1) International Organization for Migration (IOM): IOM has reported that around 6.9 million people are internally displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Genesis: Established in 1951 as the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME). It was renamed as IOM in 1989.
- About: It is the leading intergovernmental organization in the field of migration. IOM is part of United Nations system, as a related organization.
- Functions: The IOM works on areas of migration management: migration and development, facilitating migration, regulating migration, and addressing forced migration.
- Members: It consists of 175 Member states (Including India) and 8 observer states
2) Pralay missile: India successfully test-fire Pralay missile.
- Developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation for deployment along Line of Actual Control and Line of Control.
- Range: 350-500 km Short-Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM).
- Type: Surface-to-surface missile.
- Payload capacity: 500-1,000 kg.
- It is a solid-fuel, battlefield missile based on Prithvi Defence Vehicle.
- It has ability to change its path after covering a certain range mid-air.
- It is as powerful as Russian “Iskander” and China’s “Dong Feng 12”.
- India’s other SRBMs: Prithvi I, Prithvi II etc.
3) Solar flares: Aditya L1’s payload named High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) has captured first glimpse of solar flares.
- Solar flare is an intense burst of radiation coming from release of magnetic energy from Sun.
- These are solar system’s largest explosive events.
- They tend to originate from regions of solar surface that contain sunspots — darker, cooler portions of solar surface where magnetic fields are particularly strong.
- They can disturb the Earth’s ionosphere, which in turn disturbs radio communications.
- They produce enhanced emission in wavelengths across electromagnetic spectrum – radio, optical, UV, soft X-rays, hard X-rays and gamma-rays.
4) Euclid Mission: Euclid mission shares its 1st full-color images of the universe.
- Euclid mission is built and operated by European Space Agency and was launched in 2023.
- It is a cosmology survey mission, optimised to determine the properties of dark energy and dark matter on universal scales.
- It’ll make a 3D-map of Universe by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of sky.
- It will orbit Lagrange point 2 (L2).
- Mission Lifetime: 6 year.
- It’ll take images in optical and near-infrared light.
