News in Short

• Canada’s government will allow the province of British Columbia to try a three-year experiment in decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs, hoping it will help stem a record number of overdose deaths by easing a fear of arrest by those who need help.
• The policy approved by federal officials doesn’t legalize the substances, but Canadians in the Pacific coast province who possess up to 2.5 grams of illicit drugs for personal use will not be arrested or charged.
• The three-year exemption effective Jan. 31 will apply to drug users 18 and over and include opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

• Frontier, a supercomputer built using Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) architecture and equipped with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors, outperformed Fugaku to become the world’s fastest supercomputer.
• The supercomputer, built for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has reached Linmark benchmark score of 1.1 exaflops, making it the world’s first supercomputer to break the exascale speed barrier.
• Fugaku, installed at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, has a Linmark benchmark score of 442 petaflops.

• The Biden administration will send Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems, which Ukrainian leaders have been begging for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region.
• The rocket systems are part of a new $700m tranche of security assistance for Ukraine from the United States that will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems.
• The Ukrainians have assured US officials that they will not fire rockets into Russian territory. The advanced rocket systems will give Ukrainian forces greater precision in targeting Russian assets inside Ukraine.

• MominulHaque has stepped down as Bangladesh test captain in the wake of their home series loss against Sri Lanka.
• Mominul has led the side since October 2019, has looked under pressure and managed only 162 runs from six matches this year, with just one half-century.
• The BCB is yet to name a replacement, but reports suggest that all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan could return to lead the side.

• Star Bollywood singer KrishnakumarKunnath, popularly known as KK, has died of a suspected heart attack at age 53.
• The versatile singer has recorded songs in several languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali, among other.
• He has sung songs such as DilIbaadat from Tum Mile, Tu Jo Mile From Salman Khan’s BajrangiBhaijaan, AbhiAbhi from Jism 2, Tu Hi Meri Shab Hai from Gangster, Ankhon Mein Teri from Om Shanti Om and many more.