• Providing a major relief to the apple growers of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre has fixed Minimum Import Price (MIP) for apple by amending its import policy.
• As per the notification issued by the Director General of Foreign Trade, Department of Commerce, “Import of apples under ITC (HS) 08081000 is prohibited wherever the CIF import price is less than or equal to Rs 50 per kilogram.” The CIF import price comprises cost, insurance and freight.

• World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day is celebrated annually on May 8^th to honor the birth anniversary of Henry Dunant, the founder of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and was the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • The first-ever Red Cross Day was observed on May 8, 1948.
• The theme of World Red Cross Day for 2023 is “Everything we do comes from the heart.”
• The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a worldwide humanitarian network that operates in almost every country across the globe.
• The network offers aid and support to people in need during various emergencies, conflicts, disasters, and other crises and strives to alleviate human suffering, safeguard human dignity, and promote health, peace, and overall well-being.

• Indian athlete Praveen Chithravel achieved an extraordinary feat by winning the men’s triple jump event at an athletics meet in Havana, Cuba, with a record-breaking national mark of 17.37m.
• He surpassed the previous men’s triple jump national record of 17.30m, set by Renjith Maheswary in Bangalore in 2016.
• This accomplishment of Praveen Chithravel also qualifies him for the World Athletics Championships 2023.

• Tungnath Temple in the district of Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand, has now been declared as a national monument.

About Tungnath Temple

• It is the highest Shiva temple in the world nestled at an altitude of 3680 meters.
• It is one of the Panch Kedars and is believed to have belonged to an ancient era almost 1000 years old.
• It was built in the North Indian style of architecture and has a dozen shrines of other Gods surrounding the temple.

About Panch Kedar

• Panch Kedar is a group of five sacred shrines of Lord Shiva located in the Garhwal Himalayas, Uttarakhand.
• The five temples are the Kedarnath Temple, the Tungnath Temple, the Rudranath Temple, the Madhyamaheshwar Temple or Madmaheshwar and Kalpeshwar Temple.

• Cyclone Mocha, a tropical cyclone, has developed due to storm in southeast Bay of Bengal.
• Mocha (Mokha) name was suggested by Yemen after Red Sea port city, which is known to have introduced coffee to the world over 500 years ago.

About Tropical cyclones

• Tropical cyclones are violent storms that originate over warm ocean waters near the equator.
• Conditions for formation of tropical cyclone:
  • Large sea surface with temperature higher than 27° C.
  • Presence of the Coriolis force.
  • Small variations in the vertical wind speed.
  • A pre-existing weak low-pressure area or low-level-cyclonic circulation.
  • Upper divergence above the sea level system.
• Cyclones are named by the regional specialised meteorological centres (RSMCs) and Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres (TCWCs).
  • There are six RSMCs in the world, including IMD, and five TCWCs.
• As an RSMC, IMD names the cyclones developing over north Indian Ocean, including Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea.
• IMD is also mandated to issue advisories to 12 other countries in the region on the development of cyclones and storms
• In 2000, a group of nations called WMO/ESCAP (World Meteorological Organisation/United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), which comprised Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand, decided to start naming cyclones in the region. After each country sent in suggestions, the WMO/ESCAP Panel on Tropical Cyclones (PTC) finalised the list.
• Name is taken from this list which contains suggestions categorised alphabetically and country-wise and are neutral gender wise.

• National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) is expanding its capacity to train more civil servants from different countries.

About National Center for Good Governance (NCGG)

• It was set up in 2014 as an apex–level autonomous institution under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
• The Centre traces its origin to the National Institute of Administrative Research (NIAR), which was set up in 1995 by the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), the Government of India’s topmost training institute for civil services.
  • NIAR was subsequently rechristened and subsumed into NCGG.
• It is mandated to work in areas of public policy, governance, reforms, and capacity building of civil servants of the country as well as those of other developing nations.
• It curates training courses for civil servants from India and other developing countries.
• It provides a platform for sharing existing knowledge and proactively seeking out and developing ideas for their implementation in the government, both at the National & International levels.
• NCGG has been extensively working in areas such as primary and elementary education, decentralized planning at district and block levels, capacity building of Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs), participatory models of learning and action, rural development, cooperatives, and public sector management, etc.
• NCGG is governed by a Governing Body, under the Chairmanship of the Cabinet Secretary.

• According to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) bulletins, ozone was identified as a prominent pollutant recently, when AQI was in the ‘moderate’ category.
  • Ozone occurs both in Earth’s upper atmosphere (stratospheric or good ozone) and at ground level.
• Ozone pollution refers to tropospheric or “ground-level” ozone.
• It is formed when oxides of nitrogen (NOX) and Volatile Organic Compounds react in the presence of sunlight.
• NOX is released by combustion of fossil fuels from vehicles and industries.
• Ozone can also be transported long distances by wind.
• Exposure to excessive ozone can cause problems breathing, trigger asthma, reduce lung function and lead to lung disease.

• Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a new introductory-level online training programme called START- Space Science and Technology Awareness Training.
• START is aimed at post-graduate and final-year undergraduate students of physical sciences and technology.
• The program will provide a comprehensive understanding of the various aspects of the discipline, research possibilities, and professional pathways.
• It will cover various domains of Space Science, including Astronomy and Astrophysics, Heliophysics and Sun-Earth interaction, Instrumentation, and Aeronomy.
• It will be delivered by scientists from Indian academia and ISRO centers.

• Defence minister has recently approved posting of Women Officers of the Territorial Army along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan.

About Territorial Army

• The Territorial Army (TA) was raised by the British in 1920 through Indian Territorial Act of 1920 and it was organized into two wings namely – ‘The Auxiliary Force’ for Europeans & Anglo-Indians and ‘The Indian Territorial Force’ for Indian Volunteers.
• Post-independence, India’s first Governor General Shri C Rajagopalachari formally inaugurated the Indian Territorial Army on October 9^th in 1949.
• It is an organization where volunteers apply for a short period of training every year, so as to be ready to tackle any emergent situation or to serve for the defence of India.
• Also known as the ‘Terriers’, it is considered the second line of national defence after the regular Army.
• The Territorial Army is part of regular Army and its present role is to relieve the Regular Army from static duties and assist civil administration in dealing with natural calamities and maintenance of essential services in situations where life of the communities is affected or the Security of the Country is threatened and to provide units for Regulars Army as and when required.
• Any citizen between the age of 18-42 years can be a part of the service.
• The pensionable age for a soldier below officer’s rank in the TA is the same as that of a regular soldier — 15 years.
• Operations– The TA units were actively involved in operations during the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars.
• The motto of the Territorial Army of India is ‘Savdhani Va Shoorta’e Vigilance and Valour.

• As per ECI, 5 big metro cities –Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, New Delhi, and Chennai in descending order accounted for nearly 90% of all EBs sold so far.

About Electoral Bonds

• EBs are interest-free bearer instruments to cleanse the system of political funding in the country.
• These were introduced in 2017-18
• Objective
  • limit use of cash in political funding,
  • Eliminate fraudulent political parties,
  • Protecting donor from political victimization, curb black money etc.
• EBs can be purchased by a citizen of India or entities incorporated or established in India.
• EBs are valid for 15 calendar days from the date of issue and no payment shall be made to any payee Political Party if the Electoral Bond is deposited after expiry of the validity period.
• EBs are sold in multiples of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh, and Rs 1 crore.
• State Bank of India is the only bank authorised to sell them.
• Registered political parties that secured at least one percent of votes polled in the most recent General or Assembly elections are eligible.
• Buyers of bonds submit full KYC details at the time of buying.
• But beneficiary political party is not required to reveal the identity of the entity that has given it the bond(s).