Rapid Fire Current Affairs | 11 Feb 2023

First Sundarban Bird Festival

Recently, 145 different bird species were sighted during the first Sundarban Bird Festival. The first-ever festival was organised by the Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR) division of the West Bengal Forest Department, where several teams visited different areas inside the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve. The Bird Festival provides baseline data on Sundarbans' bird species diversity.

The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) in 2021, had recorded 428 bird species in the Sundarbans which is one-third of all the avian species (derived from birds) found in the country.

Mysterious Ring on a Dwarf Planet

In a new study, astronomers have found a ring around a dwarf planet, located in the Kuiper Belt at the solar system’s edge, called Quaoar. Astronomers believe the new study points to the possibility of discovering more rings around smaller planets like Quaoar in the outer solar system, which might expand our understanding of planetary ring systems.

Quaoar (named after a god of creation in Native American mythology) is roughly half the size of Pluto and orbits beyond Neptune. It also has a moon of its own, which is known as Weywot. The rings of the planet are positioned at a distance of over seven planetary radii (distance between a planet’s centre and its surface) which is much further away from other planets that possess rings.

According to the study, the ring lies far away from the Roche limit — a mathematically determined distance beyond which rings aren’t supposed to exist.

Planetary rings possess small chunks of ice and other materials that orbit a larger object. Only Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, including two other minor planets, Chariklo and Haumea, are known to possess rings.

Read More: Pluto

The Paalam Project

The Paalam Project or the City Livelihood Centre in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district is successfully placing educated unemployed youth in good jobs. And unlike most government employment exchanges, this one focuses mostly on private jobs.

Karur, located near the textile hub of Tirupur in western Tamil Nadu, is known for its industries, but it is more popular for its domestic textile products. The project began in 2022.

The aim of the Paalam Project was to act as a bridge between job seekers and employers.

Essentially, the Paalam Project was not to come up with an innovative idea but to utilize the many known and unknown government schemes and opportunities available.

Read More: India’s Unique Job Crisis

Exercise TARKASH

The exercise named TARKASH by the National Security Guard (NSG) and US Special Operations Forces (SOF) is currently underway in Chennai.

With chemical and biological warfare being recognised as a coming threat to the world, an ongoing Indo-US joint exercise has for the first time included a Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) terror response in its drill.

The objective of the joint exercise was to rapidly neutralise the terrorists, rescue the hostages safely and deactivate the chemical weapons being carried by the terrorists

CBRN weapons, which are also classified as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), have been used by States and terror elements in the past. The most recent use of CBRN in the form of a sarin gas attack was witnessed in Syria in 2017.

According to the UN, the prospect of non-state actors, including terrorists and their supporters, gaining access to and using WMDs or CBRNs is a serious threat to international peace and security.