake Passage
Why in news?
- In a first, six rowers from four countries on December 25 crossed the Drake Passage, in just under two weeks after pushing off from the southern tip of South America. The project was dubbed “The Impossible Row.”
Important facts
- The Drake Passage is located between Cape Horn at the tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula. The passage is named after Sir Francis Drake, who was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe.
- It is also the narrowest stretch in the Southern Ocean and spans approximately 800 km between the southern tip of South America and the northern tip of the West Antarctic Peninsula.
- It is considered one of the roughest waterways in the world because here, layers of cold seawater from the south and warm seawater from the north collide to form powerful eddies.
- The six men rowed for 12 days, 1 hour and 45 minutes, making it the first completely human-powered crossing of the passage, which was confirmed by the Guinness World Records (GWR).
- As per the GWR, the row represents, among other firsts, the first row on the Southern Ocean, the first row across the Drake Passage and the first row to the Antarctic continent.
Committee on economic statistics
Why in news?
- A high-level panel under India’s first chief statistician Pronab Sen will review and develop the country’s surveys on employment, industry and services sector amid criticism of official statistics.
Important facts
- The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has set up a single standing committee on economic statistics (SCES) to deliberate and develop methodologies for surveys on industry, services and employment in place of multiple panels on these issues.
- Comprising 27 members, including academics and industry representatives, the SCES will subsume in it the four standing committees on labour force statistics, industrial statistics, services sector and unincorporated sector enterprises.
- It will review the existing framework of data sources, indicators and definitions of index of industrial production, periodic labour force survey, time use survey, economic census and unorganised sector statistics, among others. “The idea is to make these statistics talk to each other and make them consistent.
- The committee has been set up at a time when the credibility and independence of India’s official statistics have been doubted on various grounds, including the gross domestic product (GDP) growth numbers and methodology, employment and expenditure surveys.
Capital punishment
Why in news?
- Japan executed a Chinese man, Wei Wei, who was on death row for the slaying of a family of four. He was the first foreigner to be executed by Japan’s Ministry of Justice in over a decade.
Important facts
- The global trend has largely been to move away from executions and death sentences.
- According to Amnesty International, at least 690 executions were carried out in 20 countries in 2018, which is a decrease of over 31 per cent compared to 2017. The most executions were carried out in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Iraq.
- The methods used to execute people included beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.
- In 2018, while Burkina Faso abolished the death penalty, Gambia and Malaysia both declared an official moratorium on executions and in the US, the death penalty statute in the state of Washington was declared unconstitutional in October 2018.
- As of 2018, while over 106 countries abolished the death penalty in law for all crimes, roughly 142 countries abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
World Economic League Table 2020
Why in news?
- India will overtake Germany to become fourth-largest economy in the world by the year 2026. According to a report by the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), India is all set to overtake Japan to become the third-largest economy by 2034.
Crucial highlights:
- The report titled ‘World Economic League Table 2020’ said that India is also set to become a 5 trillion dollar economy by 2026, 2 years later than the government’s target of 2024.
- India has decisively overtaken both France and the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2019. The report said that Japan, Germany and India will battle for third position over the next 15 years.
- The World Economic League Table is an annual calculation by CEBR jointly published by CEBR and Global Construction Perspectives. The base data for 2019 is taken from the IMF World Economic Outlook.