1) Bullion: Bullion refers to physical gold and silver of high purity that is often kept in the form of bars, ingots, or coins.
- It can sometimes be considered legal tender and is often held as reserves by central banks or held by institutional investors.
2) India International Bullion Exchange (IIBX): Prime Minister has launched India’s first International Bullion Exchange (IIBX) at the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) near Gandhinagar.
- India for the first time had liberalised gold imports through nominated banks and agencies in the 1990s.
- Now, the eligible qualified jewellers in India have been allowed to directly import gold through IIBX.
- For this, jewellers will have to become a trading partner or a client of an existing trading member.
- In addition, the exchange has set up necessary infrastructure to store physical gold and silver.
- The exchange will sell physical gold and silver and aims to be set up on the lines of the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Borsa Istanbul in order to make India a key regional hub for bullion flows.
3) Hybrid electric vehicle (HEV): it uses an ICE (a petrol/diesel engine) and one or more electric motors to run. It is powered by the electric motor alone, which uses energy stored in batteries, by the ICE, or both.
- The powertrain of the HEV is more complex than a regular ICE-powered car as it has EV components and a conventional ICE.
- HEV powertrains are designed to power cars in a series, parallel or series-parallel (power split) methods.
4) Gluttonous Cosmic ‘Black Widow’: Astronomers have observed a most massive neutron star, classified as a “black widow”.
- It got particularly hefty by gobbling up most of the mass of a stellar companion trapped in an unhappy cosmic marriage.
- It means its gravitational pull has poached material from its companion star enabling it to grow to a mass at the uppermost limit before it would collapse into a black hole.
- It is highly magnetized type of neutron star called a pulsar.
- It unleashes beams of electromagnetic radiation from its poles. As it spins, these beams appear akin to a lighthouse’s rotating light.
5) Section 295A: defines and prescribes a punishment for deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.
- India does not have a formal legal framework for dealing with hate speech. However, a cluster of provisions, loosely termed hate speech laws, are invoked. These are primarily laws to deal with offences against religions.
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