India participates at 3rd G20 Sherpa meeting in Indonesia

• A Sherpa is a personal representative of the leader of a member country at an international Summit meeting such as the G8, G20, the Nuclear Security Summit etc.
• The Sherpa engages in planning, negotiation and implementation tasks through the Summit.
• They coordinate the agenda, seek consensus at the highest political levels, and participate in a series of pre-Summit consultations to help negotiate their leaders’ positions.
• Sherpas are career diplomats or senior government officials appointed by the leaders of their countries.
• The term is derived from the Nepalese Sherpa people, who serve as guides for mountaineers in the Himalayas.
• There is only one Sherpa per Summit for each member country; he/she is assisted by several sous Sherpas.

PFRDA will observe tomorrow as the National Pension System Diwas (NPS Diwas) to promote pension and retirement planning

• It aims to promote pension and retirement planning among the citizens. PFRDA is organising this campaign under ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’.
• The pension regulator aims to encourage every citizen, whether working professionals or self-employed professionals, to plan towards creating a pension corpus to ensure a financially sound future after retirement.
• NPS subscribers will enjoy the benefits of tax deduction on contribution, power of compounding and reap the benefits of regular income after retirement.

AFSPA extended in Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh

• The AFSPA will be extended for six months in nine districts -- Dimapur, Niuland, Chumoukedima, Mon, Kiphire, Noklak, Phek, Peren, and Zunheboto -- and 16 police stations areas in four other districts -- Kohima, Mokokchung, Longleng, and Wokha of Nagaland.
• It has been extended in certain parts of five other districts of the two northeastern states to facilitate the armed forces to continue the anti-insurgency operations.
• It is a law which gives armed forces (Army, the Air Force and Central paramilitary forces) the special powers and immunity to maintain public order in “disturbed areas”.
• **When is it applied?**It can be applied only after an area has been declared “disturbed” under section 2 of the act.
• What is a Disturbed area?  An area can be considered to be disturbed due to differences or disputes among different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities.
• Who declares an area as disturbed?  Section (3) of AFSPA empowers the governor of the state/Union territory to issue an official notification declaring the state or a region within as a “disturbed area”, after which the centre can decide whether to send in armed forces.
• The ‘special powers’ of armed forces under Section 4 are:
  • ‘Power to use force, including open fire’ at an individual if he violates laws which prohibit (a) the assembly of five or more persons; or (b) carrying of weapons.
  • ‘power to arrest’ without a warrant; (Under section 5 the Armed Forces have to hand over the arrested person to the nearest Police Station “with the least possible delay”.
  • ‘power to seize and search’ without any warrant any premise.
• These armed forces are immune from prosecution unless Union Government provides sanction to the prosecuting agencies.

Bolivian woman held with black cocaine worth Rs 13 crore at Mumbai airport

• “Black cocaine” is a rare drug, is a mixture of regular cocaine and other chemicals of administrated quantity.
• In a bid to ensure that sniffer dogs used at airports do not detect cocaine, it is being used by drug peddlers coming to India from South American countries.
• It neutralises the smell of cocaine so that it can pass through checkpoints easily.
• Black cocaine is a mixture of regular cocaine base with various substances to camouflage typical appearance (e.g. charcoal), to interfere with colour-based drug tests (cobalt salts form deep red complexes in solution), to make the mixture undetectable by drug-sniffing dogs as activated carbon may sufficiently absorb trace odours.
• The pure cocaine base is then recovered from the mixture by extraction using common organic solvents such as methylene chloride or acetone.
• A second process is required to convert the cocaine base into powdered cocaine hydrochloride.

Russia''s Putin signs laws annexing 4 Ukraine regions, finalising the move

• The four regions being annexed are Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine.
• The separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine have been backed by Moscow since declaring independence in 2014, weeks after the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
• The southern Kherson region and part of the neighboring Zaporizhzhia were captured by Russia soon after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
• Together with Crimea that Russia annexed in 2014, Russia now claims 20% of Ukrainian territory.
• The four territories create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

President Droupadi Murmu recently gave away the National Film Awards for the year 2020 under various categories at the 68th edition of the ceremony.

• The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was conferred on veteran actor Asha Parekh, an accomplished Indian classical dancer who has also been a director and producer.
• The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India''s highest award in the field of cinema.
• It is presented annually at the National Film Awards ceremony by the Directorate of Film Festivals, an organisation set up by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
• The recipient is honoured for their "outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema".
• The award prize consists of a golden lotus, a cash prize of ₹10 lakh and a shawl.
• The award was introduced by the Government of India to commemorate Dadasaheb Phalke''s contribution to Indian cinema, who is popularly known as and often regarded as "the father of Indian cinema".
• It was first presented in 1969. The first recipient of the award was actress Devika Rani, “the first lady of Indian cinema”.

Output growth of eight core infrastructure sector slows to 3.3% in August

• This is the slowest pace seen since November 2021, with crude oil and natural gas continuing to report contractions while electricity and steel production clocked sharply lower expansions than in the previous month.
• Overall output levels in the eight sectors were 1.5% lower than in July 2022, marking the third successive month of sequential contraction.
• The core sector is an aggregate of 8 core sectors that are fundamental to the Indian economy.
• These are Coal, Crude oil, Natural gas, Refinery products, Fertilisers, Steel, Cement and Electricity.
• These 8 sectors constituting the core sector are important because they account for nearly 40.27% of the overall IIP and hence have long term repercussions for corporate profit growth as well as for the overall GDP growth.
• The growth of the country’s eight core sectors is a lead indicator of the monthly industrial performance.
• The Office of Economic Adviser, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) in the Commerce and Industry Ministry releases the Index of Eight Core Industries.

Gen Anil Chauhan assumes charge as Chief of Defence Staff

• General Anil Chauhan was commissioned into the 11 Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army in 1981 and has served a range of staff and operational appointments including that of Director General of Military Operations.
• The CDS post has been vacant for over nine months since the death of the first CDS Gen Bipin Rawat in a chopper crash in December 2021.
• This is the first instance since independence, of a three-star Lieutenant General rank officer taking over as a four-star General after retirement.
• The Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces (CDS) is the military head and permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) of the Indian Armed Forces.
• The Chief of Defence Staff is the highest-ranking uniformed officer on active duty in the Indian military and chief military adviser to the Minister of Defence.
• The Chief also heads the Department of Military Affairs.

RBI hikes repo rate by 50 basis points

• It raised the repo rate (or the rate at which it lends money to the banking system) by 50 basis points (or 0.5 percentage points).
• It has cut India’s GDP growth rate for the current financial year (2022-23) from 7.2% to 7%.
• The MPC retained the retail inflation projection for the current fiscal year at 6.7%.

Monetary Policy Committee

• The Monetary Policy Committee of India is responsible for fixing the policy interest rate, to achieve the objectives of monetary policy.
• Three officials of the Reserve Bank of India, with Governor of RBI as Chairperson, ex officio
• Three external members appointed by the Government of India
• The external members hold office for a period of four years.
• Decisions of the MPC are taken on the basis of majority, with Governor having the casting vote in case of a tie.
• The MPC meets least 4 times a year and it publishes its decisions after each such meeting.

ASI’s recent findings in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve

• The 26 caves that were found are associated with the Mahayana sect of Buddhism.
• These date back to the same time as the Ajanta caves in Aurangabad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Besides the caves, the ASI team also found the remains of 26 temples, two mathas, two stupas, 46 idols and sculptures, 26 fragments and 19 water bodies.
• ASI also mentioned a Buddhist pillar fragment containing a miniature stupa carving, dating to the 2nd-3rd century CE, and 24 Brahmi inscriptions from the 2nd-5th century CE.
• The temples are from more recent times — the Kalachuri period (9th-11th century), while the water bodies range between 2nd-15th centuries CE.
• The places Kaushami, Mathura, Pavata (Parvata), Vejabharada and Sapatanaairikaa are mentioned in the Brahmini inscriptions, while the inscribed names of kings include Shri Bhimsena, Maharaja Pothasiri and Bhattadeva.

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve

• Bandhavgarh was declared a national park in 1968 and became a tiger reserve in 1993.
• Tala, Khitauli and Magadhi comprise the three main zones of the national park, which together cover an area of 716 km.