Recently, The Dag Hammarskjöld Medal was presented posthumously by the UN to an Indian peacekeeper Naik Dhananjay Kumar Singh.

About Dag Hammarskjold medal

• It is a posthumous award to members of peacekeeping operations.
• The first Medal was presented to the family of Dag Hammarskjöld in 1998.
  • He was Secretary-General of the UN from 1953 until 1961.

Japan has spotted Chinese ships sailing near disputed Senkaku Islands in East China Sea.

About Senkaku Islands 

• Also known as Diaoyu in Chinese.
• Located approximately 170km northwest of Japan’s Ishigaki Island/ /Okinawa Prefecture, 170km northeast of Taiwan and 330km from mainland China coast.
• Comprises group of islands i.e. Uotsuri Island (largest), Kuba Island, Taisho Island etc.
• Senkaku Islands have long been a contentious issue between Japan and China. Both nations assert historical claims over uninhabited rocky chain.

Recently, Cambodia announced that it will start work on Funan Techo canal soon.

About Funan Techno Canal

• It is a proposed 180-kilometer canal project in Cambodia funded by China.
• It will connect Cambodian coastal province of Kep (on Gulf of Thailand) with capital Phnom Penh via Bassac River (Hau Giang River), one of the major tributaries of Mekong River.
• It will reduce Cambodia’s reliance on Vietnamese ports for international shipping.

The recent VRR auction by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) witnessed a good response from banks.

About VRR

• Rate at which RBI allows Banks to borrow at a rate decided by the market.
  • Repo Rate is the rate at which Banks borrow money from RBI which is fixed by RBI.
• The borrowing duration is more than One Day and usually up to 14 days.
• It is a tool to inject short-term liquidity into the banking system.
  • Similarly Variable Rate Reverse Repo (VRRR) is conducted to absorb the excess liquidity from the system.

Released by: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Key findings

• Climate change and biodiversity loss can have complex and interconnected effects on diets, affecting food availability, diversity etc. 
• More than two billion people, many of them in Africa and South Asia, cannot afford a healthy diet.
• Around 38 percent of the Indian population ate unhealthy foods
• As a result of poor diet, 16.6% Indians suffer from malnutrition.

About IFPRI

• Established in 1975, It is a research center of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers.

High Court judge becomes first in Goa to register a ‘living will’.

About Living Will (Advance Medical Directive)

• Refers to a written document that a person uses to give his explicit instructions in advance about medical treatment to be administered if he becomes incompetent or unable to communicate.
• It is executed voluntarily.
• Supreme Court in Common Cause vs. Union of India & Anr. (2018) case, held that a person in persistent vegetative state can opt for passive euthanasia (withdrawing life support, medical treatment).
  • A person can execute a living will to refuse medical treatment in case of a terminal illness.

Special Enforcement Bureau raids on Mahua liquor in Andhra Pradesh have targeted Koya tribe, threatening their traditional practices.

• Mahua (tropical tree) is considered sacred by them. Its flowers are used for brewing liquor.

About Koya Tribe 

• Habitat: Hills and forests north of Godavari District (Andhra Pradesh) and Malkangiri district (Odisha).
• Occupation: 
  • Traditionally, they are pastoralists and shifting cultivators but now they have taken to settled cultivation. 
  • Cultivate mainly paddy, maize, mandia (millet) and tobacco leaf. 
• Culture: 
  • Speak Koya language, which belongs to Dravidian family of languages.
  • Koya observes annual religious festivals i.e., Bijja Pandu, Kodta Pandu, Bimud Pandu etc.

Recently, the first discovery of living shallow-marine stromatolites was made in the Middle East near the Red Sea. 

About Stromatolites

• They refer to a range of microbial communities that are associated with layers of rock.
• They represent the earliest geological record of life on Earth.
• They are partially responsible for the Great Oxygenation Event, which changed the composition of our atmosphere by introducing oxygen.

• They are typically relegated to extreme environmental niches, thus are found Rarely and are sparsely scattered across the globe.