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January – 01

TNPSC BITS
❖ Tamil Nadu and Kerala Chief Ministers jointly released a souvenir to mark the
centenary celebrations of Vaikom Satyagraha at Chennai.
❖ The Centre appointed Nina Singh as the Director General of CISF.
o It is making her the first woman to head this elite force.
❖ President of India has nominated Justice Sanjiv Khanna of the Supreme Court
as Executive Chairperson of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA).
❖ Around 1,300 tabla players performed at the 99th International Tansen Samaroh
in Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
o It has entered the Guinness World Records for achieving the “largest tabla
ensemble”.
❖ Sports entrepreneur Vita Dani has become the first Indian to be inducted as a
governing board member of the International Table Tennis Federation's (ITTF)
Foundation.
❖ P Indira Devi, ICAR Emeritus professor at Kerala agricultural university (KAU)
was conferred with the title of the Indian society of agricultural economics (ISAE)
fellow 2023.
❖ Mr. L.P. Hemanth K. Srinivasulu, the newly appointed Director of the Latin
America and Caribbean Trade Council, was honored with the prestigious "Man of
the Year-2023."
❖ The Ayodhya railway junction was given a new name as Ayodhya Dham.
❖ Jacques Delors, a former head of the EU Commission and key figure in the
creation of the euro currency, has passed away recently.
❖ India has made its first-ever payment in rupees for crude oil obtained from the
UAE.
o It is marking a significant move in the country’s initiative to promote the
global use of its local currency.

NATIONAL
PM-KISAN Scheme beneficiaries
❖ The number of PM-Kisan beneficiaries are dropped by over 20 per cent to 8.12
crore now from a peak of 10.47 crore in April-July 2022.
❖ The government has added back 34 lakh farmers under the “saturation drive”.
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❖ Of the 34 lakh, Uttar Pradesh accounts for the most — 8.50 lakh.
❖ It is followed by Rajasthan 2.39 lakh, Manipur 2.27 lakh, Jharkhand 2.2 lakh,
and Maharashtra 1.89 lakh.

Women in Ayushman Bharat Yojana

❖ Women account for approximately 49% of the total Ayushman cards created and
approximately 48% of total authorised hospital admissions.
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❖ Ayushman cards are made under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri — Jan
Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY).
❖ Currently as per the government figures 55 crore individuals corresponding to 12
crore families are covered under the scheme.
❖ Approximately 28.45 Crore Ayushman Cards have been created since the
inception of the scheme.
❖ Of that, approximately 9.38 crore Ayushman Cards have been created during the
year 2023.

INTERNATIONAL
Colombo Security Conclave
❖ India’s National Security Adviser (NSA), Ajit Doval, took part in the sixth NSA
meeting of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC).
❖ The meeting also included member-states, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, and
observer-states, Bangladesh and Seychelles.
❖ The organisation came into its own in 2011, with Sri Lanka joining India and the
Maldives for a trilateral maritime security grouping.
❖ In 2020, India expressed interest in expanding the CSC to Mauritius, the
Seychelles, and Bangladesh.

Venezuela and Guyana Land Dispute

❖ Venezuela and Guyana have agreed not to use force or threaten one another in
their long-standing dispute over a border region.
❖ Both countries planned to meet again in Brazil within the next three months to
resolve any outstanding issues.
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❖ Venezuela insists Essequibo should be under its control because it was within
its borders during the Spanish colonial period.
❖ But Guyana says a border drawn by international arbitrators in 1899 means it
is part of Guyana.
❖ Guyana argues the controversy should be resolved by the International Court of
Justice in the Netherlands.
❖ While Venezuela says the court does not have jurisdiction.

ECONOMY
Iron Ore Exports to China
❖ China has emerged the highest buyer of iron ore from India with nearly 24.75
million tonnes (mt) being exported for April-November period (eight months).
❖ This is the highest export to China in absolute terms in over the last three years,
and second highest since FY20.
❖ So far, this fiscal, nearly 95 per cent of India’s iron ore shipments have gone to
China.
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❖ From 18.15 mt for 8 months of FY20 or 76 per cent of total shipments, it shot up
to 92 per cent of at 35.19 mt in FY21 - the highest in absolute numbers.

Trend and Progress of Banking in India

❖ Indian banks’ gross non-performing assets (GNPA) ratio fell to 3.2 per cent at the
end of September.
❖ The GNPA ratio for Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) dropped to 3.9% at the
end of March 2023.
❖ The report also highlighted that commercial banks' consolidated balance sheet
grew by 12.2% in 2022-23, the highest in nine years.
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❖ At the end of September 2023, the capital to risk weighted assets ratio (CRAR) of
SCBs stood at 16.8 percent.

Card-on-file tokenisation

❖ The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now enabled card-on-file tokenisation (CoFT)
through card issuing banks and institutions.
❖ It aims to enhance convenience for cardholders to get tokens created and linked
to their existing accounts with various e-commerce applications.
❖ The card details when stored with a merchant is known as card-on-file (CoF).
❖ This free availability of information was used to compromise the safety of financial
data of users.
❖ RBI introduced the rule of tokenisation in Sep 2021 where instead of card details,
a specially created token is saved with the merchant.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SLIM Mission - Japan
❖ Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft entered into orbit
around the moon recently.
❖ If the landing attempt succeeds, Japan will become only the fifth country to soft-
land a robotic craft on the natural satellite.
❖ By sacrificing some time, SLIM could be more fuel-efficient.
❖ SLIM is the second Japanese attempt this year to soft-land on the moon.
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❖ The HAKUTO-R M1 lander, built by Japanese company ispace, crashed in late

April.

Bright sub-second X-ray bursts

❖ AstroSat, has detected bright sub-second X-ray bursts from a new and unique
neutron star with an ultrahigh magnetic field (magnetar).
❖ This is expected to help understand the intriguing extreme astrophysical
conditions of magnetars.
❖ One of the key findings was the detection of 67 short sub-second X-ray bursts,
with an average duration of 33 milliseconds.
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❖ Of these bursts, the brightest one lasted for about 90 milliseconds.

❖ AstroSat is the India’s first multi-wavelength space-based observatory.
❖ Magnetars are neutron stars having an ultrahigh magnetic field that are much
stronger than the terrestrial magnetic field.

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