• The new snail has been described in latest issue of Molluscan Research, an international journal, by Amrut Bhosale, Tejas Thackeray of the Mumbai-based Thackeray Wildlife Foundation and Omkar Yadav of the Medha-based Amdar Shashikant Shinde Mahavidyalay.
• This species is endemic to Vishalgad Conservation Reserve in Shahuwadi tehsil of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur.
• It is named after the type locality of the species in the northern part of the Western Ghats, which is Sahyadri in Sanskrit.
• According to the study, the ‘Sahyadri snail’ is distinguished from other Indian and Southeast Asia’s Haploptychius in having a sub-oblique helical shell, low spire and presence of a strong parietal lamella.
• The species was placed in the genus Haploptychius based on the shell morphology and genital characters.

• Life, is a Fintech startup, which claims to be India’s first blockchain-enabled transaction framework, has launched its UPI services aimed at rural India.
• Life claimed it is collaborating closely with regional rural banks and district co-operative banks to assist them bank more efficiently and provide full financial inclusion for the rural population with minimal disturbance.

KEY POINTS:

• Life‘s goal is to make financial services available to people in rural areas who need them the most. There are 4 million Life customers spread throughout 15 states and 1 lakh villages.
• The fintech business stated it works on three models. Those three models are: (1) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) which comprises their mobile app, (2) Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) which comprises their website, and (3) Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) which corresponds to their mobile vans.
• The company currently has about 100 active mobile vans for digital banking, with plans to expand to 200 in the near future.
• Life seeks to digitise various financial offers and boost the Indian financial sector, particularly in rural India.

• To encourage openness and public partnership, the Union Government has developed the Rashtriya Puruskar Portal, which invites nominations for numerous awards given by various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies.
• The Portal intends to make it easier for public to propose people and organisations for various prizes given out by the Indian government.

KEY POINTS:

• This common Rashtriya Puruskar Portal has been developed by the government to invite nominations for various awards.
• These awards include various awards like like Padma Awards, Sardar Patel National Unity Award, Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award, Jeevan Raksha Padak series of Awards, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Telecom Skill Excellence Award, etc.
• This will bring together all of the awards of the various Ministries/Departments/Agencies of the Government of India under one digital platform, ensuring transparency and public partnership.
• This portal attempts to make it easier for public to nominate people and organisations for various awards given by the Indian government.

• Russia has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become India’s second-biggest supplier of oil behind Iraq as refiners snap up Russian crude available at a deep discount following the war in Ukraine.
• Indian refiners bought about25 million barrels of Russian oil in May, or more than 16 per cent of all their oil imports.
• Russian-origin crude hit 5 per cent of India’s total seaborne imports in April for the first time, rising from under 1% throughout 2021 and Q1 2022.

Key points:

• After the S. and China, India is the world’s third-largest consumer of oil, over 85 per cent of which is imported.
• The Oil Ministry had last month stated that “energy purchases from Russia remain minuscule in comparison to India’s total consumption.”
• Iraq remained the top supplier to India in May and Saudi Arabia is now the third biggest supplier.
• India has taken advantage of discounted prices to ramp up oil imports from Russia at a time when global energy prices have been rising.

About Institute for Management Development (IMD):

• IMD business school in Switzerland and Singapore released the 2022 World Competitiveness Ranking. Its think-tank, Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Center, ranks 63 economies and assesses the extent to which a country promotes the prosperity of its people by measuring economic well-being via hard data and survey responses from executives.

Key points:

• India has witnessed the sharpest rise among the Asian economies, with a six-position jump from 43rd to 37th rank on the annual World Competitiveness Index compiled by the Institute for Management Development, largely due to gains in economic performance.
• Denmark has moved to the top of the 63-nation list from the third position last year, while Switzerland slipped from the top ranking to the second position and Singapore regained the third spot from fifth.
• After a stable but stagnant five years, 2022 witnessed significant improvement in the competitiveness of the Indian economy and this is largely due to gains in economic performance (from 37th to 28th).
• Some of the factors that helped India in improving its Rank: The labour market, a key sub-factor in the business efficiency parameter, moved up from 15th to 6th, while management practices and business attitudes and values also made major leaps. major improvements in the context of retrospective taxes in 2021, Its re-regulation of several sectors, including drones, space, and geo-spatial mapping, global movement to fight climate change and pledge of net-zero by 2070 at the COP26 summit etc.
• The top five attractive factors of India’s economy for business are – a skilled workforce, cost competitiveness, dynamism of the economy, high educational level, and open and positive attitudes.

• The Himachal Pradesh Government has launched an ambitious plan to double tea production in the next five years from 10,01,419 kg during 2021-22 to 20,00,000 kg by 2026-27.
• At present tea is being cultivated in 2310.71 hectares of areas in the lower slopes of Dhauladhar mountains in Dharamsala, Shahpur, Nagrota Bagwan, Palampur, Jaisinghpur, Baijnath and Jogindernagar.
• An additional area of 5.6 hectares was brought under fresh plantation during the year 2021-22 and a target has been fixed to bring additional 100 hectares area under commercial tea cultivation in the coming five years.
• Orchard integration of tea is also being explored for doubling farmers’ income and offsetting area loss. The tea industry has contributed around Rs 20 crores to the economy of Himachal Pradesh during the last financial year providing direct and indirect employment to around 5,000 people in the state.

• The Him Anchal Education and Welfare Society will organise a Khel Utsav in all gram panchayats of the Hamirpur constituency.
• The Khel Utsav would encourage the youth to stay away from drugs.
• It is a talent hunt programme to assess the potential of the players in sports.
• The games such as volleyball, kabaddi and cricket would be played in the festival.

• Hosts Haryana won the Khelo India Youth Games (KIYG) 2021 title with 52 gold medals on the final day. Haryana also won 39 silver and 46 bronze medals, taking their overall medal tally to 137 medals – the highest cumulative haul by any state.

Key points:

• Maharashtra, meanwhile, managed 45 gold, 40 silver and 40 bronze medals to come second with 125 medals.
• Karnataka, with 22 gold, 17 silver and 28 bronze, finished third with 67 medals.

About the Khelo India Youth Games 2021:

• The Khelo India Youth Games 2021 started on June 4across multiple venues with Haryana’s Panchkula hosting the bulk of the events. The Games, which are a part of the Indian government’s Khelo India initiative, concluded on June 13.
• This was Haryana’s second KIYG title. Haryana won the inaugural title in 2018 but finished second to Maharashtra in the next two seasons.
• This was the fourth edition of the Khelo India Youth Games. Some 4,700 athletes, including 2,262 women, from all of India’s 36 states and Union Territories participated at KIYG 2021.
• Hosts Haryana fielded the biggest contingent with 398 athletes, followed by Maharashtra with 357. A total of 33 states won at least one medal at KIYG 2021 while 28 won at least one gold.

• Payment solution provider, OmniCard has announced that it became the 1st RBI licensed PPI (prepaid payment instrument) to launch cash withdrawal using a RuPay-powered card from any ATMs across the country.
• OmniCard users can withdraw cash from any ATM at their convenience with full security from frauds like card theft, card cloning, and PIN skimming as the withdrawal facility comes with high safety & secure features and protects the user from exposing their money and bank account details.
• The company worked with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) team to enable the facility.

Key features:

• Run by Noida-based Eroute Technologies, Omnicard is a RuPay powered prepaid card with a mobile app where the users can spend using swipe, scan, tap and pay online, avail in-app offers from partner brands and get rewarded on every spends.

• Angipath scheme, It will entail induction of troops into the Army, the Air Force and the Navy for a duration of four years as jawans, airmen and sailors, respectively.
• In the first phase, some 46,000 youth in the age group of 17.5 years to 21 years will be recruited for a period of four years in the three services.
• The Agniveers is the name for those recruited under the scheme.
• Those exiting after four years will have a job opportunity in several ministries, public sector undertakings and in some State Governments.
• After completion of four years of services only 25 per cent of those recruited can opt for full tenure. The retaining will be done through a scientific model and centrally-maintained data and will then go on to serve with all benefits that apply to existing troops.
• It will also be open to women.
• The risk and hardship allowance will be separate at par with regular soldiers based on where they are posted.
• The recruit will have a contributory severance package called the one time ‘Seva Nidhi’ package and after four years each de-mobilised trooper would receive around Rs 11.76 lakh with interest.
• All the earnings would be exempt from income tax. There shall be no entitlement to gratuity and pensionary benefits.
• Recruits would also be provided with death and disability benefits under the scheme and this includes an insurance cover of Rs 1 crore to family in case of death.