- Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: It is a rare genetic disorder that results from an X-chromosome mutation. It was first described by the French neurologist Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne in 1860.It is characterised by progressive muscle degeneration and weakness due to alterations of a protein called dystrophin that helps keep muscle cells intact. It is a multi-systemic condition affecting many parts of the body, that results in the deterioration of the skeletal, heart, and lung muscles. It primarily affects males, while females are typically carriers. It can begin as early as age 2 or 3, first affecting the proximal muscles(those close to the core of the body) and later affecting the distal limb muscles (those close to the extremities).Usually, the lower external muscles are affected before the upper external muscles.
The affected child might have difficulty jumping, running, and walking. Other symptoms include enlargement of the calves, a waddling gait, and lumbar lordosis (an inward curve of the spine).Later on, the heart and respiratory muscles are affected as well. Presently available treatments are gene therapy, exon skipping, stop codon read-through and gene repair.
- Overnight Index Swap: Recently, Indian overnight index swap (OIS) rates rose to their highest levels in 10 months due to offshore payments and triggering of stop losses. It is a derivative instrument where returns under a fixed-rate asset are swapped against a predetermined published index of a daily overnight reference rate for an agreed period of time.The primary purpose of an OIS is to manage interest rate risk, particularly the risk associated with fluctuations in the overnight lending rate.An overnight index swap rate is calculated each day.This rate is based on the average interest rate institutions with loans based on the overnight rate have paid for that day.
- Eastern Maritime Corridor (EMC): The EMC is a proposed sea route between the Indian port of Chennai and the Russian port of Vladivostok. The corridor is estimated to bring down transportation time between Indian and Russian ports in the Far East Region by up to 40 percent (24 days from the current 40 days).
The present trade route between Mumbai, India, and St. Petersburg, Russia, covers a distance of 8,675 nautical miles.The EMC will cover a distance of about 5,600 nautical miles, which is significantly shorter than the current route via the Suez Canal. Once complete, EMC will take 24 days, down from presently over 40 days, to transport goods from India to Far East Russia. For India, it will provide a shorter and more efficient route to access the markets of the Far East, such as China and Japan.
- Recent NSO Data: According to the latest National Statistical Office (NSO) data, India’s retail inflation rate eased to 6.83% in August from a 15-month high of 7.44% in July 2023, mainly due to a slide in prices of food items, especially vegetables. However, it continued to remain above the upper limit of the 4+/-2% band of Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) medium-term inflation target. The retail inflation of 6.83% in August 2023 makes it the 4th instance of headline inflation staying higher than the upper limit of the target during this calendar year and the seventh such instance since August 2022.In the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), manufacturing in absolute terms improved to 141.2 in July from 135 a year ago and 141.1 in the previous month. The worrisome area is the contraction of 2.7% yoy in consumer durables in July 2023 and reflective of the weakness and skewness in consumption demand..
