Current Affair 1:

Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme 2022-23

 

The Government of India, in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India, has decided to issue Sovereign Gold Bonds in tranches.

The Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs) will be sold through Scheduled Commercial banks(except Small Finance Banks and Payment Banks), Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited (SHCIL),Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL), designated post offices, and recognised stock exchanges viz., National Stock Exchange of India Limited and Bombay Stock Exchange Limited.

Now, you read this. All from 1 to 20 except few.

The features of the Bond are as under:

Point 10 to point 13 is not required.

Current Affair 2:

What UN General Assembly’s adoption of multilingualism resolution means for Hindi, Bangla, Urdu?

 

In a move symbolic of the changing and democratic nature of communications at the United Nations, the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted an India-sponsored resolution on multilingualism.

The resolution promoted the UN’s Department of Global Communications to use both official and non-official languages, including Bangla, Hindi, and Urdu, in its communications. It also mentioned languages like Portuguese, Kiswahili, and Persian.

1. While the UN has six official languages — English, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and French — the addition of Hindi, Bangla, and Urdu will instrumentalise and institutionalise their usage as mediums for disseminating UN information.
2. The resolution was co-facilitated by Andorra and Columbia.
3. The first-time mention of Hindi, Bangla and Urdu will also help in “promoting, protecting and preserving diversity of languages and cultures globally, as well as of improving the efficiency, performance and transparency of the Organization”, noted the draft of the resolution.
4. Specifically, the aim of the resolution is not to substitute the usage of the official languages with the newly added languages. Instead, the purpose is to “encourage the Department of Global Communications to continue to use other languages in addition to the official languages with a view to reaching the widest possible spectrum of audiences and extending the United Nations message to all corners of the world in order to strengthen international support for the activities of the Organization”, it added.

India partnering with UN Global Communications since 2018

1. India has been partnering with the UN Department of Global Communications since 2018 by providing an extra-budgetary contribution to mainstream and consolidate news and multimedia content in the Hindi language.
2. “’Hindi @ UN’ project was launched in 2018 with an objective to enhance the public outreach of the United Nations in the Hindi language, and to spread greater awareness about global issues among millions of Hindi-speaking populations around the world”.

Current Affair 3:

The interlinked threats facing lakes

 

Across the world, lakes fed by rivers, glacial melt, groundwater and rain have played an important role in human civilization and development. They contain 90 per cent of the fresh water on the planet’s surface, house an array of wildlife, and make possible farming, fishing and industry. Yet, due to climate change, pollution, mining, population pressure, and unsustainable land use, they are declining at an unprecedented rate.

Important sources:

1. Fertilizer is an important component of current food systems, and yet it is also a major source of river and lake pollution.
2. Rain washes the nutrients in fertilizer into waterways and lakes which can lead to damaging algal blooms, which are predicted to increase by at least 20 per cent by 2050.
3. Wastewater is another pollution threat. Up to 80 per cent of global wastewater is estimated to enter water bodies untreated with adverse impacts on human and ecosystem health.

Resolution on Sustainable Lake Management

Recognizing these threats, in March 2022 the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted a resolution on Sustainable Lake Management. It calls on countries to protect, restore, and sustainably use lakes, while integrating them into national and regional development plans.

This is the first ever United Nations resolution specifically focusing on the sustainable management of lakes, without distinguishing between freshwater, alkaline, saltwater or soda lakes.

The March 2022 UN Environment Assembly also adopted a resolution asking UNEP to support Member States in the development of national action plans to sustainably manage nitrogen, a nutrient in fertilizer that can create aquatic “dead zones”.

Learn Dead zones.

Depletion of oxygen in coastal waters causes mortality and emigration of fish, crustaceans, and other animals. The resulting areas that appear largely lifeless are known as “dead zones.” The lack of oxygen (hypoxia) is primarily due to increased microbial respiration accompanying the decomposition of organic material.

See examples below:

 

 

Current Affair 4:

Fast radio burst (FRB)

 

News:

An international team of astronomers working on China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) has detected a new fast radio burst (FRB) with unusual properties.

Fast radio bursts and repeaters

Fast radio bursts were first detected in 2007, and hundreds have been observed since.

They are high-energy phenomena, emitting electromagnetic energy in the form of bursts of radio pulses. These last for an interval ranging from a mere fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds. In each pulse, the source can emit as much energy as the sun does in a month.

 

FRBs are triggered by explosive events in the universe, such as a supernova or the collision of two compact objects like a neutron star and a black hole. Such bursts typically occur as a transient flash only once, never to be seen again. A majority of FRBs occur this way.

​Once or twice a year, astronomers also observe repeated bursts, where the signals recur with a certain frequency over a period of time, spanning hours to days, sometimes even over a period of months. Such signals are believed to be produced typically by magnetars — rapidly spinning neutron stars, which are themselves left over, extremely dense remnants of dead stars that exploded in a supernova.

​The new signal is a repeating one that’s produced by a magnetar in a dwarf galaxy located three billion light years away from Earth.

 

 

<< Previous Next >>