• Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways (MoPSW) has accorded administrative approval for sanction of Rs 50.30 crore for developing all-weather ROPAX (Roll-on/Roll-off Passenger) Jetty and allied infrastructure connecting Kaninali in Bhadrak district &Talachua in Kendrapara district, Odisha under the Sagarmala initiative.
• The Government of Odisha will fund another 50% cost of the project.
• The project will facilitate indirect employment opportunities to locals around Dhamra river and reduce road distance of ~200 km from Talachua to Dhamra. Kaninali in Bhadrak district and Talachua in Kendrapada district, are located on the northern and southern banks of River Dhamra respectively.

• Facebook has signed a deal to buy renewable energy in India from a local firm’s wind power project, the social media giant’s first such deal in the South Asian nation.
• The 32 megawatt wind power project, located in southern Karnataka state, is part of a larger portfolio of wind and solar projects that Facebook and Mumbai-based CleanMax are working together on for supplying renewable power into India’s electrical grid.

• India’s first Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) has arrived at H-Energy’s Jaigarh Terminal in Maharashtra.
• This will also be the first year-round Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in Maharashtra.
• The LNG terminal is located at JSW Jaigarh Port in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, on the west coast of India.

• NCAER appoints World Bank lead economist Poonam Gupta as its first women director general.
• She will succeed Shekhar Shah who has led NCAER since 2011 and will complete his second five year term in early May.
• About NCAER: National Council of Applied Economic Research is a New Delhi based non-profit think tank of economics.

• The country’s first green bonds, issued by Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, were listed on BSE.
• Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, a civic body in Uttar Pradesh, has raised Rs 150 crore through the issuance of green bonds and the proceeds will be utilized for the tertiary water treatment plant to benefit industries in Ghaziabad.

About Green Bonds

• A green bond is like any other regular bond but with one key difference: the money raised by the issuer are earmarked towards financing `green’ projects, i.e. assets or business activities that are environment-friendly. Such projects could be in the areas of renewable energy , clean transportation and sustainable water management.

• Filmmaker Guneet Monga, who is receiving great reviews for her latest release, Pagglait, will be conferred with Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier dans I’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) — the second highest civilian French honour.

• The United Arab Emirates named the next two astronauts in its space programme , including the country’s first female astronaut.
• Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai identified Noura al-Matroushi as the UAE’s first female astronaut. She along with her male counterpart, Mohammed al-Mulla will undergo training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

India and Russia are “committed” to completing their contract for the S-400 missile system, due to be delivered to India at the end of the year, Russian Ambassador to India Nikolai Kudashev confirmed recently.

About S-400 Missile system

The S-400 Triumf, (NATO calls it SA-21 Growler), is a mobile, surface-to-air missile system (SAM) designed by Russia. It is the most dangerous operationally deployed modern long-range SAM (MLR SAM) in the world, considered much ahead of the US-developed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD).

The system can engage all types of aerial targets including aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV and ballistic and cruise missiles within the range of 400km, at an altitude of up to 30km.The system can track 100 airborne targets and engage six of them simultaneously.

It represents the fourth generation of long-range Russian SAMs, and the successor to the S-200 and S-300. The S-400’s mission set and capabilities are roughly comparable to the famed US Patriot system.

Rajinikanth has been conferred with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2019.

About the Award:
Dadasaheb Phalke award is India’s highest award in cinema. It is presented annually at the National Film Awards ceremony by the Directorate of Film Festivals (an organisation set up by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting).

The award prize consists of a golden lotus, a cash prize of ₹10 lakh and a shawl.

The award is given to people for their “outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema”.

It was first presented in 1969. The first recipient of the award was actress Devika Rani, “the first lady of Indian cinema.”

Nasa’s InSight lander has recorded over 500 quakes to date on Mars since its touch down on the Red Planet in November 2018.
The two recent quakes of magnitude 3.3 and 3.1 originated in a region called Cerberus Fossae. These findings support the idea that the planet is seismically active.

About InSight Mission
‘InSight’ is part of NASA’s Discovery Program.
It will be the first mission to peer deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet’s interior by measuring its heat output and listening for mars quakes, which are seismic events similar to earthquakes on Earth.
It will use the seismic waves generated by mars quakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior.

Importance of the mission:
Purpose: It is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed.
Scientific Instruments: The scientific instruments used for the mission are seismometer for detecting quakes, sensors for gauging wind and air pressure, magnetometer and a heat flow probe designed to take the planet’s temperature.