DAILY GK : 22,23 MAY

 DAILY GK : 22,23 MAY 

1.      GREENKO IS TO SET UP WORLD’S LARGEST IRESP IN KURNOOL, ANDHRA PRADESH

·         The Greenko Group and the Government of Andhra Pradesh is setting up the World’s largest Integrated Renewable Energy Storage Project (IRESP) with a capacity to store 5,230 Mega Watt (MW), in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh.

·         It will be the first-of-its-kind Single location energy storage project with wind and solar capacities.

·         The project is scheduled to be commissioned by the last quarter of 2023.

·         It is being implemented with an investment of over USD 3 billion comprising pumped storage (10,800 megawatt hour of daily storage), solar (3,000 MW) and wind (550 MW).

 

2.      UNICEF RELEASES CHILD ALERT MAY 2022

·         The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has released its UNICEF Child Alert – May 2022 edition, titled “Severe Wasting: An Overlooked Child Survival Emergency.”

·         According to UNICEF, India has the world’s most severely wasted children under the age of five, with 5,772,472 affected children.

·         What Is Severe Wasting: Wasting is the most visible and fatal form of malnutrition, described as a low weight-for-height ratio. The most dangerous form is severe wasting, often known as severe acute malnutrition.

·         It is caused by a lack of nutritional diet and frequent occurrences of infections such as diarrhoea, measles, and malaria that deplete a child’s immunity

·         In terms of countries with the highest number of children under the age of five affected by severe wasting, Indonesia ranks second with 812,564 severely wasted children. Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh ranked third, fourth, and fifth, respectively.

·         Preventable & Curable Measures for Severe Wasting 

(I) Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF): It is the gold standard for effectively treating severely wasted children in complex emergency situations. RUTF is a paste made from peanuts, sugar, oil, and milk powder. It is manufactured in Kenya, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nigeria, India and Pakistan, and distributed primarily through UNICEF.

(II) The Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) tape: It is a colour-coded measuring band used to diagnose malnutrition in children by measuring their mid-upper arm. It is a life-saving do-it-yourself early detection tool.

 

3.      7TH ANNUAL MEETING OF BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF NDB

·         Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Corporate Affairs and also an India’s Governor for the New Development Bank (NDB) chaired the 7th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of NDB through a video conference in New Delhi, Delhi.

·         The meeting was attended by Governors or Alternate Governors of Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa and the newly joined members of Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

·         The theme of 7th Annual Meeting for the year 2022 was “NDB: Optimising Development Impact”.

·         The NDB is a multilateral development bank, set up by the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in 2014.

·         However, it was operationalised in 2015 with its headquarters in Shanghai, China

·         In 2021, the NDB has expanded its membership to include four more countries namely, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Uruguay.

 

4.      NASA & BOEING LAUNCHED STARLINER SPACECRAFT TO CARRY ASTRONAUTS TO ISS 

·         The Boeing Company and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the Starliner Space Capsule- OFT 2 (Orbital Flight Test-2) from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, United States of America (USA) to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). 

·         The launch was carried out using the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.

·         The Launch is the second uncrewed flight test of Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner spacecraft for the Commercial Crew Program.

·         NASA has partnered with Boeing Company and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to build and operate vehicles to fly astronauts to and from the space station.

 

5.      WEBB – WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL TELESCOPE COMPLETES

·         James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space-based observatory, recently completed the first test to track a moving object, which verified that the telescope could conduct moving target science.

·         The Webb team has already used an asteroid within our solar system to run engineering tests of the ‘moving target’ (MT) capability.

·         The engineering team tested this capability on a small asteroid in the Main Belt: 6481 Tenzing, named after Tenzing Norgay, the famous Tibetan mountain guide who was one of the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest..

·         The Webb mission was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana on December 25, 2021.The space-based observatory will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in the universe.