# G20

• India updated its G20 calendar on Friday, it showed that a meeting of the working group on Tourism will take place in Srinagar from May 22 to 24.
• The announcement of the dates came despite opposition from Pakistan ans also China.
• China had last month also objected to another G20 meeting in Arunachal Pradesh.
• G20 meetings are taking place in all 28 states and union territories.
• Around 50 delegates had participated in the G20 meeting in Arunachal Pradesh.

# China

• Seventy one Chinese military aircraft crossed the sensitive median line of the Taiwan strait on Saturday.
• China began drills around Taiwan in anger at President Tsai ing Wen’s meeting with the speaker of the US house of representatives.
• China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the Island under its control.
• Taiwan military said they will respond if their sovereignty will be challenged.

# Central pollution body

• Central pollution control board and the state or union territory boards do not have adequate staff strength to perform their respective duties.
• One third (193) of the total sanctioned posts (577) of the CPCB is currently lying vacant whereas the vacancy position in the states and the UTs goes upto almost half of the sanctioned positions of 11956.
• Data shared by the environment ministry in the Lok Sabha shows that while jharkhand reported the highest vacancy of 87% followed by Bihar (78%) ang Haryana (68%).

# PM Modi

• PM Narendra Modi will on Sunday launch the international Big Cats Alliance (IBCA) and release the latest figures of the country’s tiger population at the Karnataka state open University.
• The IBCA aims to focus on protection and conservation of seven major big cats of the world – Tiger, lion, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Puma, Jaguar and Cheetah.
• The launch of the alliance and the release of the tiger numbers will happen on the first day of the three day Indian conservation conference, marking the celebration of the 50 years of project tiger which was launched by then PM Indira Gandhi on April 1 1973.