• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that an ancient idol of the goddess Annapurna, stolen from India about a century ago, is being brought back from Canada.
• Annapurna is the goddess of food.
• The 18th-century idol, carved in the Benares style was smuggled out of the country around 100 years ago somewhere around 1913.
• Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is the official custodian of all such repatriated artefacts.

• Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has launched India’s first 100 Octane petrol.
• It helps India to join a select league of nations globally that have such superior quality fuel.

XP100

• Branded as XP100, the premium grade petrol was launched across ten cities in India.
• Previously, the nation leapfrogged from BS-IV (Euro-IV) emission compliant fuel to BS-VI from April 1, 2020.

Octane Ratings

• They are measures of fuel stability.
• It is a measure of a fuel's ability to avoid knock.
• Knock occurs when fuel is prematurely ignited in the engine's cylinder, which degrades efficiency and can be damaging to the engine.
• The higher the octane number, the more resistant the petrol mixture is to knock.
• Worldwide, 100 Octane petrol has a niche market for luxury vehicles that demand high performance and is available only in six countries of USA, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia and Israel.
• Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) had recently launched Octane 99 and now IOC has come to the market with XP100.

• A research study published in Scientific Reports suggests that around four billion years ago floods of unimaginable magnitude washed through Gale Crater on Mars' equator.
• The research findings were ascertained from the data collected by NASA's Curiosity rover.
• This research puts a stamp on the possibility of supporting microbial life on the fourth planet of our solar system.

Gale Crater

• Gale Crater formed when a meteor hit Mars in its early history, about 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago.
• The meteor impact punched a hole in the terrain.
• The explosion ejected rocks and soil that landed around the crater.
• Gale crater has always fascinated the scientists as the Curiosity rover science team has already confirmed that it was once home to persistent lakes and streams.
• Scientists chose Gale Crater as the landing site for Curiosity because it has many signs that water was present over its history.

Tree Rings

• The tree rings grow wider in years when soil moisture is high.
• Indirectly, wider rings reflect more rainfall and higher river runoff.
• A new study analyzed that the existing projections of the Brahmaputra flooding are based on observations of rainfall patterns.
• The study looked at rings of ancient trees sampled at 28 sites in Tibet, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, at sites close enough to be affected by the same weather systems as the Brahmaputra watershed.
• The study is based on examinations of tree rings, which showed rainfall patterns going back seven centuries i.e. long before discharge records were compiled.
• The rings showed that the post-1950s period was actually one of the driest since the 1300s.

• Bangladesh government started the process of relocating Rohingyas from Cox’s Bazar refugee camp to the newly developed facility at the Bhashan Char Island.
• International Human Rights groups are opposing the relocation of Rohingyas to the Bhashan Char.
• They demand independent assessment of the liveability on the Bhashan char by the UN and humanitarian agencies before the process is started.

Bhashan char

• It is an uninhabited island where the government of Bangladesh has made shelter houses for one lakh Rohingya refugees at an estimated cost of Tk. 2,300 crore.
• The environmentalists say that the Bhashan char falls in an ecologically fragile area prone to floods, erosion and cyclones.
• Currently more than a million Rohingya are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh after fleeing the military crackdown in the Rakhine province of Myanmar in August 2017.

• After Sikkim, Lakshadweep is the first Union Territory to become 100% organic as all farming is carried out without the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, providing access to safer food choices and making agriculture a more environment-friendly activity.

Lakshadweep

• India’s smallest Union Territory Lakshadweep is an archipelago consisting of 36 islands with an area of 32 sq km.
• It is a uni-district Union Territory and comprises 12 atolls, three reefs, five submerged banks and ten inhabited islands.

Microclimatic Zones Shifting

• Microclimatic zones, or areas where the weather is different from surrounding areas, they are shifting across various districts of India.
• A shift in microclimate zones may lead to severe disruptions across sectors – every 2 degrees C rise in annual mean temperature will reduce agricultural productivity by 15-20%.
• Some reasons identified behind this shift in microclimatic zones are:

1. change in land-use patterns
2. disappearing wetlands and natural ecosystems by encroachment
3. Urban heat islands that traps heat locally.

• The Central Government has approved the expansion of interest subvention scheme to raise ethanol manufacturing capacity to 1,000 crore litres by including grain-based distilleries in addition to just molasses-based units.
• The decision will facilitate capacity addition and greater ethanol blending will immensely help in import substitution, savings of foreign exchange and environment sustainability.

Ethanol Blending in India

• Ethanol blending is the practice of blending petrol with ethanol.
• In India, ethanol is mainly derived by sugarcane molasses, which is a by-product in the conversion of sugar cane juice to sugar.
• The practice of blending ethanol started in India in 2001 and ethanol blending first found mention in the Auto fuel policy of 2003.
• The Ethanol Blending Program (EBP) was started in 2003.
• The blending percentage of ethanol in petrol has gone up from 1.53% in 2013-14 to 5% in 2019-20 and estimated to be 8.5% in 2020-21.
• The Government has setup an ambitious target of 10% ethanol blending by 2022 and 20% ethanol blending by 2025.

Disturbed Areas under AFSPA

• A disturbed area is the one which is declared by notification under Section 3 of the AFSPA.
• It can be invoked in places where the use of armed forces in aid of civil power is necessary.
• An area can be considered to be disturbed due to differences or disputes between members of different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities.
• Once declared disturbed, the region is maintained as disturbed for a period of three months straight, according to The Disturbed Areas (Special Courts) Act, 1976.
• The government of the state can suggest whether the Act is required in the state or not.
• Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh is the four states in North Eastern India which are declared as disturbed areas under AFSPA.

• India in September 2020, has joined the Djibouti Code of Conduct as an observer which is expected to provide it a strategic heft in the Indian Ocean region.

The Djibouti Code of Conduct/Jeddah Amendment (DCOC/JA)

• It is a regional maritime security cooperation agreement established by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2008.
• It was initially focused on piracy and armed robbery against ships in the Western Indian Ocean Region, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
• It was later extended to cover environmental issues as well in 2017.
• It comprises 19 member states adjoining the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the East coast of Africa.
• India has joined Japan, Norway, the UK and the US as observers of the grouping.
• India's joining of the grouping comes at a time China has been making concerted efforts to expand its military influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
• Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) Dispute is the  conflict between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia dates back to May 2011 when Ethiopia started building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD); Egypt voiced concern over its water share.
• In 2015, the three countries signed the Declaration of Principles, per which the downstream countries should not be negatively affected by the construction of the dam.