Short News

Economy (GS III)

India buying Russian Sokol Oil

Sokol is a light sweet crude which is extracted from the Sakhalin oil fields.
Due to Indian government advisory to state refiners against using Chinese yuan to pay for Russian oil, there was a pause in Sokol imports.
HPCL has resumed by trading Sokol oil in UAE dirhams.

Science & Technology (GS III)

OpenAI launched Sora: A text prompt to video creator.

Sora is an AI model that crafts realistic and imaginative scenes based on textual instructions.
Sora is a diffusion model that starts with a video resembling static noise. Over multiple steps, the output gradually transforms by removing the noise.
Sora can generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background.
Sora focuses on transforming visual data into a unified representation conducive to large-scale training of generative models.
Sora leverages transformer architecture, similar to GPT models.

Infrastructure (GS III)

SagarAankalan Guidelines were recently launched to revolutionize the assessment and performance of Indian ports.

The SagarAankalan guidelines focus on national benchmarking of Indian port performance.
The Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways (MoPSW) organized a stakeholders’ meet to implement the MoUs signed during the Global Maritime India Summit 2023 (GMIS 2023).

Key Goals

Mapping and benchmarkinglogistics performance and efficiency.
Harmonizationof standards, definitions, and performance metrics with global benchmarks.
Enhancing competitiveness, overall efficiency, and sustainability of the port sector.
Prioritizing continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.