1) Doctrine of res judicata: evolved from the English Law System, it literally means ‘the thing has been judged”. It is a judicial concept which means that the issue before the court has already been decided by another court, between the same parties, and the courts do not allow a petition to be filed in the same or to the other Court. Thus, courts dismiss the case before it as being useless.
- Res Judicata is applicable both in the case of the Civil as well as Criminal legal system.
2) Strike-slip faults: the recent Earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey was at a depth of 18km on East Anatolian fault, which was a strike slip fault.
- Strike-slip faults indicate rocks are sliding past each other horizontally, with little to no vertical movement. Both the San Andreas and Anatolian Faults are strike-slip.
- Other faults: Normal faults create space. Two blocks of crust pull apart, stretching the crust into a valley. The Basin and Range Province in North America and the East African Rift Zone are two well-known regions where normal faults are spreading apart Earth’s crust.
- Reverse faults, also called thrust faults, slide one block of crust on top of another. These faults are commonly found in collisions zones, where tectonic plates push up mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and the Rocky Mountains.
3) Types of bonds: Sebi has strengthened the framework for green bonds (green debt securities) by introducing the concept of ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’ bonds as new modes of sustainable finance.
- Blue bonds: It is a debt instrument issued by governments, development banks or others to raise capital to finance marine and ocean-based projects that have positive environmental, economic and climate benefits
- Yellow bonds pertain to solar energy
- Transition bonds: To fund a firm’s transition or to reduce their carbon emissions
4) NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR): It is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) observatory jointly developed by NASA and ISRO consisting of both L-band and S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments, which makes it a dual-frequency imaging radar satellite.
- NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet’s surface. SAR is capable of penetrating clouds and can collect data day and night regardless of the weather conditions.
- NASA has provided the L-band radar, GPS, a high-capacity solid-state recorder to store data, and a payload data subsystem. ISRO has provided the S-band radar, the GSLV launch system, and spacecraft.
- It will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses, providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater globally with 12-day regularity on ascending and descending passes.
5) White Label ATM: set up, owned and operated by non-banks, the operators are authorised under the Payment & Settlement Systems Act, 2007 by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
- Such non-bank entities should have a minimum net worth of Rs 100 crore as per the latest financial year’s audited balance sheet, which is to be maintained at all times.
- Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), up to 100 per cent, is allowed under the automatic route in the activity of White Label ATM (WLA) Operations.
