Rapid Fire Current Affairs | 31 Aug 2023

Recently, the United States and the Republic of Palau, a country in the western Pacific Ocean, signed an expanded bilateral law enforcement agreement to enhance maritime governance.
The agreement enables the U.S. Coast Guard to enforce regulations at sea in Palau's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) on behalf of Palau even without the presence of a Palauan officer.
The agreement will help increase maritime domain awareness and prevent Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing within Palau's EEZ.

Mahendragiri, the last Project 17A Frigate, will be launched on 1st September 2023.
The ship is named after a mountain peak in Eastern Ghats located in the state of Orissa.
- Project 17A Frigates are follow-ons of the Project 17 Class Frigates (Shivalik Class), with improved stealth features, advanced weapons and sensors, and platform management systems.
Mahendragiri is a technologically advanced warship and stands as a symbol of India's determination to embrace its rich naval heritage.
Project 17A ships have been designed in-house by the Indian Navy’s Warship Design Bureau.

Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. He hypothesised that helium gas could be formed from radioactive substances.

He discovered that there are at least two types of radiation, alpha (α) and beta (β) particles, coming from uranium.
His most famous experiment is the gold foil experiment:
- A beam of alpha particles was aimed at a piece of gold foil. Most alpha particles passed through the foil, but a few were scattered backward.
- This showed that most of the atom is empty space surrounding a tiny nucleus (positively charged and surrounded at a great distance by the negatively charged electrons).