Australian technology may help generate power from defunct gold mines in Kolar Gold Fields in Karnataka. Need for such technology: A drawback that makes renewable energy unreliable, from solar or wind power, is that there is no power during nights or windless days. The idea is to address this challenge by relying on low-tech gravity. How power will be generated? …

The Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he intends to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus What are tactical nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons can be categorised into two types — strategic and tactical. Strategic weapons refer to weapons that have bigger objectives, such as destroying cities or larger targets with larger war-waging objectives in mind. Strategic …

Union Minister of State for Panchayati Raj informed the Lok Sabha about implementation of the SWAMITVA Scheme. It is a Central Sector Scheme. To provide the ‘Record of Rights’ to village household owners possessing houses in inhabited areas (Abadi) in villages. Under the scheme, land parcels in rural inhabited area of all the villages of the country …

India emerged as world’s second largest crude steel producer since 2018 and second largest consumer of finished steel since 2019. A Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Specialty Steel was approved by the Government on 22.07.2021, with a financial outlay of ₹ 6,322 crores. The PLI scheme aims to extend an incentive of 4% to …

The Defence Minister informed the  Parliament about IDEX scheme. The iDEX initiative was launched in 2018. iDEX aims to achieve self – reliance and foster innovation and technology development in Defence and Aerospace by engaging Industries including MSMEs, start-ups, individual innovators, R&D institutes and academia. iDEX has launched challenges on frontier technologies/ domains to ensure that the Services enjoy a technological edge over their adversaries. SOURCE: THE HINDU, …

UP man booked under Wildlife Protection Act for keeping injured Sarus crane. The Wildlife Protection Act came into force in 1972. To provide for the protection of wild animals, birds and plants to ensure the ecological and environmental security of the country. To conserve protected species in two main ways: firstly, by prohibiting their hunting and secondly by protecting their habitat through the creation …

National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Eco-systems (NPCA) scheme implemented for conservation and management of wetlands (includes lakes) in the country on cost sharing basis between Central Government and respective State Governments Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) provided financial assistance to the States/Union Territories under the National Wetlands Conservation Programme (NWCP) and National Lake …

PARIVESH Portal provides a “single window” solution for an expeditious, transparent and effective decision making without compromising on  environmental safeguards PARIVESH is a web based, role-based workflow application which has been developed for online submission and monitoring of the proposals submitted by the proponents seeking for Environmental (EC), Forest (FC), Wildlife (WL) and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearances. It automates the entire tracking of proposals at each stage …

Lebanon was thrown into mass confusion after its government at the last minute delayed the start of daylight saving time by a month. Meanwhile, Greenland has chosen to stay with daylight saving time forever. What is daylight saving time? Daylight saving time (DST) is the practice of setting the clocks forward …

Shri Bhupender Yadav launches Aravalli Green Wall Project, a major initiative to green 5 km buffer area around the Aravalli Hill Range in four states The Aravalli Green Wall Project is part of the Union Environment Ministry’s vision to create green corridors across the country to combat land degradation and desertification. The project covers states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi – where …