• A committee headed by Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) field director visited the enclosure at the Manthirimattam reserve forest area of the Manamobolly forest range to assess the progress of the rewilding of a sub-adult tiger.

ABOUT ANAMALAI TIGER RESERVE

• It is carved out of the Tamil Nadu portion of the Anamalais.
• The Tiger Reserve falls in four revenue taluks namely; Pollachi, and Valparai of Coimbatore district and Udumalpet of Tiruppur District and Kodaikanal taluk in Dindigul district in the State of Tamilnadu.
• The total area of the Tiger Reserve is 59 sq.km.
• It lies South of the Palakkad gap in the Southern Western Ghats.
• It is surrounded by Parambikulum Tiger Reserve on the East, Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary and Eravikulum National Park on the South Western side.
• The Anamalai Tiger Reserve falls within the Western Ghats mountain chain of South West India, a region designated as one of 25 Global Biodiversity Hotspots.
• The biogeographical classification of the country includes Western Ghats which are considered as one of eight “hottest hot spots”.
• The Tiger Reserve supports diverse habitat types Wet evergreen forests, semi evergreen forests, moist deciduous, dry deciduous, dry thorn and shola forests.
  • Man-made teak plantations of exotics like eucalyptus, wattle, pines are also found.
• Fauna– it supports 120 species of reptiles, 300 species of birds and 80 species of mammals.
  • Asiatic elephant, Sambar, Spotted deer, Barking deer, Mouse deer, Gaur, Nilgiri tahr, Tiger, etc.
• It supports 6 indigenous people Malasar, Malai malasars, Kadars, Eravallars, Pulayars and Muduvars.

• IndianOil has successfully commenced the production of Reference Gasoline and Diesel fuels for the first time in India.
• Reference gasoline fuels will be available in E0, E5, E10, E20, E85, E100 from Paradip Refinery.
• Reference diesel fuel shall be available in B7 grade from Panipat Refinery.
• Reference fuels (gasoline and diesel) are premium high-value products, used for calibration and testing of vehicles by auto OEMs and organizations involved in testing and certification in the automotive field like ICAT (International Centre for Automotive Technology) and ARAI (Automotive Research Association of India).
• To meet the international standards, these products had passed through three layers of certification — Refinery lab, IOCL R&D Centre and an internationally reputed third party lab.
• India is dependent on imports to cater to the demand for this specialized fuel.
• Specification requirements of reference fuels are more stringent than commercial gasoline and diesel.
• The demand of reference fuels in India is currently met by importing from other countries.
• Advantage – These indigenously developed products will lead to import substitution at a better price and minimum lead time for the vehicle manufacturers.

• Recently, 124 PM-Shri schools were launched in the state of Haryana.
• The schools have been designed with smart classrooms and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) labs.
• It is a Centrally sponsored scheme under the Ministry of Education launched in 2022.
• Objective- Development of more than 14500 schools across the country by strengthening selected existing schools being managed by Central Government/ State/ UT Government/ local bodies.
• It aims at providing high-quality education and making children active participants as per the vision of NEP 2020.
• The schools now under PM Shri are not new ones but existing government schools, both co-educational and girls’, that have received special attention on infrastructure.
• The scheme will be implemented from 2022-23 to 2026-27, after which it shall be the responsibility of the states/UTs to continue to maintain the benchmarks achieved by these schools.
• The total cost of the project will be Rs 27,360 crore spread over a period of five years, of which the Centre’s share is Rs 18,128 crore.
• PM Shri schools will provide
  • Student registry for tracking enronhent and learning progress.
  • Sports and arts labs, smart classes, CBSE affiliation
  • Sustainable and carbon-neutral buildings
  • Links with higher education institutions and local entrepreneurs for mentoring
  • New-age pedagogy under NEP to enhance students learning outcomes
  • Counseling for psychological wellbeing and career

• The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) announced the launch of its first-ever Data Dashboard compiling national reporting figures from 126 countries.
• The 21^st session of the UNCCD Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 21) will be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from 13-17 November 2023.

 MAJOR FINDINGS

• It shows that land degradation is advancing at an astonishing rate across all regions.
• Between 2015 and 2019, the world lost at least 100 million hectares of healthy and productive land each year, adding up to twice the size of Greenland.
• Eastern and Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean regions experience the most severe degradation, affecting at least 20 per cent of their total land area.
• Meanwhile, sub-Saharan Africa, Western and Southern Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean experienced land degradation at rates faster than the global average.

 INDIA SPECIFIC FINDINGS

• From 2015-2019, 51 million hectares of India’s total reported land was degraded.
• India’s total degraded land is equivalent to the size of 43 million football pitches, according to UNCCD.
• 71 million Indians constituting 18.39 per cent of the country’s population were exposed to land degradation during the same period.

ABOUT UNCCD

• Established in 1994, it is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management.
• Members– 197 Parties to Convention, including 196 countries and European Union.
  • India is a
• The UNCCD permanent secretariat is located in Bonn, Germany.
• It addresses specifically the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, known as the drylands, where some of the most vulnerable ecosystems and peoples can be found.
• The UNCCD is one of the three Rio Conventions, the other two being:
  • Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD)
  • United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

• The World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is observed on October 27^th.
• The celebration is a key initiative for UNESCO and the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) to honour audiovisual preservation professionals and institutions that safeguard our heritage for future generations.
• The theme for this year is “Your Window to the World.”
• It has its roots in the adoption of the Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images during the 21^st General Conference of UNESCO in 1980.

• Slovakia’s newly appointed Prime Minister, Robert Fico, has assumed office for the fourth time.
• Fico’s Smer party won last month’s elections, forming a coalition government with Hlas and the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS).

• The Summit of the Three Basins will congregate in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo to strengthen South-South governance for three ecosystems — Amazon, Congo, Borneo-Mekong and Southeast Asia.
  • These 3 global ecosystems account for 80% of the world’s tropical forests and 2/3 of the earth’s biodiversity.
• These basins are seeing extensive forest loss and are moving towards a systemic ecosystem breakdown that affects global climate stability, biodiversity and the livelihoods of millions of indigenous peoples and local communities.
• The first Summit of the Three Tropical Forest Basins was held in Brazzaville in 2011 and resulted in the Declaration of the Summit of the Three Tropical Forest Basins, which recognised the need to establish a platform to promote cooperation among the countries of the three basins.

• ‘SIM’ stands for ‘subscriber identification module’.
• Specifically, it is an integrated circuit, or a microchip, that identifies the subscriber on a given network.
• In order for a mobile phone to connect to any cellular network that follows the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) standard, a SIM card is mandatory.
• This relationship is established using a unique authentication key – a piece of data that a user needs to ‘unlock’ access to the network.
• Every SIM card stores this data and it is designed such that the user can’t access it through their phone.
• Instead, signals sent by the phone into the network are ‘signed’ by the key, and the network uses the signature to understand whether the phone’s connection is legitimate.
  • It is possible to duplicate a SIM card by accessing its key and storing it in multiple cards.
• SIM cards also store information about its own ID number (the integrated circuit card identifier), the IMSI, the subscriber’s location area identity (i.e. their current location), a list of preferred networks (to whom the subscriber can connect when roaming), emergency numbers, and – depending on the space available – the subscriber’s contacts and SMS messages.
• SIM cards are designed according to the ISO/IEC 7816 international standard maintained by – as its name indicates – the International Organisation for Standardisation and the International Electrotechnical Commission.
  • It applies to electronic identification cards, including smart cards.
  • In this standard, the card itself consists of the integrated circuit, which is glued to a silicon substrate on the top side.
  • On the other side of the substrate are metal contacts, which form the gold-coloured side of the SIM card.
  • Wires connect the integrated circuit from its bottom side to the metal contacts on the top side, and the contacts interface with the phone’s data connectors.

• Vajra mushti kalaga is on the decline and takes place only during Dasara.
• The ‘’vajra mushti kalaga’’ is a form of wrestling different from the conventional grappling and entails two jettys taking a swipe at each other’s head with a knuckleduster.
• Whosoever draws the blood from the opponent’s head first is declared the winner.
• The fight is real and the jetty’s make all efforts to draw blood from the opponent’s head and a referee intervenes on noticing the first drop.
• Sometimes the fight is over in matter of seconds but is nevertheless conducted.

BACKGROUND

• Though this form of wrestling was popular during the period of the Vijayanagar rulers who reigned between the 14^th and the 17^th centuries, it has gone extinct.
• It was held at the palace premises on Tuesday to mark the Vijayadashmi of the Wadiyars and was witnessed by a large crowd.
• Medieval travellers from Portuguese noticed this form of wrestling during the Navaratri celebrations in Vijayanagar empire and have left detailed accounts of it.

• The Indian Air Force (IAF) is set to make a strategic decision to bolster its acquisition of the Meteor Missile.

ABOUT METEOR MISSILE

• It is a European active radar-guided beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM).
• It is manufactured by MBDA Systems for six European nations- UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and Sweden.
• It offers a multi-shot capability (multiple launches against multiple targets).
• It has the ability to engage highly maneuverable targets such as jet aircraft, and small targets such as UAVs and cruise missiles in a heavy electronic countermeasures.
• It has a combat range of 200 km.
• A solid-fueled ramjet motor allows the missile to cruise at a speed of over Mach 4.
• The missile is equipped with a blast-fragmentation warhead.
• The missile system is installed with an active radar target seeker, offering high reliability in the detection, tracking, and classification of targets.