📝 Ooty & Kodaikanal[1]
🚀 Ooty/Udagamandalam: Hill station in the Nilgiri hills (Tamil Nadu) → Queen of Hill Stations
🚀 Kodaikanal: Hill station in the Palani hills (Tamil Nadu) → Princess of Hill stations
📝 First Vande Bharat train to Kashmir[2][3]
🚀 PM Modi will flag off the first Vande Bharat Express to Srinagar from Katra on April 19 → will connect Jammu to Srinagar (Katra to Srinagar initially) → will pass through the Chenab Bridge (highest rail bridge in the world) and Anji Khad bridge (India’s first cable-stayed railway bridge).
👉🏽 It will complete the 272-km Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project.
📝 NITI NCAER States Economic Forum[4]
🚀 NITI NCAER States Economic Forum portal: Developed by NITI Aayog & National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) → Launched by the FM Nirmala Sitharaman → A “comprehensive repository” of data on social, economic and fiscal parameters, research reports, papers, and expert commentary on the finances of States for 30 years from 1990-91 to 2022-23.
👉🏽 Four main components: State reports, data repository, State fiscal and economic dashboard and research and commentary.
📝 Fourth edition of Tiger Triumph[5][6]
🚀 Tiger Triumph: India-U.S. tri-service Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Exercise → 4th edition will take place from April 1 to 13
👉🏽 Harbour Phase: Visakhapatnam (April 1 to 7)
📝 Awareness drive by the CISF[7]
🚀 The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) completed a cycle expedition along India’s coastline to connect with and empower local communities, recognizing their role in safeguarding the nation’s maritime interests.
📝 Detecting radioactive materials[8]
🚀 Scientists have developed a method to detect radioactive materials from 10 meters away using carbon dioxide lasers, triggering an avalanche breakdown in the air.
🚀 Avalanche Breakdown: Radioactive materials emit particles (like alpha particles) that ionize nearby air, creating a few free electrons. A powerful laser pulse is then fired into this ionized region. The laser’s electric field accelerates the free electrons, causing them to collide with air molecules and knock out more electrons. This chain reaction rapidly multiplies the number of electrons, creating a glowing plasma, which is detected to confirm the presence of radiation.
📝 Government Assurances[9]
🚀 Assurance: An undertaking provided by a ministry in parliament as part of a response or discussion that entails further action from the government in reporting back to the House.
👉🏽 The Committee of Government Assurances was established in 1953 to ensure that promises made in Parliament by the executive are implemented.
👉🏽 An assurance is considered ‘pending’ if not fulfilled within three months. After this, the corresponding ministry must either apply for an extension of this period or request that the assurance be ‘dropped.’ → The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs keeps track of these assurances and publishes their status on the Online Assurance Monitoring System (OAMS) portal.
🚀 The Home Ministry dropped the most assurances across both Houses since 2014.
📝 Arctic Council[10]
🚀 Arctic Council: Formed in 1996 through the Ottawa Declaration → 8 members: Canada, Denmark (through Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the USA.
🚀 The Arctic lacks special legal safeguards. It is primarily governed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) → UNCLOS permits nations to extend their claims to the seabed beyond the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) if they can prove that the area is a natural prolongation of their continental shelf.
🚀 The melting of Arctic ice due to global warming creates new economic and strategic opportunities, including new commercial trade routes, in the Arctic. → The Arctic has untapped natural resource reserves, including fossil fuels, rare earth elements, phosphates, copper, and lucrative fishing grounds. → A 2009 U.S. Geological Survey report estimated that the region holds 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its untapped natural gas reserves.
📝 India’s oil imports[11]
🚀 India is the third-largest oil importer → relies on imports to fulfil 88.1% of its oil requirements → Russia is India’s top oil supplier (38% share in 2024), followed by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
🚀 China is Russia’s top oil export destination, followed by India.
📝 India’s Steel Industry[12]
🚀 India is the second largest crude steel producer after China → produces over 10% of the world’s steel → aims to have 300 MT of steel-making capacity by 2030.
🚀 Durgapur Steel Plant (West Bengal): built with British help in 1959.
📝 Miscellaneous
🚀 Port Talbot & Scunthorpe are industrial towns in the United Kingdom.[12]
🚀 Rafah is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestine.[13]
🚀 Nagarahole National Park and Tiger Reserve is Located in Karnataka. It is part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. The Hadlus are the swampy grasslands found in it.[14]
🚀 Cheppandikere Lake is in Karnataka.[15]
🚀 El-Nino refers to the warming (0.5 to 1 degree Celsius) of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. It can cause reduced monsoon rainfall in India.[16]
Citations
1. New e-pass system in the Nilgiris, Kodaikanal from today
2. PM likely to inaugurate Vande Bharat train to Srinagar on April 19
3. PM Modi will flag off first Vande Bharat Express to Kashmir from Katra on April 19
4. Niti Aayog develops portal on finances of States
5. India-U.S. tri-service Ex Tiger Triumph to be held from April 1 to April 13
6. Indo-US joint Exercise Tiger Triumph begins at Visakhapatnam
8. Laser allows long-range detection of radioactive materials
9. Among Ministries, Home Affairs ‘dropped’ most assurances
10. Why are tensions high in the Arctic?
11. Is India firmly positioned to manage U.S. sanctions on Russian oil?
12. As sun sets on Britain’s ‘steel empire’, India on ‘conquering’ march
13. Israeli military orders evacuation of most of Rafah
15. Study reveals rainfall increase in Western Ghats over 800 years
16. El Nino ruled out during monsoon this year: IMD