WHY IN THE NEWS?

Scientists are on alert for a possible eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano within Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park.

About Kilauea Volcano:

• Kilauea, also called Mount Kilauea, is located in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the southeastern part of the island of Hawaii, U.S.A.
• It is an active shield volcano. Historically, it is the most active of the five volcanoes that together form the Big Island of Hawaii.

What is Volcano?         

• A Volcano is an opening on the surface of a planet or moon that allows material warmer than its surroundings to escape from its interior.
• When this material escapes, it causes an eruption. An eruption can be explosive, sending material high into the sky. Or it can be calmer, with gentle flows of material.

WHY IN THE NEWS?

The Union Minister of Women & Child Development, Smriti Irani addressed the First ever G20 Ministerial Conference on Women’s Empowerment.

About:

• Conference was held at Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy in a hybrid format.
• During the conference, union minister highlighted India’s commitment of addressing gender and women centric issues by means of mutual cooperation.
• She also noted several initiatives undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government in India towards bringing gender equality, strengthening women’s safety & security and ensuring better healthcare.
• He also conveyed India’s solidarity with the G20 grouping in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment within the partner countries.
• She also joined the Gender Equality Ministers of the G20 for the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women through cooperation and coordination at all the relevant fora.

About G20

G20 is an informal group comprising of 19 countries and the European Union besides the representatives from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Membership to G20 is a mix of world’s largest advanced and emerging economies. It represents about two-thirds of world’s population, 85% of world’s gross domestic product, 80% of world’s investment and 75% of world’s trade

WHY IN THE NEWS?

India and Maldives have signed pact with Maldives on one of the major connectivity initiatives called “Greater Male Connectivity Project”.

About:

• Under the agreement, India will start the largest-ever infrastructure project called Greater Male Connectivity Project (GMCP) in the Maldives.
• For the project, India will grant $100 million and a line of credit worth Rs 400 million.
• GMCP is the flagship project of President Solih’s presidency and will be an enduring symbol of India-Maldives partnership.
• This project will be started to connect business, people and industry.
• GMCP will comprise of the construction of a 6.74 km long bridge and causeway link. Both will connect the capital city Male with adjoining islands of Thilagushi, Villingli and Gulhifalhu.

Background

This project was planned during the visit of external affairs minister of India to Male in September 2019.

Significance of the project

Agreement over the GMCP project proves that, India is a robust development partner of the Maldives and is also the First Responder in times of any emergency in the Maldives. It is not only the biggest project by India in the Maldives but also the biggest infrastructure project overall in the Island nation. It will provide a major boost to Maldivian economy as well as the connectivity between four islands that accounts for about half of the Maldivian population.

Largest connectivity project

So far, the largest connectivity project in Maldives is the Sinamale Bridge of 1.4 km, which was completed in 2018. It was built under Chinese assistance and connects Male with Hulhule and Hulhumale.

WHY IN THE NEWS?

Indian states have reported new cases of sub-lineage AY.12 of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, in recent months. According to experts, this new sub-lineage could be a reason behind the recent surge in COVID cases in Israel.

About:

• According to India Sars Cov2 Genome Consortium (INSACOG’s) update, even though 60 percent of the population are fully vaccinated in Israel, Delta variant cases have increased.
• The number of Delta Family has expanded from four to 13 variants.
• In India, most widely prevalent variant of concern is being dubbed as sub-lineage AY.12.

What is AY.12 mutation?

Delta variant (B.1.617.2) has given rise to several sub-lineages and are dubbed as ‘Delta Plus’ variants. Delta plus variant bear most of its characteristic mutations but in different ways. Out of all, sub-lineages AY.12 has all the characteristic Delta mutations.  However, according to INSACOG, it is not yet clinically tested whether AY.12 is different from Delta or B.1.617.2. AY.12 has lost some of the mutations as it happens in Delta lineage.

First case of AY.12

In India, first case of AY.12 lineage was reported on September 7, 2020. Till August 26, 2021, 44,083 sequences of the same lineage have been reported worldwide. In India, out of total 78865 samples; 67699 samples have been sequenced and 50869 of them have been analysed.  Although, in India, only 0.002 of the samples available have been sequenced

AY.12 in Israel

AY.12 is a dominant strain in Israel, currently. Around 51 percent of the samples were tested with this variant.

About Delta Variant

Delta variant is also known as lineage B.1.617.2 and Indian variant. This was first detected in 2020 in India. The variant was named as its current form by World Health Organization (WHO) on May 31, 2021.

WHY IN THE NEWS?

Navies of India and Germany conducted a joint exercise in Gulf of Aden on August 26, 2021

About:
The joint exercise included helicopter landings as well as search & seizure operations.

• Frigate ‘Trikand’ from Indian Navy exercised with German frigate called ‘Bayern’.
• INS Trikand is deployed for anti-piracy patrol in Gulf of Aden region.
• Significance of the exercise

The exercise between both the navies in the Indian Ocean leg of Indo-Pacific Deployment 2021 enhanced the interoperability and facilitated exchange of best practices between them in the maritime domain.

India-Germany Defence ties

Navies of India and Germany conducted the first ever joint exercises in 2008 after both the nations signed an ‘anti-piracy co-operation agreement’ in 2006. Both the counties currently maintain an ongoing dialogue in the arena of commercial maritime security and cooperation in the area of anti-terrorism.

Military of Germany

Military of Germany has been principally structured to defend Eastern Europe and to support NATO operations in Western European theatre of operations. Germany does not have any sovereign territories in the Indo-Pacific region and is also incapable of power projection in the region, unlike UK or France.

WHY IN NEWS?
Government of India has introduced a new registration mark under the Bharat Series (BH-Series) for new vehicles.

About:

• New registration mark was launched in order to facilitate seamless transfer of vehicles.
• This citizen-centric, IT-based solution for vehicle registration was launched for facilitating mobility.
• Background

Government as well as private sector employees undergo station relocation. Such movements create unease for the employees with respect to the transfer of registration from parent state to another state. This is so because, section 47 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 provides that a person cannot keep the vehicle for more than 12 months in any state other than the state where vehicle is registered. Instead, a new registration can be made with the new state- registering authority within 12 months. Considering this difficulty, new BH-series were launched.

About BH-series

• Ministry of Road Transport and Highways launched the BH-series to facilitate seamless transfer of vehicles.
• Vehicle with this registration mark will not require assignment of any new registration mark when owner of the vehicle shifts from one state to other.
• Vehicle registration facility under this series will be available on voluntary basis to Defense personnel, employees of Central or State Government, Central or State Public Sector Undertakings and private sector companies or organizations, having their offices across four or more States or Union territories.
• Motor vehicle tax will be levied for two years or in multiple of two. After completing fourteenth year, this tax will be levied annually and it will be half the amount that was charged earlier for that vehicle.

WHY IN NEWS?

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched the India’s first ‘Quantum Computer Simulator (QSim) Toolkit’

About:

• QSim is the first-of-its-kind toolkit, indigenously developed in India.
• It meant to be a vital tool of learning and understanding the practical aspects of programming with the help of Quantum Computers. It will thus bring about a new era of Quantum Computing research in India.
• This toolkit has been developed jointly by scientists of IIT Roorkee, C-DAC and IISc Bangalore.
• It was developed with the support and funding of MeitY.

About the toolkit

• This toolkit was launched in order to enable researchers and students to do research in Quantum Computing in a cost-effective manner.
• It allows researchers and students to write and debug Quantum Code which is essential to develop Quantum Algorithms.
• It can serve as the essential educational and research tool to provide an excellent way to attract students and researchers towards the Quantum Technology.
• QSim creates a platform which will helps students and users to acquire skills of programming and designing real Quantum Hardware.

Key features of the QSim

Most unique feature of QSim is its Intuitive User Interface. This interface offers a robust Quantum Computer Simulator along with a Graphical User Interface based Workbench in an integrated manner in order to create Quantum programs and visualize instant circuit generation simulated outputs

WHY IN THE NEWS?

Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman, launched the fourth edition of the Public Sector Bank (PSB) Reforms Agenda called ‘EASE 4.0’ for the financial year 2021-22.

About:                                                                                                                                      

• It is simplified, tech-enabled and collaborative banking.
• On the occasion, the finance minister launched the annual report for PSB Reforms Agenda EASE 3.0 for the year 2020-21 and also witnessed the awards ceremony to felicitate the best performing banks on EASE 3.0 Banking Reforms Index.

Best performing banks on EASE 3.0

• SBI, Bank of Baroda (BoB), and Union Bank of India (UBI) won the awards for best performing banks on the basis of EASE index.
• Indian Bank won the award for best improvement from baseline performance.
• SBI, BoB, UBI, Punjab National Bank and Canara Bank also won the top awards across different themes of PSB Reforms Agenda EASE 3.0.

Reforms under EASE 4.0

EASE 4.0 reforms look after four key initiatives to be adopted by public sector banks:

1. Smart lending backed by analytics
2. 24×7 banking with resilient technology & cloud-based IT systems
3. data enabled agriculture financing and
4. Collaboration with the financial ecosystem.

WHY IN THE NEWS?

• India’s first sectoral index in the Agri commodities basket i.e. GUAREX was launched by the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX).
• GUAREX is a price based sectoral index that tracks the movement in the futures contracts of guar gum refined splits and guar seed on a real-time basis. This index product will offer a lot of opportunities to the value chain.
• The weightage of guarseed and guar gum refined splits in the index will be 63 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively. The index futures will be cash-settled. Initially, Guarex futures contracts expiring in September and October will be made available for trading.

WHY IN THE NEWS?

• Former India footballer O Chandrasekharan, popularly known as Olympian Chandrasekharan in his home state Kerala, passed away.
• Chandrasekharan, who played as a defender, was a member of the Indian team in the 1960 Rome Olympics the last time the country participated in football at the Games.