1) Colour Revolutions: At the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, China appealed to the SCO members to cooperate with each other to prevent foreign powers from destabilising their countries by inciting “colour revolutions”.
- It refer to a series of uprisings that first began in former communist nations in Eastern Europe since around 2004. But they are also used in reference to popular movements in the Middle East and Asia.
- Most have involved large-scale mobilisation on the streets, with demands for free elections or regime change, and calls for removal of authoritarian leaders.
- Some of the better known “colour revolutions” are: Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution, and Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution.
2) PM PRANAM (Promotion of Alternate Nutrients for Agriculture Management Yojana):
- Objectives: To encourage the balanced use of fertilisers in conjunction with biofertilisers and organic fertilisers. To bring down the subsidy burden on chemical fertilisers.
- The scheme will have no separate budget and will be financed through the “savings of existing fertiliser subsidy” under schemes run by the Department of Fertilizers.
- 50% of subsidy savings will be passed on as a grant to the state that saves the money.
- 70% of the grant provided under the scheme can be used for asset creation and The remaining 30% grant money can be used for rewarding and encouraging farmers, panchayats, farmer producer organisations and self-help groups that are involved in the reduction of fertiliser use and awareness generation.
3) KRITAGYA 3.0: Indian Council of Agricultural Research with its National Agricultural Higher Education Project and Crop Science Division is organizing Hackathon 3.0 ‘’KRITAGYA” on promoting ‘speed breeding for crop improvement’.
- The definition of KRITAGYA is KRI for Krishi meaning Agriculture, TA for Taknik meaning Technology and GYA for Gyan meaning Knowledge.
- In this competition, students, faculty and innovators/entrepreneurs from any university/technical institutions across the country can apply and participate in the program as a group.
4) Seed Treaty: Seed treaty or also known as the International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) is a major legally binding international agreement to conserve, use and manage plant genetic resources.
- It was adopted by FAO in 2001 and came into force in 2004. India is a party to it.
- The Treaty aims at: Recognizes the contribution of farmers to the diversity of crops. Provides access to plant genetic materials; Ensures sharing of the benefits.
- The treaty enables sharing of 64 of our most important crops through an easily accessible global pool of genetic resources.
5) SOVA virus attack: A new banking malware is targeting bank customers using SOVA android Trojan with the ability to harvest usernames and passwords. The malware hides itself within fake android applications displaying logos of legitimate applications like Chrome, Amazon, and NFT (non-fungible token) platforms and deceives users into installing them.
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