The Indian Air Force (IAF) is set to test-fire ASRAAM from the Russian Su-30 MKI and the Anglo-French Jaguar aircraft by the end of this year (2019).

• ASRAAM is the British Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile (ASRAAM).
• It is a Within-Visual-Range (WVR) dominance weapon with a range of over 25 km.
• It accepts target information via aircraft sensors, such as radar or helmet-mounted sight, but can also act as an autonomous infrared search and track system.

• Locusts are a certain species of short-horned grasshoppers.
• Locusts are related to grasshoppers, and the two insects look similar but behave differently. While lifestyle being much like grasshoppers, locusts have another behavioral phase called the gregarious phase. When environmental conditions produce many green plants and promote breeding, locusts can congregate into thick, mobile, ravenous swarms (dense groups).
• There has been an incursion of desert locusts in Rajasthan and Gujarat from areas bordering Pakistan, recently. They emerged from Sudan and Eritrea on Africa's Red Sea Coast and travelled through Saudi Arabia and Iran to enter Pakistan.
• Locust swarms devastate crops and cause major agricultural damage and associated human misery such as famine and starvation.

The 36th Central Apprenticeship Council meet was held recently.

• The Central Apprenticeship Council (CAC) is an apex statutory body under the Apprentices Act, 1961.
• The Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) organizes the meetings of the Central Apprenticeship Council (CAC).
• The council aims to meet the aspirations of the Indian youth who strive to gain on-the-job training and secure better opportunities for employment.
• Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is the Vice Chairman of the council.
• Other members of the council include -
  1. representatives of the Establishment in the PSUs, Private Sector
  2. representatives from Central Ministries and State /UT Governments
  3. persons having special knowledge and experience on the matters relating to industries, labour
  4. representatives of the All India Council of Technical Education and UGC

Kharchi Puja, a centuries-old Puja, was recently inaugurated in Tripura’s erstwhile capital Puran Habeli.

• The seven-day Kharchi Puja is an annual festival meant to cleanse the sins of mortal souls.
• Originally a Hindu tribals' festivity, it is now observed by all communities and religions.
• The worship starts with the dipping of 14 deities in the Howrah river, followed by the sacrifice of 108 animals in the presence of hundreds of thousands of devotees, all at government expense.

The WHO has recently declared the elimination of measles from Sri Lanka.

• Sri Lanka is the fifth country in WHO’s Southeast Asia region to eliminate measles. The other four countries are Bhutan, Maldives, DPR Korea and Timor-Leste.
• India has still a long way to go in eradicating measles. The concerns with and mistrust in vaccines is a huge challenge in this process. The Delhi High Court, in 2018, had put on hold a vaccination campaign, citing lack of parental consent.
• Measles is a deadly childhood infection (sometimes in adults) and a serious and highly contagious disease. It can cause debilitating or fatal complications, including encephalitis, severe diarrhoea and dehydration, pneumonia, ear infections and permanent vision loss.

• Hayabusa2 spacecraft was launched by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.
• JAXA recently confirmed that Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully landed on a distant asteroid and collected underground samples (soil sample).
• Hayabusa2 is the first to successfully collect underground soil samples from an asteroid.
• The asteroid is named Ryugu, after an undersea dragon palace in a Japanese folktale. It is about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth.
• The achievement comes ahead of a similar mission planned by the US's NASA team at another asteroid.

In Budget 2019, the Finance Minister has announced fresh measures to boost the development of India’s corporate bond market.

• Corporate bonds are debt securities issued by private and public corporations to raise money for a variety of purposes.
• A buyer buys a corporate bond, and lends money to the "issuer" i.e. the company that issued the bond, and gets periodical returns as interest until the principal amount is paid at a specified maturity date.
• Notably, a corporate bond does not involve an ownership interest in the company. This is unlike the case when one purchases the company's equity stock, which involves ownership terms.

• Article 35A allows the Jammu and Kashmir legislature to define the list of ‘permanent residents’ of the state. It was added to the constitution through the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954, a presidential order.
• Art 370 provides temporary, transitional and special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

Recently, the government has informed the Parliament that no foreign government or organisation had any locus standi in repealing Article 370. The reply came in response to a question on whether repeal of these articles in any way violate UN regulations or any international obligation of the country.

• The Diamond Harbour in West Bengal is located at the mouth of river Hooghly.
• It was recently in news as it recorded the maximum sea level increase, among the major ports in India. Diamond Harbour is followed by Kandla port in Gujarat, Haldia in West Bengal, and Port Blair on South Andaman Island.
• Chennai and Mumbai recorded a sea level rise far below the global and the national averages.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently expressed concern over risks of monsoon floods threatening the lives of Rohingya refugees in camps in Bangladesh.

• Rohingya are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, largely comprising Muslims, who predominantly live in the Western Myanmar province of Rakhine.
• They speak a dialect of Bengali, as opposed to the commonly spoken Burmese language.
• Though they have been living in the South East Asian country for generations, Myanmar considers them as persons who migrated to their land during the Colonial rule. So, it has not granted Rohingyas full citizenship. Sectarian violence between Rohingyas and Rakhine’s Buddhist natives began flaring up in 2012.
• Thousands of Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar, many of whom are moving to Bangladesh and India, which is leading to a refugee crisis.