News in Short

• New Delhi and Colombo are discussing a proposal for the supply of two Dornier aircraft for the Sri Lankan military.
• The Dornier is a twin-engine multi-purpose aircraft, used by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard for maritime surveillance. It is also used by the Indian Air Force.
• It is manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd under licence from Swiss company RUAG, and is a showpiece of the government’s “Make In India” programme.

• Airtel broadband users across the country faced a momentary disruption in data connectivity. Network issues were reported from various corners of the country
• Airtel connections ranging from fiber internet, broadband, to even mobile network is down in regions like Delhi, Mumbai, Noida and many other locations.
• Earlier this month, a similar outage was reported by Jio users. The network outage was reported by users from the Mumbai circle.

• The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has voted unanimously to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 4%.
• The MPC decided by a majority of 5 to 1 to continue with the accommodative stance as long as necessary to revive and sustain growth on a durable basis.
• The marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate remain unchanged at 4.25% and the reverse repo rate also remains unchanged at 3.35%.

• Astronomers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics have devised a new approach for identifying potentially habitable planets with a high probability.
• The astronomers used an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based algorithm for this where around 60 potentially habitable planets have been found from 5,000 total planets known.
• It is a tedious job to scan thousands of planets manually and to identify planets potentially similar to Earth. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be utilized effectively to find habitable planets.

• Bombay High Court judge Justice PushpaGanediwala, who faced flak for the interpretation of what constitutes as ‘sexual assault’ under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, has resigned.
• Justice Ganediwala, who presently presides at the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, tendered her resignation a day before her tenure as additional judge was to end.
• After her problematic judgments, the apex court collegium had withdrawn its recommendation to appoint Justice Ganediwala as a permanent judge.