• National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) Limited has completed construction of 2,000 Mega Watt Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project dam till the top level of Elevation Level (EL) 210 m.
• SLHP is located on Subansiri River which is on border of India’s two north-eastern states, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
• It is the biggest hydroelectric project undertaken in India so far and is a run of river scheme on river Subansiri.
  • A run-of-river dam is one in which the flow of water in the river downstream of the dam is the same as the flow of water upstream of the dam.
• Subansiri River, aka Gold River, is the tributary of River Brahmaputra.
• It originates from the Tibetan Himalayas and makes its way to India via (Miri Hills) Arunachal Pradesh.

• The government has announced the development of a National Maritime Heritage Complex (NMHC) in Lothal, Gujarat under the Sagarmala program (under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways (MoPSW)).
  • Sagarmala Programme, launched in 2015 by MoPSW, ensures holistic port infrastructure development along India’s 7500km long coastline.
• The project aims to showcase India’s maritime heritage from ancient to modern times.
• It will consolidate all diverse and rich artifacts from ancient to modern times for edutainment purposes, i.e. entertainment designed to be educational.
• It will include world’s highest light house museum, world’s largest open aquatic gallery, India’s largest naval museum and is envisaged to be one of the biggest international tourist destinations in world.
• It is funded by MoPSW and Ministry of Culture through National Culture Fund by way of grant.

ABOUT LOTHAL

• Lothal, prominent city of Indus-Valley Civilization (IVC), had the oldest man-made dry-dock dating back to 2400 BC.
• It is located between Bhogavo and Sabarmati rivers near Gulf of Khambat in Gujarat.
• It was nominated to be enlisted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014 and its application is pending on tentative list of UNESCO.

ABOUT INDUS VALLEY CIVILISATION

• IVC aka Harappan Civilization was home to largest of four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China.
• It was an urban civilisation which had roads, developed drainage systems , houses made of baked bricks with had two or more storeys.
• It thrived about 2,500 BC in western South Asia, which now is Pakistan and northwest India.
• By 1500 BC, the Harappan culture came to an end.

• In last 18 months, flesh-rotting ‘zombie drug’ has caused 9 deaths and 150 overdoses in a US County in Florida.

ABOUT ZOMBIE DRUG

• Xylazine, also known as “tranq,” “tranq dope” and “zombie drug”, has sedative like symptoms such as extreme sleepiness.
• Tranq, known for its ability to induce a “zombie” like stupor and cause flesh rot near injection sites.
• It can cause raw wounds on the user’s skin. It starts with ulcers, hardens to dead skin called eschar, and if left untreated can result in amputation.
• Xylazine can also cause amnesia and slow down breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure to extremely low levels, when combined with opioids like fentanyl, thus increasing the risk of overdose and death.
• It is usually used as a tranquilizer on cows and horses.
• It has been approved by the US FDA for use in animals only.

• PM recently wished the people of Santhal tribe on occasion of Hul diwas using Ol Chiki Script of Santhali language

• Hul Divas is observed annually on June 30 in memory of tribals — Sidho and Kanhu Murmu — who led the Santhal hul (rebellion) on June 30, 1855, at Bhognadih in Sahebganj district.
  • Hul, in the local language, means a movement for liberation.
• The 92^nd Constitutional Amendment Act added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali languages to Schedule VIII to Constitution of India.
• The Ol Chiki script, also known as Ol Chemetʼ, Ol Ciki, Ol, and sometimes as the Santali alphabet, is the official writing system for Santhali.
• It was created in 1925 by Raghunath Murmu.
• Santhali is a Munda language and is spoken mainly in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and also in Bangladesh, eastern Nepal and Bhutan.
• There are about 3 million speakers of Santali in India according to 2011 census.

• People have lost hope for restoration of Bhootnath bridge, the targets for whose completion have been postponed several times during the last three years.
• The bridge is lying defunct for the past over four years.
• It is a 96-metre-long double-lane bridge over the Beas river at Bhoothnath in Kullu.

• Kolkata CID recently warned parents of dangers of Sharenting.
• Sharenting refers to the act of parents posting too many details about their children on social media.
• It could be detrimental for child’s psychological growth and also increases risk of details being used by Cyber criminals.
• It also requested that information about the child are to be posted with extreme caution.

• It is released by Ministry of Panchayati Raj.
• It provides a matrix to monitor and evaluate the progress of panchayats through the scores achieved by them.
• 9 themes- Poverty-free, Healthy, Child-friendly, Water-sufficient, Clean and green, Self-sufficient, Socially just and secure, Well-governed, and Women-friendly.
• It ranks panchayats on the basis of scores, and categorize them into four grades. Grades include
  • A (75 to 90%),
  • B (60-75%),
  • C (40-60%) and
  • D (under 40%).

• Greedflation refers to the situation where corporate greed drives inflation.
• Rather than a wage-price spiral, it is a Profit-Price Spiral where companies exploit inflation by raising prices excessively, going beyond covering their increased costs, and aiming to maximize their profit margins.
• These further fuels inflation.
• Indian listed companies’net profits surged to Rs.2.9 trillion in March 2023, over 3.5 times the pre-pandemic average of Rs.0.83 trillion from December 2017 to Dec 2019, indicating exceptional post-pandemic profit generation.
• In India, 60% of the growth in net profit can be attributed entirely to the increase in profit margin. The increase in sales contributed an additional 36% and the rest was a bonus from a combination of the two
• This shows the presence of greedflation.

• The European Space Agency (ESA) is embarking on an extraordinary mission with the launch of the Euclid Space Telescope.
• It will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will remain operational for a minimum of six years.
• The spacecraft measures approximately 4.7 metres tall and 3.7 metres in diameter.
• It is named after the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria.

• This mission is part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, which plans to explore the origin and components of the Universe and the fundamental laws that govern it.
• The spacecraft will have a 1.2-metre-wide telescope and two instruments;
  • A visible-wavelength camera (the VISible instrument): It will look for tiny distortions in the shapes of distant galaxies from different points in time to highlight the tussle between the pull of gravity and the push of dark energy.
  • A near-infrared camera/spectrometer(the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer):

NISP will observe galaxies in the near-infrared range, providing essential data on their distance, redshift, and clustering properties. By measuring the distribution of galaxies at different cosmic epochs, NISP will aid in the study of large-scale cosmic structures.

• After a month-long journey through space, Euclid will join its fellow space telescope James Webb at a stable hovering spot around 1.5 million kilometers (more than 930,000 miles) from Earth called the second Lagrange Point (L2).
• Euclid will chart the largest-ever map of the universe, encompassing up to two billion galaxies across more than a third of the sky.
• The telescope hopes to deliver images that are at least four times sharper than ground-based ones.

• Senegal has become the fourth country, following South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam, to sign the JETP deal.

ABOUT JUST ENERGY TRANSITION PARTNERSHIP

• It is a mechanism for multilateral financing by developed countries to support an energy transition in developing countries.
• It was first announced at UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow, where France, Germany, UK, USA, and EU announced JETP to support South Africa’s decarbonization effort.
• Goal of JETP is to support countries’ transition from coal to cleaner energy sources while addressing social consequences, such as job creation and economics impact.
• It aims to reduce emissions in the energy sector and accelerate the coal phase-out.
• India refused to give its consent, saying that coal cannot be singled out as a polluting fuel and that energy transition talks need to take place on equal terms.