Top 5 Current Affairs: 22 June 2018

Prime Minister lays foundation stone of paperless Vanijya Bhawan

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of Vanijya Bhawan, a new office complex for the Union Department of Commerce. It will be a completely paperless office with state-of-the-art-facilities such as smart access control, central air-conditioning, video conferencing and completely networked systems.

The Vanijya Bhawan will be a green building with all the required certifications. The layout of the building has been planned so as to minimise the number of trees that would have to be cut.

Indian scientists discover sub-Saturn like planet around a sun-like star

An Indian team of scientists led by Professor Abhijit Chakraborty of Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, have discovered a sub-Saturn or super-Neptune size planet around a Sun-like star.

The planet has a mass of about 27 Earth Mass and size of 6 Earth Radii. It goes around the host star in about 19.5 days.

The discovery was made by measuring the mass of the planet using the indigenously designed ‘PRL Advance Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search’ (PARAS) spectrograph integrated with 1.2m Telescope at PRL’s Gurushikhar Observatory in Mount Abu, India.

India retaliates to US tariffs, hikes import duty on 29 US products

In a retaliatory move to the heavy tariffs imposed by the United States on imported steel and aluminium items, India has decided to raise customs duty on 29 US products including almond, walnut and pulses. The duty hike by India would have equivalent tariff implications for the US.

The duty hike decision by India is similar to that of the European Union and China which decided to levy higher import duties on a variety of US products in retaliation to its protectionist policies.

Re-development of 7 colonies in Delhi to increase green coverage by 3 folds

The redevelopment of the seven government colonies in Delhi will lead to an increase the green area coverage by about 3 times from the existing green space area, as per Union Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs.

The government colonies include Nauroji Nagar, Netaji Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Mohammadpur, Sriniwaspuri, Kasturba Nagar and Thyagaraj Nagar.

The redevelopment of the seven colonies is being done with complete adherence to environmental sustainability and green building concepts and special care and attention is being given towards retaining maximum number of existing trees and incorporating them in a large cluster, as an integral part of landscaping design scheme.

ISRO clears GSAT-11 for launch

The 5,700-kg GSAT-11 satellite was slated for launch on May 26 from Kourou, a site in South America which India uses to launch its heavy-weight satellite.

In a setback to the ISRO, the space agency lost contact with GSAT-6A after it was launched in March this year. Although the ISRO has been trying to establish with GSAT-6A, a satellite meant for military communication, it has found little success.

This also led to the ISRO recalling GSAT-11 for conducting thorough checks.