Imd Expects Normal Monsoon Rainfall For Fourth Straight Year

• The IMD predicts a “normal”, “below normal”, or “above normal” monsoon in relation to a benchmark “long period average” (LPA).
• According to the IMD, the “LPA of rainfall is the rainfall recorded over a particular region for a given interval (like month or season) average over a long period like 30 years, 50 years, etc”.
• The IMD’s latest prediction of a normal monsoon was based on the LPA of the 1971-2020 period, during which India received 87 cm of rain for the entire country on average.
• The IMD has in the past calculated the LPA at 88 cm for the 1961-2010 period, and at 89 cm for the period 1951-2000.
• While this quantitative benchmark refers to the average rainfall recorded from June to September for the entire country, the amount of rain that falls every year varies from region to region and from month to month.
• Therefore, along with the countrywide figure, the IMD also maintains LPAs for every meteorological region of the country — this number ranges from around 61 cm for the drier Northwest India to more than 143 cm for the wetter East and Northeast India.

WhatsApp Payments will display your legal name

• This will take the total permissible number of users on the platform to 100 million.
• As a result of this clearance from NPCI, WhatsApp will be able to add 60 million users to its UPI service and take on heavyweight rivals such as Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay, which command a majority of the transactions that happen on UPI.
• The NPCI has mandated that no platform should handle more than 30 per cent of total transaction volumes of UPI on a three-month rolling period basis.
• However, for bigger players like PhonePe, which commanded a 49 per cent market share in terms of value of transactions in March and Google Pay, which had a 35 per cent market share, it has allowed them time until the end of 2022 to comply with the directive.
• So, even as these players could continue commanding a significant market share till the end of this year, the increasing clearance to WhatsApp and the mandate for the others to restrict their share could result in a less skewed market.

What is the Neptune cruise missile that severely damaged Russian warship Moskva?

• The Ukrainians claim that the Moskva was hit by two anti-ship cruise missiles called the Neptune. Ironically, the design of this missile is based on a Russian Kh-35 cruise missile which goes by the NATO name of AS-20 Kayak.
• the Neptune is a coastal anti-ship cruise missile which is capable of destruction of naval vessels in a range of 300 km.
• Moskva is a guided missile cruiser of the Russian Navy named after the city of Moscow. It has a displacement of 12,490 tons. It is the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy and carries a crew of around 500 personnel.

India to host Street Child Cricket World Cup in 2023

• In 2019, this championship was held in London where eight teams competed, and Team India South lifted the cup after beating hosts England.
• This event will take place in September ahead of the ICC World Cup, and see street children and young people take part in a mixed-gender cricket tournament.

Poila Boishakh.

• Poila Boisakh is the first day of the Bengali calendar which is also the official calendar of Bangladesh.
• This festival is celebrated on 14 April in Bangladesh and 15 April in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam (Barak Valley) by Bengalis regardless of religious faith.
• The traditional greeting for Bengalis in the new year is "Shubho Noboborsho" which is literally "Happy New Year".
• The festive Mangal Shobhajatra is organized in Bangladesh. In 2016, the UNESCO declared this festivity organized by the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka as a cultural heritage of humanity.

Haryana to setup training institute for drone pilots

• The institute, to be set up under the aegis of the Drone Imaging and Information Service of Haryana Limited (DRIISHYA) is expected to cater to training needs of personnel of DRIISHYA and other organisations.
• The Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar was informed that Haryana is the first state to create a separate corporation to hasten unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-driven governance application.
• With the help of drones, illegal encroachments can also be controlled along with detecting of expansion of areas as earlier manual surveys were conducted at regular intervals which were time-consuming, costly and required more manpower.
• Besides the revenue department, the use of drones should also be ensured in urban local bodies, power, disaster management, mining, forest, traffic, town and country planning, agriculture, etc, as it would help in mapping, land records, disaster management and emergency services, development planning departments in the urban areas.

National Health Authority (NHA) gives open call for Expression of Interest for developing innovative solutions for building digital health ecosystem for India

• The interested developers/ parties can also make a significant contribution to the national digital health ecosystem development by sharing their Expression of Interest (EoI).
• Unified Health Interface (UHI) - NHA intends to develop a digital platform (similar to Unified Payment Interface or UPI) for interoperability between various digital solutions to facilitate various stakeholders using disparate solutions to communicate.
• Health Claims Platform (HCP) - NHA is developing a Health Claims Platform as a public good. Health providers (e g: Hospitals, labs) can submit their e-claims on this platform which can be received by payers (e.g.: Insurers, TPAs) for processing.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) - Various digital health solutions can be used by healthcare providers. These may include solutions such as Hospital Information System (HIS), Hospital (or Health) Management Information System (HMIS) etc.

Government under Shri Narendra Modi launches country’s biggest ever Quiz Contest Sabka Vikas Mahaquiz

• The quiz aims to sensitise the participants about the various schemes and initiatives and how to avail the benefits.
• This quiz has been fittingly launched on the birth anniversary of Bharat Ratna Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar on 14th April 2022.
• Under this, the first quiz is the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
• Under the scheme, all National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries are entitled to 5 kgs of free food grain every month. This is over and above the highly subsidised food grains available to NFSA beneficiaries.
• The scheme has been successful in keeping extreme poverty low during the pandemic and has been praised in a working paper prepared by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).