INTERNATIONAL
- Pakistan approves the proposal to open Sharda Peeth corridor
- The Pakistan government approved a proposal to establish a corridor that will allow Hindu pilgrims from India to visit Sharda Peeth.
- It is an ancient Hindu temple and cultural site in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
- The Sharda Peeth corridor, when opened, will be the second religious tract after Kartarpur corridor in Pakistan-controlled territory that will connect the two neighbouring nations.
- After Partition in 1947, the temple went under the control of Pakistan.
- It is about 130km from Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu & Kashmir.
- Kashmiri Pandits consider Sharada as their “kuldevi” or principal deity.
- India, Bangladesh to start cruise service
- India and Bangladesh will start a cruise service that would take passengers through the Sunderbans to Dhaka.
- The move aims to strengthen inland waterway routes between the two countries.
- Other than road and rail, India and Bangladesh also have very strong power connectivity through waterways.
- As the movement of goods starts using inland waterways, goods from India can go in the cheapest possible form up to Narayanganj and Dhaka in Bangladesh.
- Apart from it, people would have the option to travel through the Sunderbans on luxury vessels up to Dhaka.
- World’s largest e-waste recycling hub opened in Dubai
- Located at the Dubai Industrial Park, the 2,80,000 square feetplant will process Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), IT asset disposition (ITAD), refrigerant gas and specialised waste.
- It is established by ‘Enviroserve’ company with a total cost of $5 million.
- It has a processing capacity of 100,000 tonnesof total integrated waste per year, of which 39,000 tonnes is e-waste.
- The 120 million dirhams ($5 million) project is backed by the Swiss Government Export Finance Agency.
NATIONAL
- Government notifies Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules 2019
- Health and Family Welfare Ministry have notified the Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019 with an aim to promote clinical research in the country.
- The new rules will change the regulatory landscape for the approval of new drugs and conduct of clinical trials in the country.
- These rules will apply to all new drugs, investigational new drugs for human use, clinical trial, bioequivalence study and Ethics Committee.
- It has reduced the time for approving applications to 30 days for drugs manufactured in India and 90 days for those developed outside the country.
- The ethics committee will monitor the trials and decide on the amount of compensation in cases of adverse events.
- ISRO to launch 29 satellites including EMISAT on April 1, 2019
- India on April 1 will launch an electronic intelligence satellite ‘Emisat’ for the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) along with 28 third party satellites.
- ISRO, for the first time, will also demonstrate its new technologies like three different orbitswith a new variant of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket.
- PSLV-C45will take off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota tentatively at 9:30 AM carrying the satellites onboard.
- EMISAT, weighing 436 kg, is intended for electromagnetic spectrum measurement.
- The 28 international customer satellites are from four countries, viz. Lithuania, Spain, Switzerland and USA. All these satellites are being launched under commercial arrangements.
- India successfully conducts an anti-satellite missile test in Mission Shakti
- India successfully completed ‘Mission Shakti‘ operation where it destroyed a live satellite on a low earth orbit (LEO) using an Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile in three minutes.
- A DRDO-developed Ballistic Missile, Defence Interceptor Missile successfully engaged an Indian orbiting target satellite in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in a Hit to Kill mode.
- He assured the international community that India’s capability will not be used against anyone but is purely a defence initiative for its security.
- The successful launch of an anti-satellite missile, the country has emerged as a space superpower in the world.
- After the US, Russia, and China, India is the fourth country to acquire this space capability.