Researchers discover new cuckoo bee in Kerala

• The new species belongs to the family Apidae of the order Hymenoptera.
• The genus Thyreus consists of cuckoo bees or cleptoparasitic bees.
• Cuckoo bees parasitise the nest of other bees by breaking and entering and laying their eggs.
• Unlike other female bees, cuckoo bees lack pollen-collecting structures.
• Once the cuckoo bee’s larva hatches out in the nest of the host bee, it consumes the food stored by the host for its own growing larva.

Kole wetland

• It is the largest brackish, humid tropical wetland ecosystem located in the state of Kerala.
• Extending from the northern bank of Chalakudy River in the south to the southern bank of Bharathapuzha River in the north
• It is situated in the central Asian Flyway of migratory birds.

NFOs back, but no need to rush bets

• A new fund offer (NFO) refers to the initial sale of fund shares issued by an investment company to investors.
• Similar to an IPO in the stock market, NFOs are intended to raise capital for the fund and attract investors.
• Mutual funds are the most common type of new fund offering.

Types of New Fund Offers

• Open-End Fund: These funds do not limit their number of shares. These funds can be bought and sold from a brokerage firm on their initial launch date and thereafter. The shares do not trade on an exchange and are managed by the fund company.
• Closed-End Fund: Closed-end new fund offers are often some of the most highly marketed new fund issuances since closed-end funds only issue a specified number of shares during their new fund offer. Closed-end funds trade on an exchange with daily price quotes throughout the day.

Sebi seeks F&O trade info from desi hedge funds

• Futures Contract: It is an agreement between buyer and seller to buy or sell an asset at a certain time in the future at a certain price.
• The buyer must purchase or the seller must sell the underlying asset at the set price, regardless of the current market price at the expiration date.
• Underlying assets include physical commodities and financial instruments (stocks, currencies and bonds etc.)
• They are subjected to high risk and can reap unlimited profit or loss.
• Option Contract: An option is a contract that gives an investor the right but not the obligation to buy or sell a commodity at a specified price at a specified future date.
• They carry limited risk and can reap either unlimited profit or loss.
• Advance is paid in the form of premiums in option contracts.

India-Japan joint military exercise Dharma Guardian to begin today

• It is the 4th joint military exercise between India and Japan which is being conducted since 2018.
• The scope of this exercise covers platoon-level joint training on operations in jungle and semi-urban or urban terrain.
• Troops of the Garhwal Rifles Regiment of the Indian Army and an Infantry Regiment from the Middle Army of the Japan Ground Self Defence Force are participating in the exercise.
• This joint exercise will enable the two armies to share best practices in tactics, techniques and procedures for conducting tactical operations under a UN Mandate.

India and Japan

• **Malabar:**India and Japan with the United States and Australia participate in the naval war gaming exercise named Malabar.
• JIMEX (naval)
• SHINYUU Maitri (Air Force)

Government Eases Rules For Organ Donation, Relaxes Cap On Age

• The primary legislation governing organ transplantation in India is the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, passed in 1994.
• It provides a system to regulate the removal, storage, and transplantation of human organs for therapeutic purposes and for the prevention of commercial dealings in human organs.
• National Organ transplant programme:
• It is implemented by the Directorate General of Health Services, Government of India.
• Objectives:
  • To organize a system of organ and Tissue procurement & distribution for transplantation.
  • To promote deceased organ and Tissue donation.
  • To train the required manpower.
  • To protect vulnerable poor from organ trafficking.
  • To monitor organ and tissue transplant services and bring about policy and programme corrections/ changes whenever needed.
• National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO):
  • It is a National level organization set up under the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
  • It functions as the apex center for coordinating all activities and networking for the procurement and distribution of organs and tissues and maintaining the registry of organs and tissue donation and transplantation in the country.

Organ donation in India:

• Organ donation means giving part of the body (organ) to a person with end-stage organ disease who needs a transplant.
• In India, organ donations are legal under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA), 1994, which also legalizes the concept of ‘brain death’, the permanent cessation of all brain functions.
• Organ donation is a voluntary process wherein you can fill up a consent form to donate your organs in the event of your demise.
• Types of organ donation:
  • Living Donor Organ Donation:
    • A person during his life can donate one kidney, a portion of the pancreas, and a part of the liver.
    • Living Donor is any person not less than 18 years of age who voluntarily authorizes the removal of any of his organ and/or tissue, during their lifetime, as per prevalent medical practices for therapeutic purposes.
    • The donor can be a family member, relative, friend, neighbour, or in-law.
  • Deceased Donor Organ Donation:
    • A person can donate multiple organs and tissues after (brain-stem/cardiac) death. Their organ continues to live in another person’s body.
    • Deceased Donor is anyone, regardless of age, who can become an organ and tissue donor after their death (Brainstem/Cardiac). Consent of a near relative or a person in lawful possession of the dead body is required.
• Eligibility criteria:
  • There is no age limit for organ donation. It can be started at as young as six weeks. The only essential thing is the health and condition of your organs.

RBI grants in-principle approval to 32 entities for payment aggregator licence

• A PA (also known as a merchant aggregator) is a third-party service provider that allows merchants to accept payment from customers by integrating it into their websites or apps.
• It facilitates different types of payment transactions, including cash/cheque, online payments through multiple payment sources, or offline touchpoints.
• It allows merchants to accept bank transfers without setting up a bank-based merchant account. It means a merchant need not have a merchant account directly with the bank.
• A PA in India is incorporated under the Companies Act 2013.
• A PA can be a bank or a non-bank entity.
• Since a PA handles funds, it requires a license from the RBI.
• Only non-bank payment aggregators require unique authorization from RBI as ‘handling funds’ is considered a part of the normal banking relationships for bank PAs.
• Examples: Amazon (Pay) India, Google India, Razorpay, Pine Labs, etc.

Payment Gateway

• It is a software service that connects your bank account to the platform where you need to transfer your money.
• It authorizes you to conduct an online transaction through different payment modes like net banking, credit card, debit card, UPI, or other online wallets.
• A Payment gateway plays the role of a third party that securely transfers your money from the bank account to the merchant’s payment portal.

Payment Aggregator v/s Payment gateway:

• A payment gateway is a software that allows online transactions to take place, while a payment aggregator is the inclusion of all these payment gateways.
• While a payment gateway is an intermediary, the payment aggregator is the interface where the payment gateway processes the transactions.
• Most payment aggregators own payment gateways to offer various exclusive services to their merchant customers.

Union Cabinet approves establishment of new Primary Agricultural Credit Society in 2 lakh panchayats

• PACS are village-level cooperative credit societies that serve as the last link in a three-tier cooperative credit structure headed by the State Cooperative Banks (SCB) at the state level.
• Credit from the SCBs is transferred to the district central cooperative banks (DCCBs) that operate at the district level. The DCCBs work with PACS, which deals directly with farmers.
• Individual farmers are members of the PACS, and office-bearers are elected from within them.
• There are 02 lakh PACS in India (As per the RBI report of December 2022).
• Functions:
  • To provide short and medium-term purpose loans to farmers for various agricultural purposes.
  • Borrowing adequate funds from central financial agencies to help its members on time.
  • Maintaining the supply of the hired light machinery for agricultural purposes.
  • To promote savings habits among its members.
  • To arrange for supplying agricultural inputs.
  • Provide marketing facilities to members that could enhance the sale of their agricultural products in the market at reasonable prices.
• Organizational Structure:
  • General Body: Exercise control overboard and management.
  • Management Committee: The general body elects them to perform the work prescribed by society’s rules, acts, and by-laws.
  • Chairman, Vice-Chairman, and Secretary: Appointed from amongst its members. They work for the benefit of the members by performing their roles and duties as assigned to them.
  • Office Staff: Performs day-to-day work.3

Scrap steel industry seeks ''reverse charge mechanism'' in GST

• It is a mechanism where the recipient of the goods or services is liable to pay GST instead of the supplier.
• Typically, the supplier of goods or services pays the tax on supply. Under the RCM, the recipient of goods or services becomes liable to pay the tax, i.e., the liability of tax payment gets reversed.
• Objectives:
  • to widen the scope of levy of tax on various unorganized sectors;
  • to exempt specific classes of suppliers of goods/services;
  • to tax the import of services (since the supplier is based outside India);
• Under the RCM, **the recipient of goods cannot claim an Input tax credit (ITC)**as the supplier has not paid any tax for their sales.

Input tax credit (ITC) under GST

• ITC means GST paid by a taxable person on any purchase of goods and/or services that are used or will be used for business.
• ITC value can be reduced from the GST payable on the sales by the taxable person after fulfilling some conditions.

Webb Uncovers New Details in Pandora''s Cluster

• It is a giant galaxy cluster.
• It appears to be the result of a simultaneous pile-up of at least four separate, smaller galaxy clusters.
• The crash took place over a span of 350 million years.
• The galaxies in the cluster make up less than five percent of its mass.
• The gas (around 20 percent) is so hot that it shines only in X-rays.
• Dark mattermakes up around 75 percent of the cluster''s mass.
• It is located around 4 billion light years from earth.

Galaxy clusters

• They are the largest objects in the universe that are held together by their own gravity.
• They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, lots of hot plasma, and a large amount of invisible dark matter.
• Galaxy clusters are home to the biggest galaxies in the known universe and provide us with information about the structure of the universe on the largest scales.

India ranks 47th in OECD''s services trade restrictiveness index

• The 2022 STRI of India is above the OECD average and high compared to all countries in the STRI sample.
• India had been progressively introducing reforms over the past years, contributing to a slight liberalisation of services trade in some sectors, most notably between 2018 and 2021.

Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI)

• It was launched in 2014 and provides information on regulations affecting trade in services in 22 sectors across all member countries.
• The regulatory database and indices are updated annually in December.
• There is also a Digital STRI that identifies, catalogues, and quantifies cross-cutting barriers that affect services traded digitally.
• Scoring: This index takes values between zero and one, one representing a totally closed and zeros a fully open sector.