DAILY PRELIMS BOOSTER 13th MAY 2022

Sagittarius ‘A’ star: it refers to the believed location of the supermassive black hole in the centre of our galaxy.

Event Horizon:

Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, making viewing them extremely challenging.

• A black hole’s event horizon is the point of no return beyond which anything—stars, planets, gas, dust and all forms of electromagnetic radiation—gets dragged into oblivion.
• The closer someone came to a black hole, the greater the speed they would need to escape that massive gravity.
• The event horizon is the threshold around the black hole where the escape velocity surpasses the speed of light.

ASEAN: US President Joe Biden will host leaders and top officials of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Washington DC.

• ASEAN is a political and economic union of 10 member states in Southeast Asia.
• It brings together ten Southeast Asian states – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – into one organisation.
• It was established on 8th August 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration

India Hypertension Control Initiative (IHCI): Recognizing that hypertension is a serious, and growing, health issue in India, the Health Ministry, the ICMR, State Governments, and WHO-India began a five-year initiative to monitor and treat hypertension.

• The programme was launched in November 2017.
• India has committed to a “25 by 25” goal, which aims to reduce premature mortality due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by 25% by 2025.
• To achieve India’s target of a 25%, approximately 4.5 crore additional people with hypertension need to get their BP under control by 2025.

Hypertension: Hypertension is defined as having systolic blood pressure level greater than or equal to 140 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure level greater than or equal to 90 mmHg.

• The definition also assumes taking anti-hypertensive medication to lower his/her blood pressure.

There were an estimated 20 crore adults with hypertension in the country.