A total lunar eclipse that turned the moon blood red was witnessed across the globe.

About Total Lunar Eclipse

• An eclipse happens when a planet or a moon gets in the way of the Sun’s light.
• A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon align so that the Moon passes into Earth’s shadow. 
• The entire Moon falls within the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, called the umbra. 
• When the Moon is within the umbra, it will turn a reddish hue, thus called Blood Moons.

Due to Increased imports, Assam Tea Industry is facing a crisis.

About Tea as a crop

• Temperature: 18°C to 30°C. Extreme temperatures can adversely affect growth and yield.
• Rainfall: 1200 to 2500 mm. Adequate rainfall during the growing season is crucial.
• Humidity: High humidity levels (above 70%).
• Soil: Well-drained, acidic soils, rich in organic matter and have good water-holding capacity.
• Major Tea Growing Regions: Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, etc.

OPEC+ agreed to accelerate the Oil output.

About OPEC+

• OPEC signed an agreement with 10 other oil-producing countries to create what is now known as OPEC+.
• ​​OPEC and OPEC+ countries combined produced about 59% of global oil production.
• Largest oil producer USA is not part of OPEC+
• OPEC was formed in 1960 by Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.

India’s account aggregator system now has 112 million users, according to the government.

• The Account Aggregator (AA) framework was launched in 2021.
• It is one of the country’s fastest-growing pillars of Digital Public Infrastructure.

About Account Aggregator

• In India, they are entities licensed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
• They facilitate the collection and sharing of financial data.

A team of researchers at MIT has developed a new technique to understand how language models predict protein structure and function.

About Protein language models (PLMs)

• PLMs are a type of large language model (LLM), adapted from natural language processing (NLP).
• Instead of words, they treat amino acids like tokens and proteins like sentences.
• By training on millions of protein sequences, they learn the grammar of proteins.
• This helps speed up drug and vaccine development by avoiding traditional, time-consuming lab experiments.

A new study warns of the limitations of CCS to store carbon.

About CCS

• CCS processes capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes, power generation, and other sources, and then store them underground.
• Challenges:
  • Commercial: Expensive technology.
  • Storage: Capacity of underground geological formations to store CO2 is limited, and not all sites may be suitable for long-term storage. 
    • Earth can only safely hold about 1,460 billion tonnes of CO2 underground.
  • Infrastructure: cost of building and maintaining pipelines to transport can be high, and face public resistance.
  • CO2 impact: Corrosion, degradation, leakage.

Recently The Supreme Court observed that the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018 cannot be treated as a substitute for not cancelling bails when conditions are violated.

About Witness Protection scheme 2018

Objective: 

• Ensure safety of witnesses and their families so they can testify freely without fear or intimidation.
• It aims to promote law enforcement by facilitating the protection of persons in providing assistance to criminal law enforcement agencies.

Recently, the President of Sri Lanka visited Katchatheevu Island amid renewed calls by Indian politicians for its return to India.

About Katchatheevu Island

• Location: It is a tiny, uninhabited island in in Palk strait.
  • It lies to the northeast to Tamil Nadu’s Rameswaram town and southwest of Sri Lanka's Jaffna city.
• The island is barren, with no drinking water or sanitation with St. Anthony’s Catholic Shrine being the only permanent structure.
• Political Dispute - The island was disputed between India and Srilanka.
  • In 1974,agreement was signed between both countries delineating an  International Maritime Boundary Line, which placed Katchatheevu on the Sri Lankan side.
  • In return India gained Wadge Bank, located near Kanniyakumari.