SHORT NEWS

History (GS-I)

Gulbadan Begum

In the annals of history, where the exploits of men are often heralded above all, the story of Gulbadan Begum, a Mughal princess of unparalleled courage and the first female historian of the empire, emerges as a beacon of inspiration.

 About

• In 1576, Gulbadan Begum defied societal norms and undertook a daring six-year voyage to Mecca.
• This journey was not merely a pilgrimage to Mecca but a daring adventure that challenged the norms of her time and showcased her profound bravery, kindness, and desire for freedom.
• Her memoir,Humayun nama, offers rare insights into the Mughal empire from a femaleperspective, challenging male-dominated historical narratives.

Location in news

Avdiivka

The Russian military has taken full control of the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant.

About

• Avdiivka, which had a pre-war population of around 32,000.
• It was briefly taken in 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists who seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine but was recaptured by Ukrainian troops who built extensive fortifications.
• It is called Avdeyevka by Russians.
• Avdiivka has strategic and logistical value for Moscow. 
• Avdiivka sits in the industrial Donbas region, 15 km (9 miles) north of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Before the war, the Soviet-era coke plant was one of Europe's biggest.
• The fall of Avdiivka is Russia's biggest gain since it captured the city of Bakhmut in May 2023.

International Relations (GS-II)

India-China’s fresh round of military talks

India and China failed to make much headway in 21st round of India-China corps commander level meeting to resolve border issues in eastern Ladakh since the Galwan face-off in 2020.

India-China Border and dispute

The India-China border is divided into three sectors

• Western:The boundary dispute in the Western Sector pertains to the Johnson Line proposed by the British in the 1860s that extended up to the Kunlun Mountains and put Aksai Chin in the then princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• Middle:In the Middle Sector, the dispute is a minor one. It is the only one where India and China have exchanged maps on which they broadly agree.
• Eastern: The disputed boundary in the Eastern Sector of the India-China border is over the MacMahon Line.

International Relations

Alexei Navalny (1976-2024)

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, died recently after collapsing and losing consciousness at the penal colony north of the Arctic Circle where he was serving a long jail term.

Who was Navalny?

• Navalny, 47, became the leadingfigure among Russia's splintered opposition.
• Supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who would one day be freed from jail to lead the country.
• Rose to prominence: A former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence with blogs which exposed what he said was vast corruption across the Russian elite, describing Russia as ruled by "crooks and thieves".
• The US can announce a major package of sanctions against Russia over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalnyand the two-year Ukraine war.

What is India’s stand?

• India is standing by its close relationship with Russia.
• As a nation, Russia has supported India and India, in turn, has supported Russia. India has also been very clear vocal in the G20 declaration and before that at every summit.
• India is “on the side of peace".

Personality in News

Fali Nariman  (1929-2024)

Fali Nariman passed away at the age of 95, leaving behind a legacy of remarkable achievements and a profound impact on the country's judicial system.

About

• Fali Nariman (Fali as everybody called him) began his practice in the Bombay High Court and soon became a leading lawyer.
• When Emergency was declared in 1975, he put in his resignation.
  • Given the times, it was brave of him but clearly, his conscience did not permit him to represent an authoritarian regime.
• He made significant contributions to the evolution of law and fought for human rights in India, England, and America.
• He was part of historic judicial proceedings like the Golaknath case and Kesavananda Bharati case.
• Nariman’s contribution to the Indian judiciary is majorly embodied in the three cases that established and upheld the Collegium system of appointing judges.
• He served as the Additional Solicitor General of India from 1972 to 1975.
• He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2007. 
• He also served as the
  • President of the Bar Association of India
  • Vice-Chairman of the Internal Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce
  • honorary member of the International Commission of Jurists from
  • member of the  London Court of International Arbitration

Personality in News

Ameen Sayani (1932-2024)

Ameen Sayani, a pioneering radio presenter who drew in generations of listeners in India with his melodic voice on a radio show that became a national phenomenon, died in Mumbai.

About

• Sayani was one of the most recognizable voices in Indian radio as the host of one of the first radio shows in the country.
• He showcased songs featured in Hindi movies for more than 42 years, helping establish a place for film music in India’s popular culture.
• He hosted the program on Radio Ceylon, one of the oldest radio stations in the world, based in what is now Sri Lanka.

Personality in News

Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974)

The centennial anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose's groundbreaking discovery in physics, which laid the foundation for quantum theory, is being celebrated, highlighting the pivotal contribution of an often-overlooked Indian scientist in reshaping the field of physics.

Satyendra Nath Bose:

• Satyendra Nath Bose was an outstanding Indian physicist specialising in quantum mechanics.
• He is of course most remembered for his excellent role played in the class of particles ‘bosons’,which were named after him by Paul Dirac to commemorate his work in the field.
• He is known for his work in Quantum Physics.
• He is famous for "Bose-Einstein Theory"and a kind of particle in an atom has been named after his name Boson.
• Bose adapted a lecture at the University of Dhaka on the theory of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe into a short article called “Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta”and sent it to Albert Einstein.
• Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose’s paper “Planck’s Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta” into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose’s name, in 1924.
• This formed the basis of the Bose-Einstein Statistics.
• His theoretical paper became one of the most important findings in quantum theory.

Recognition:

• In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose.
• For his tremendous contribution to physics, Bose was honoured with the second-highest civilian award in the country, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954.
• He was also appointed as National Professor, the highest honour in India for scholars.
• Bose went on to serve as president of many scientific institutions, including the Indian Physical Society, National Institute of Science, Indian Science Congress and the Indian Statistical Institute.
• He was also an adviser to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and later became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
• In honor of Bose’s legacy, any particle that conforms with his statistics today is known as a Many scientific breakthroughs have come from his work including the discovery of the particle accelerator and the God particle.

Polity & Governance

SC invokes Article 142

The Supreme Court, using Article 142, declared Aam Aadmi (AAP) party councillor as elected to the post of Chandigarh mayor, upon finding that the presiding officer deliberately defaced eight votes cast in his favour.

What is Article 142?

• Article 142 of the Indian constitution is a provision that empowers the Supreme Court to pass any decree or order necessary for doing complete justice in any case or matter pending before it.
• It also makes such decree or order enforceable throughout the territory of India.
• Article 142 is supported by several other provisions, including
  • Article 32 (which ensures the right to constitutional remedies)
  • Article 141 (mandating that all courts within India must abide by the Supreme Court's decisions)
  • Article 136 (which allows for the Special Leave Petition)
• This collective framework is known by the term "judicial activism”.

Science & Technology (GS-III)

European Remote Sensing 2 (ERS-2)

After 16 years of operation, a defunct satellite, ERS-2 spacecraft, burnt up in the atmosphere over the Pacific.

About

• European Remote Sensing 2 (ERS-2) was launched in 1995, retired in 2011, and has been gradually making its way back to Earth since then.
• Over its 16-year life, the ERS-2 collected information on climate change and the Earth's atmosphere. 

Science & Technology (GS-III)

OpenAI's latest offering Sora

OpenAI’ Sora is its newest AI innovation that generates realistic videos from simple text descriptions.

What is Sora?

• Sora is a text-to-video diffusion model, capable of generating videos based on textual descriptions.
• Users can input text prompts, and Sora will create corresponding video content.
• Other models:
  • Meta has a tool for creating short video clips.
  • Google is working on its text-to-video model.

Science & Technology

iOncology AI for cancer detection

To exploit the power of AI in healthcare, AIIMS, New Delhi, in collaboration with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Pune, has launched an AI platform, iOncology.ai, for facilitating early detection of Cancer.

About

• The AI system runs on deep learning models capable of analysing complex medical data with "unprecedented accuracy and efficiency".
• It was trained using a data set of 500,000 radiological and histopathological images from 1,500 cases of breast and ovarian cancers, the two most common types of cancer. 

Cancer

• Cancer is globally estimated to be the most fatal disease than those from cardiovascular (Lancet, 2019) in high-income countries (HICs), and middle-income countries (MICs).
• According to the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) estimates, there were 19.3 million incident cancer cases worldwide for the year 2020.
• India ranked third after China and the United States of America.

Science & Technology

Protein Structure

John Jumper, Breakthrough Prize laureate, has been developing novel methods to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to protein biology.

What are protein structure?

• Proteins are the end products of the decoding process that starts with the information in cellular DNA. 
• The building blocks of proteins are amino acids, which are small organic molecules that consist of an alpha (central) carbon atom linked to an amino group, a carboxyl group, a hydrogen atom, and a variable component called a side chain.
• Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule.

Environment (GS-III)

Micro- and nano-plastics in water

A litre of bottled water can contain more than one lakh particles of micro- and nano-plastics, with 90% of those being the latter, a new study has reported.

About

• Nanoplastics are minute, with dimensions ranging from 1 nanometre to 1 micrometre.
• The prefix ‘micro’ means one-millionth; ‘nano’ means one-billionth.

Economy (GS-III)

Cooling Inflation

Inflation has cooled significantly in recent months, yet many people are still paying more for a lot of things.

What is Cooling Inflation?

• Cooling or easing inflation doesn't actually mean prices are falling.
• It just means prices are rising more slowly.

Economy (GS-III)

Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of sugarcane

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) of sugarcane for Sugar Season 2024-25 at ? 340/quintal at sugar recovery rate of 10.25%.

Sugar Production in India

• India is the world’s largest producer and consumerof sugar. Being on the top, it is required to produce enough to meet its huge domestic demand.
• The country's sugar production dipped 2.48 per cent to 22.36 million tonnes till February 15 of the ongoing 2023-24 marketing year.