• Yuri Averbakh, a Russian Grandmaster, a trainer, international arbiter, chess composer, and endgame theoretician, has passed away at the age of 100 in Moscow, Russia. He was the world’s oldest living Grandmaster. He was born on 8 February 1922 in Kaluga, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has appointed Vivek Kumar, an Indian Foreign Service (IFS)
• Officer of the 2004 batch, as the Private Secretary (PS) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Joint Secretary level.

• Gautam Adani, Chairman and founder of the Adani Group, Supreme Court lawyer and public activist Karuna Nundy and Kashmiri rights activist Khurram Parvez were among the list of 100 Most Influential People of 2022 published by TIME magazine, an American news magazine.

• Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M.K. Stalin remotely launched the “Kalaignarin All Village Integrated Agriculture Development Programme” in the districts of Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri and Erode.
• Under this scheme, coconut saplings, home farming saplings, horticultural saplings, sprays needed for farming, kit for vegetable garden would be distributed and a 100% subsidy would be provided to Adi Dravida farmers for sinking wells in dry lands, employ drip irrigation, and to dig farm ponds.

• Redcliffe Labs, a unit of Redcliffe Lifetech Inc based in the United States of America (USA), has opened its commercial drone corridor between Uttarkashi and Dehradun, Uttarakhand. This will be the first commercial drone flight in India’s healthcare sector.
• The use of drones between Uttarkashi and Dehradun has drastically reduced the travel time to 88 minutes with one battery swap in between. Or else, the 144 Kilometres travel would take 6-8 hours by road and 12 hours during landslide times.

• Narayan Rane Union Minister for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) inaugurated India’s first Centre of Excellence for Khadi (CoEK) in New Delhi, Delhi. The CoEK is set up at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) as a hub in Delhi and spokes in Bangalore, Gandhinagar, Kolkata, and Shillong.
• Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has collaborated with National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) to set up the CoEK in NIFT, New Delhi. The MoU regarding this was signed in 2021.

• The Qutub Minar complex is not a place of worship and its character cannot be changed now, the Archaeological Survey of India submitted in a Delhi court recently, while opposing a plea challenging the dismissal of a civil suit seeking “restoration” of Hindu and Jain temples on the premises.
• The original suit, claiming that 27 temples were demolished to build the QuwwatulIslam mosque at the Qutub Minar complex, was dismissed last year under the provisions of Places Of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991.

Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991:

• It seeks to maintain the “religious character” of places of worship as it was in 1947 except in the case of Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, which was already in court.
• Section 3 of the Act bans the conversion of a place of worship or even a section of it into a place of worship of a different religious denomination or of a different segment of the same religious denomination.
• Section 4(2) says that all suits, appeals or other proceedings regarding converting the character of a place of worship (that were pending on 15th August, 1947) will come to end when the Act commences and no fresh proceedings can be filed.

Exemption:

• The disputed site at Ayodhya was exempted from the Act.
• Any place of worship which is an ancient and historical monument or an archaeological site covered by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.
• Any dispute that has been settled by the parties or conversion of any place that took place by acquiescence before the Act commenced.

• On May 9-20, 2022, the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) which was hosted by Côte d’Ivoire for the 1st time at its Sofitel Abidjan Hôtel Ivoire in Abidjan on the theme ‘Land. Life. Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity’. The theme calls for action to ensure land continues to benefit present and future generations.
• Côte d’Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara host the UNCCD’s COP15.
• Focus of COP15: It focused on the future of land management by galvanizing sustainable solutions for land restoration and drought resilience, and future-proofing land use.

• The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has recently issued ‘Guidelines for Safety Assessment of Genome Edited Plants, 2022’.
• As per the guidelines, researchers who use gene-editing technologies for plants are exempted from seeking approvals from the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC).
• Bt-cotton is the only GM crop allowed for cultivation in India.

• President Ram Nath Kovind recently appointed Vinai Kumar Saxena as the new Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.
• Saxena will replace Anil Baijal.
• Know more about Lt. Governor of Delhi, his powers vis-a-vis Delhi Government here.