1) World Population Prospects (WPP): The Population Division of the UN has been publishing the WPP in a biennial cycle since 1951.
- Each revision of the WPP provides a historical time series of population indicators starting in 1950.
- According to the 2022, India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023. It also projected the world’s population to reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022.
2) Dark Matter: it is an unknown matter which is not visible.
- The reason behind its invisibility is, it does not absorb, reflect or emit light. This makes it extremely hard to spot.
- Dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force thereby making it hard to spot.
- The gravity of the dark matter is an important prerequisite for permitting the universe to hold on to the important elements that gave rise to life and habitable planets like earth
- Dark Matter is particles that cannot be seen through a telescope, but they can be located because of its gravitational effect on its surroundings and the X-ray it emits.
3) LUX-Zeplin: a next generation dark matter experiment located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, US.
- The Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX) aimed to directly detect weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter interactions with ordinary matter on Earth.
- As of today this is the most sensitive dark matter detector in the world. To give an idea of the degree of difficulty in measuring evidence of a dark particle, it is said that the chamber of this LZ detector, can contain only one gram of dust if it is to detect a dark matter particle. This is the extent to which researchers have to go to rule out unwanted signals coming from other entities.
4) New QUAD in west Asia: The first summit this week of the forum I2U2 – which brings together India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States marks the west Asian QUAD coming together.
- The virtual summit between the leaders of the four countries is expected to take place on Thursday during Joe Biden’s visit to Israel.
5) Influencer Tax: The Influencer Tax is a new tax on social media influencers.
- Introduced by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), this tax took effect from July 1, 2022.
- Under the new rule, social media influencers will have to pay 10% tax deducted at source (TDS) on freebies or any other form of payment made in kind, if the value of the product is above ₹20,000.
- However, they will be exempted from the tax if they return the product to the respective brands.
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