2026

Venezuela crisis unlikely to hit India’s energy security

Context: Venezuelan crude accounted for about 0.3% of India’s total oil import in the current financial year up to November; since 2019, India has been cutting its imports from Venezuela after U.S. sanctions.

• The United States attack on Venezuela is unlikely to have any direct impact on India’s energy security, an analysis of the latest data shows.
• Numbers from the Commerce and Industry Ministry show that India imported $255.3 million worth of oil from Venezuela in the current financial year up to November 2025, about 0.3% of its total oil import during this period.
• In 2013, India had imported as much as $13 billion worth of Venezuelan oil. Since 2019, India has been cutting its oil imports and commercial engagements with Venezuela in response to U.S. sanctions and threats of secondary sanctions.
• “Given the low trade volumes, existing sanctions constraints, and the large geographical distance, the current developments in Venezuela are not expected to have any meaningful impact on India’s economy or energy security,”.

OPEC member

• Venezuela is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group of countries that largely dominates the global oil market. However, Venezuela currently produces a relatively small amount of crude oil compared with the other oil-producing nations.
• According to OPEC data, Venezuela accounts for about 3.5% of the OPEC’s total oil exports, and about 1% of global oil supplies.

Heavy oil

• This relatively low supply is due to the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela and the heavy nature of Venezuelan oil, which requires special refineries that most countries do not have. Most of Venezuela’s oil supply goes to China.
• Following the U.S. actions in Venezuela over the weekend, Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. would take over Venezuela’s oil supply. “We are going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars, it will be paid for by the oil companies directly,” Mr. Trump said in his address following the attack.

Source: The Hindu

India loses 0.4% of its GDP every year to natural disasters

Context: As the scale of economic loss escalates, disaster risk finance has moved to the forefront of policy.

• Emerging Asian economies that comprise India, China, and the ASEAN-11, face an escalating threat from natural disasters that are growing in both frequency and intensity (Chart 1).
• Over the past decade, the region has had an average of 100 disasters annually, impacting approximately 80 million people.
• The nature of these threats varies by geography: while floods and storms are the primary drivers of risk in India, tropical cyclones frequently batter the Philippines and Vietnam.
• Meanwhile, China and Indonesia contend with significantly higher seismic risks (Chart 2).
• The human and economic toll of this vulnerability has been punctuated by several landmark catastrophes.
• As the scale of economic loss escalates (Chart 3), disaster risk finance has moved to the forefront of regional policy. To design an effective response, governments must first establish a data-driven foundation.
• From 1990 to 2024, India sustained average annual disaster-related losses equivalent to 0.4% of GDP (Chart 4). The composition of these losses is geographically distinct. India’s vulnerability is primarily hydrological (non-storm-related floods and landslides), whereas Myanmar’s losses are predominantly meteorological (extreme temperatures and cyclonic storms).
• The regional risk framework also includes climatological factors (drought and wildfire), and geophysical hazards (seismic activity and volcanic eruptions) too. Among the Asian economies analysed, India ranks second only to the Philippines in the World Risk Index (Chart 5). The index calculates risk as the geometric mean of exposure (population burden) and vulnerability (a combination of structural susceptibility, coping capacity, and long-term adaptation).

Source: The Hindu

Earthlife is made of space stuff, studies of asteroid Bennu hint

OSIRIS-REx samples from Bennu show the asteroid carries ribose, glucose, amino acids, nucleobases; discovery includes nitrogen-rich polymers, presolar grains of supernova origin, raising questions about how earth acquired life’s ingredients

In 2020, a spacecraft more than 3 lakh km away on a small asteroid called Bennu collected samples of its surface. The craft, part of NASA’s OSIRIS REx mission, then launched itself towards the earth, dropping off the canister of samples in September 2023. Since then, scientists in the US and Japan have been studying pieces of Bennu to answer fundamental questions about the formation of the early solar system and life on the earth.

On December 2, three teams published papers reporting Bennu contains sugar and other important molecules required to form RNA, and is also surprisingly abundant in supernova dust from a time before the sun formed.

When the solar system was forming from the cloud of dust and gas swirling around the sun, several smaller rocks were pushed around as well, and often clumped together. Bennu’s larger parent asteroid formed in this way around the same time as the sun, 4.6 billion years ago, somewhere beyond Saturn. When Jupiter migrated to its present orbit, the parent was kicked into the asteroid belt, where it collided with other rocks. Over millennia, fragments from the parent gave rise to Bennu, which today orbits the sun between the earth and Mars.

In a Nature Geoscience paper, scientists led by Tohoku University in Japan reported finding ribose, the sugar molecule present in RNA, and glucose, the sugar molecule required for metabolism, on Bennu. Together with previous findings of amino acids and all the five nucleobases found in DNA and RNA, the entire inventory of molecules scientists believe are needed for life have now been confirmed on Bennu.

“For 5-C to convert to 6-C sugar, the optimal mix of environmental conditions such as very little but liquid brine, the right pH, and extremely low temperatures are required, which the asteroid possessed at formation,” Kuljeet Kaur Marhas, professor and head of the Planetary Labs Analysis Section at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, who works with samples of the asteroid Itokawa, said.

The findings strengthen the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis: that early life used RNA as a source of genetic information and for catalytic functions, before DNA and proteins evolved. According to the study, the abundance of asteroids like Bennu in the inner solar system would have provided sugars and amino acids, leading to the formation of life on the earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.

Chemical reactions

Scientists have also reported evidence of chemical reactions between ices forming polymer molecules before the ices melted. In a Nature Astronomy paper, a second team from NASA thus explained the discovery of polymers of nitrogen- and oxygen-rich materials on Bennu. This material, called carbamate, would have been soft and gummy when it formed, hardening since. Scientists haven’t found this material in extraterrestrial samples before.

At the time Bennu’s parent formed, volatile compound ices like frozen ammonia, known to accumulate on asteroids’ primordial surfaces, could have been heated by random radioactive decay. This would have liquefied the ices, which seeped into rocky pores and deposited the salts and minerals dissolved in them there. Bennu could have ‘inherited’ a piece of this.

Dust and gas in the early presolar system were formed from other exploding stars. By analysing the dust, astronomers hope to find clues about the elements that made up its counterpart in the early solar system, which could help understand how planets formed.

In a third paper also published in Nature Astronomy, a different NASA team showed the presolar grains on Bennu had indeed been disturbed and moved around by moving liquids on the asteroid’s surface. The concentration of presolar grains was at least 6x higher than in other similar asteroid and meteorite samples.

The team also reported signs the grains had been singed by heat released when the great mass of dust collapsed to form our sun.

Studies of the grains revealed they originated from various types of stars and supernovae. Of these, the concentrations of grains of supernovae-origin were the highest, indicating it was present in abundant quantities in the part of space where Bennu’s parent formed. 

“Why exactly there is an abundance of supernova-origin presolar grains is the biggest question, as Bennu is just like plenty of other asteroids in its neighbourhood,” Dr. Marhas, who also reviewed the presolar grains paper, said.

“Will we find similar concentrations if we sample previously studied asteroids in different locations or is there something specific that makes the ordinary-seeming Bennu extremely special?”

Source: The Hindu

Govt. mulls Aadhaar-like number for EV batteries

The Transport Ministry has proposed assigning Aadhaar-like unique identification numbers to EV batteries to ensure their end-to-end traceability and efficient recycling.

The proposed framework will make it mandatory for battery producers or importers to assign a 21-character Battery Pack Aadhaar Number (BPAN) to batteries, as per draft guidelines from the Ministry. They will also have to upload the relevant Battery Pack Dynamic data on the official portal of BPAN.

Nritya Kalanidhi award conferred on Urmila Satyanarayanan

Bharatanatyam exponent Urmila Satyanarayanan was presented the Nritya Kalanidhi award at the 19th Dance Festival inaugurated at the Music Academy in the city.

Presenting the award, Takahashi Muneo, Consul- General, Consulate General of Japan in Chennai, said the honour recognised not only her artistic excellence but also her lifelong commitment to the preservation and propagation of Bharatanatyam.

Drawing parallels between Indian and Japanese dance traditions, he said classical Japanese forms such as Noh, Kabuki and Nihon Buyo emphasised controlled movement and discipline — aspects that resonate strongly with Indian classical dances. Both traditions, he said, share a deep respect for heritage and the teacher-disciple lineage.

Mr. Muneo said many Japanese students had travelled to India to learn Bharatanatyam, while several renowned Indian dancers had taught and performed in Japan, serving as a powerful example of how culture can connect nations.

Accepting the award, Ms. Satyanarayanan expressed gratitude to her teachers, students and the Music Academy. Recalling that her arangetram was at the Music Academy, she said receiving the award from the renowned institution was a milestone in the life of a dancer.

Earlier, N. Murali, president of the Music Academy and Director of The Hindu Group of Publications, said the award to Ms. Satyanarayanan came at an important stage in her artistic journey — 50 years after her arangetram and 30 years since she founded the dance school ‘Natya Sankalpa’. She is known for her improvisation and innovation, with several acclaimed thematic presentations and dance dramas to her credit, he said.

Source: The Hindu

IIA scientists unveil secret behind the dusty veil of T. Chamaeleontis

Scientists from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have unveiled an intriguing secret behind the dusty veil of a young star named T. Chamaeleontis (T. Cha), quietly forming planets about 350 light years from Earth when part of its circumstellar inner wall collapsed partially.

According to the Department of Science and Technology, this can help rewrite our understanding of how planetary systems evolve.

T Chamaeleontisan (T. Cha) is surrounded by a planet-forming disk called circumstellar disk that contains a wide gap- likely carved out by a newborn planet. “Normally, the dense inner regions of such disks act like a protective wall or veil blocking much of the star’s ultraviolet light from reaching the colder, outer regions. That shielding makes Poly Atomic Hrydrocarbons (PAHs), flat, honeycomb-shaped molecules (Benzene rings) made of carbon and hydrogen thought to be among the earliest precursors of life’s chemistry, especially hard to detect around low-mass, Sun-like stars,” the department said.

While these molecules are common in interstellar clouds, detecting them in the disks of low-mass, Sun-like stars has been challenging due to the low amount of ultra violet light produced by them.

The IIA scientists used archival spectroscopic data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to study polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the spectrum of this star.

The ultra-sensitive JWST telescope, almost by accident, caught the moment in 2022 when that veil thinned- and an ancient kind of chemistry lit up in space.

The material from the disk of the star suddenly plunged onto the star in a burst of accretion, thinning or partially collapsing that inner wall. As this happened ultraviolet radiation suddenly streamed outward, illuminating parts of the disk that were once in shadow. This helped shed light on the survival and variation of complex hydrocarbon molecules in the planet-forming disk around a young, Sun-like star.

“JWST’s MIRI has now revealed them clearly in T. Cha and this is one of the lowest mass stars with PAH detection in their circumstellar disk,” said Arun Roy, a post-doctoral fellow at the IIA.

T. Cha was observed by the JWST in 2022, when the inner wall had partially collapsed allowing ultraviolet photons to flood the outer disk.

“This sudden illumination excited the PAHs in the disk, making them glow strongly in the JWST’s detectors. It was like a curtain lifting, revealing chemistry that had been hidden for years,” Mr. Roy added.

Source: The Hindu