• The WHO-GCTM Centre aims to provide support for all traditional medicines in the world. No proposal is under consideration for setting up another such type of centre elsewhere in India.
• Recently, this information was given by Minister of Ayush Shri Sarbananda Sonowal in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.
• The Ministry of Ayush and WHO signed a Host Country Agreement on 25th March 2022 for the establishment of the first WHO’s Global Centre for Traditional Medicine in India.

The salient aspects of this agreement are as follows:

• That WHO will set up GCTM Centre in Jamnagar (Gujarat).
• That it aims to support nations in developing policies & action plans to strengthen the role of traditional medicine as part of their journey to universal health coverage.
• The Government shall respect the functional independence of WHO in carrying out its activities and in assigning to the Centre such WHO officials or other WHO personnel as it deems necessary for carrying out the particular functions assigned to the Centre.
• The Government shall provide to WHO, free of charge, appropriate and adequate office premises for the Centre and its installations.
• The Government shall also be responsible for the maintenance and security of the workplace premises for the Centre, its installations and technical plants, together with storage and archive space, meeting space, equipment and other facilities.
• The Ground breaking ceremony of main office of WHO GCTM has been carried out by the Prime Minister and DG WHO in Jamnagar, Gujarat.  The construction of Interim office of WHO GCTM is under progress.
• All expenditure involved for operational, programmatic, infrastructure and construction costs of the Interim Office and the Main Office of WHO GCTM will be borne by the Ministry of Ayush.
• The financial implications of Rs. 130.00 Cr (approx.) have been approved by the Ministry of Ayush towards the functional cost of the Interim Office of WHO-GCTM and Funds of Rs. 63.26 Cr have been released till date.

• Ministry of Defence (MoD) has fast-tracked the indigenisation of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) with country’s premier R&D institutions Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur to fulfill the increasing demand by the Armed Forces across a broad spectrum of operations.
• The complete product life cycle management framework is necessary for security sensitive SDR technology and products. It involves indigenous self-sustainable design, development, manufacturing, testing/certification and maintenance ecosystem.
• Two key elements of indigenous SDR technology are the standardised operating software environment (OE) and applications (also known as waveforms) with associated waveforms repository and test/certification facility. Standard OE enables waveform portability and interoperability among SDRs of multiple vendors. Towards this, the Ministry of Defence has taken a decision to define and develop reference implementation of India specific operating environment called India Software Communication Architecture (SCA) profile or Indian Radio Software Architecture.
• Director, IIT Kanpur Dr Abhay Karandikar, who is the Chairman of SCA Committee constituted by MoD, has pioneered the idea of having ‘India SCA Profile’.
• A Draft Project Report (DPR) has been formulated by DEAL/DRDO towards indigenous development of SDR with a roadmap and timelines.
• The three institutions involved in the development namely, DEAL/DRDO, IIT-Kanpur and DoS have already started the work as per DPR. Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar exuded confidence on all organisations and said that it will create a new benchmark towards indigenisation of critical equipment which, so far, has been imported.
• This would give a boost to the endeavour to achieve ‘Aatmanirbharta’, reduce import budget and create secured radio network for the Armed Forces.

• Energy major Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with M/s Greenko ZeroC Private Limited (Greenko), to jointly pursue opportunities in Renewables, Green Hydrogen, Green Ammonia and other derivatives of green hydrogen.
• The MoU, valid for two years, was inked in New Delhi by ONGC Director Onshore Shri Anurag Sharma and Greenko CEO & Managing Director Shri Anil Kumar Chalamalasetty.
• Greenko is one of India’s leading renewable energy Companies.
• This MoU is in line with the National Hydrogen Mission launched by Hon’ble Prime Minister in making India a global green hydrogen hub.
• The activities envisaged under this MoU will contribute towards India’s target of producing of 5 million tonnes of green hydrogen per annum by 2030.
• This MoU will also act as a stepping stone for ONGC to achieve renewable energy targets as per its Energy Strategy 2040.

• BIS is the National Standard Body of India established under the BIS Act 2016 for the harmonious development of the activities of standardization, marking and quality certification of goods and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
• Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the National Standards Body is mandated by Government of India to create a robust quality Eco System in the Country through its core activities of Standardization and Certification.
• Towards this mandate, BIS had started off with the concept of creating Standards Club in Schools and Colleges, wherein the concepts of Standardization and Quality are introduced to the students at an early age.
• BIS in its first year of 2021-22 established 1037 Standards Clubs across India and upon realizing the potential and success of the novel endeavour, the target is ambitiously enhanced to creating 10,000 clubs by the end of 2022-23.
• Through Standards Clubs, BIS aims to expose science students of class 9th and above classes to the concept of Quality and Standardization with the help of student centric activities.
• In pursuance to the current target in 2022-23 of opening 10,000 Standards Clubs, BIS is aggressively following up with Schools and Colleges on pan India basis and has already created over 1755 and many more are in its advance stage of approvals. As on date over 43,000 students are members of these Standards clubs.

About Ramsar Convention:

• The Ramsar convention was established by UNESCO on February 2, 1971. It is an intergovernmental environmental treaty, named after Ramsar city in Iran because it was signed there. The convention came into effect on 1975.
• It encourages the international cooperation and national action to conserve the wetlands and sustainably use their resources. Under it, wetlands of international importance are identified worldwide.

KEY POINTS

• India has designated five (5) new wetlands of international importance, which include three wetlands (Karikili Bird Sanctuary, Pallikaranai Marsh Reserve Forest & Pichavaram Mangrove) in Tamil Nadu, one (Pala wetland) in Mizoram and one wetland (Sakhya Sagar) in Madhya Pradesh, making a total of 54 Ramsar sites in the country.
• The Ramsar sites have been increased from 49 to 54 Ramsar sites.

• According to the ADB, The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a loan of around Rs 770 crore to fund a safe drinking water and sanitation project in Himachal Pradesh.
• The loan has been provided under the Himachal Pradesh Rural Drinking Water Improvement and Livelihood Project.
• More than 90 per cent of the state’s rural population had access to drinking water, but the water supply infrastructure was old and had deteriorated over the time, resulting in inefficient and poor service.
• The ADB project will connect 75,800 households to the service, providing uninterrupted water supply to about 3.7 lakh residents in 10 districts.
• According to the Jude Kohlhase, ADB Unit Head of Project Administration on Urban Development and Water for South Asia, “The project meets the objectives of the Jal Jeevan Mission, a national flagship programme of the Union Government, which aims to provide piped water to all rural households by 2024,”.

• A museum of wood culture — which will display the use and evolution of wood in architecture, furniture, sculpture, and various art forms — is set to come up in a few months at Shamshi in Bhuntar in the district. The museum was sanctioned last year to the Parvati Forest Division.
• Under the project, the premises of the furniture workshop at Shamshi, which was established as a wood-based industry workshop in 1965, saw major renovation works, including repairs, upgrade of the campus and entrance, and installation of new technologies such solar kiln, last year.
• Deputy Conservator of the division Aishwarya Raj says that people visiting the museum will be able to get to know about the process of furniture making and various other forms of wood use through 3D models, images and interactive pictorial representation.
• They will be informed about the evolution of wood science and its uses; hardwood and softwood; defects, treatments and sources of raw materials; new technologies being used in the industry; and sustainable forestry.

• Savita Kanswal, a 26-year-old girl from Lonthru village in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi, has become the first woman in India who has successfully climbed Mt. Everest and Mt. Makalu in just 16 days.
• Her passion started in Class 11 when she got a chance for a 10-day Adventure Foundation Course. It was the course where her love for mountains began.
• She has done her mountaineering course from the NIM (Nehru Mountaineering Institute), Uttarkashi.
• She climbed Mt. Everest (8848 m) on May 12, 2022. On the 16th day, she climbed Mt. Makalu (8485 m) on May 28, 2022.
• Even she climbed Mt. Lhotse becoming the first woman from Uttarakhand and second from India to climb successfully.

• Amid the death of nearly 1000 bovines, the government on Monday sent a special team to Gujarat and Rajasthan to assess the situation and measures taken to control the Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD).
• The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD) has also issued advisories to all states and UTs for taking the bio-security measures to contain the spread of this infectious disease.
• Lumpy skin is a viral disease spread by mosquitoes, flies, lice, and wasps by direct contact among the cattle, and through contaminated food and water.
• The main symptoms are fever in animals, discharge from the eyes and nose, salivation from the mouth, soft blisters like nodules all over the body, reduced milk production, and difficulty in eating, which sometimes lead to the animal’s death.
• The official said that directions were issued to ICAR-NIHSAD, Bhopal and ICAR-NIVEDI Bangalore to carry out the epidemiological investigation in the affected states.
• The ring vaccination strategy was communicated to be carried out in and around the affected area with available Goat pox vaccine (Uttarakashi strain) in cattle and buffalo.

• Recently, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) announced third tranche of Rs 6,000 crore for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) project.
• The JICA — which has been supporting the project for the Bullet Train project — signed a loan agreement with the Government of India to provide an Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan of 100,000 million Japanese Yen (approx. INR 6,000 Crore) as Tranche 3 for the Construction of Mumbai Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR).
• The loan agreement was signed between Mr. Rajat Kumar Mishra, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India and Mr. Watanabe Jun, Senior Representative, JICA India.
• The JCA had earlier in 2017 extended a loan package of JPY 250,000 million (approximately INR 18,000 crore) package that JICA had committed in 2017.
• National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) is the Executing Agency of the Project.
• In the first phase, the bullet train will cover 508 kilometres between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
• The operating speed of the bullet train will be 320 kilometers per hour and maximum speed will be 350 kilometers per hour.