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• Gopal Baglay, High Commissioner, and Professor Udaya Rathnayake, Vice Chancellor of Sabaragamuwa University, signed the MoU to establish the Hindi Chair as part of India’s cultural connect through the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
• The Hindi chair will help familiarise students with India, its history, and culture as well as pave way for popularising Hindi by deputing Indian faculties.
• At the university’s Hindi Kavita competition, Gopal Baglay also presented awards to the winners.
• Previously, India was ranked 82nd, 84th, 85th, and 83rd in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively.
• Indian passport holders can travel visa-free to 59 countries, including Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Macao, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Iran, and Qatar.
• Globally, the greatest risks over the next 2 years [2023–2025] include: cost-of-living crisis, natural disasters and extreme weather conditions, geoeconomic confrontations, failure to control climate change, and occurrences causing significant environmental damage.
• The biggest risks over the long term (10 years) [2023-2033] are failures to adapt to and mitigate climate
change, loss of biodiversity, massive involuntary migration, and natural resource crises, among others.
• The OTP can be defined as, flights that arrive or depart within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival or departure times.
• An airline’s OTP is calculated on the basis of arrivals data, while both departures and arrivals data are taken into consideration for an airport’s OTP.
• IndiGo has been ranked 15th with OTP of 83.51 percent in 2022, while Coimbatore airport is at the 13th position under the same category.
• Both IndiGo and the AAI-owned Coimbatore airport are the only Indian airline and airport, respectively, that were ranked in the OAG’s Punctuality League report.
• The list is topped by Garuda Indonesia with an OTP of 95.63 percent, followed by Safair (95.30 percent) in the 2nd position and Eurowings (95.26 percent) in third spot.
• In the top 20 list, IndiGo is ahead of Thai Smile Airways (16th rank), Delta Air Lines (17), Viva Air Colombia (18), Etihad Airways (19) and Emirates (20).
• Among the top 20 mega airlines by OTP, IndiGo is at fifth place in the list, topped by All Nippon Airways (88.79 per cent) and with Japan Airlines (88.07 per cent) in the second place, followed by LATAM Airlines Group (85.03 per cent) and Azul Airlines (84.87 per cent) in the 3rd and 4th position respectively.
• According to the MoU, Nascent Info Technologies will use its expertise and resources to research the functional requirements of various stakeholders in the fields of limestone, bauxite, clay, coal, etc.
• It develops various algorithms and applications that will increase the efficiency of mineral identification and mapping while also enhancing operational safety, surveillance, and environmental compliance.
• The built applications would be made available for business use both on-premises and in the cloud.
• IN-SPACe will provide Nascent with assistance by facilitating access to Earth Observation data and developing an algorithm for the identification of minerals including limestone, bauxite, clay, and coal, among others, and using other resources.
• Rail India Technical and Economic Service (RITES) Limited, a Miniratna (Category-I) and Schedule ‘A’ Central Public Sector Enterprise under the Ministry of Railways (MoR) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)- Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh for exploring opportunities in the areas of sustainability and carbon-related works including carbon neutrality, particularly in sectors such as steel and power.
• The MoU also includes research and development-related works on air quality sensors to address air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste management.
• The Golden Globe awards have been annually presented by HFPA since 1943.
• The 2023 award recognises excellence in film, both American and international, and American television of 2022.
• “Naatu Naatu” Song from SS Rajamouli’s Telugu film “RRR” won the Best Original Song- Motion Picture. The award was shared among M M Keeravani, composer of the track, and Chandrabose, lyricist of the song.
• Prithvi-II, a short-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile, is the first missile to have been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP).
• It is a part of India’s Prithvi missile series, which includes the Prithvi-I, Prithvi-II, Prithvi-III, and Dhanush.
• It is powered by light propulsion twin engines.
• It has a range of around 350 km and can carry 500-1,000 kg of warheads. It uses an advanced inertial navigation system to strike the set target
• It will be primarily used by the Indian Army.
• The three planets in the same system were previously found by NASA:
• TOI 700 b (90% Earth’s size)- orbits the star every 10 days.
• TOI 700 c (2.5 times bigger than Earth)- completes an orbit every 16 days.
• TOI 700 d (near-Earth-sized)- a 37-day orbit
• In January 2020, scientists announced the discovery of TOI-700 d, the 1st Earth-sized planet discovered by TESS in the habitable zone.
• Since Planet e is around 10% smaller than Planet d, the system shows how additional TESS observations enable the discovery of smaller and smaller worlds.
• Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, presented the result on behalf of her team at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Association in Seattle, Washington, United States (US).
• A paper about the newly discovered planet was accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
• The observance of the week is led by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways(MoRTH).
• 2023 marks the observance of the 34th Road Safety Week.
• Road Safety Week 2023 is observed under “Swachhata Pakhwada 2023” to propagate the cause of safer roads for all.
• Note: ‘Swachhata Pakhwada’ is a concept inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to engage all ministries and departments in “swachhta” related activities, and making it “everyone’s business”.
• 12th January 2023 marks the 160th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda.
• On National Youth Day 2023, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi inaugurated the 26th National Youth Festival (from 12th to 16th January 2023) in Hubbali, Karnataka.
• The theme of National Youth Festival 2023 is “Viksit Yuva-Viksit Bharat”.
• In 1984, the Indian government declared the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda as National Youth Day to honour and recognise his teachings.
• The 1st ever National Youth Day was observed on 12th January 1985.
• The development project would assist Assam in realising its goal of becoming a leader in the green energy transition.
• The battery storage projects are essential for the successful integration of future solar power projects in Assam, which has been developing a significant amount of solar energy potential.
• The benefit of this project is to improve power availability during peak load hours, integrate renewable energy generation into the electricity grid and increase grid reliability.