News in Short

• China is preparing to send three astronauts to live on its space station for six months – a new milestone for a program that has advanced rapidly in recent years.
• It will be China’s longest-ever crewed space mission and set a record for the most time spent in space by Chinese astronauts.
• The Shenzhou-13 spaceship is expected to be launched into space on a Long March-2F rocket early from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China.

• China objected to the recent visit of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu to Arunachal Pradesh, saying that it is firmly opposed to the Indian leader’s visit to the state.
• Naidu visited Arunachal Pradesh on October 9 and addressed a special session of the state assembly. China routinely objects to Indian leaders’ visits to Arunachal Pradesh to buttress its stand.
• India says Arunachal Pradesh is its integral and inalienable part and Indian leaders visit the state from time to time, as they visit other parts of the country.

• The Global Hunger Index ranked India at 101 position out of a total 116 countries. India is also among the 31 countries where hunger has been identified as serious.
• Only 15 countries fare worse than India. India was also behind most of the neighbouring countries. Pakistan was placed at 92 rank, Nepal at 76 and Bangladesh also at 76.
• Current projections based on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) show that the world as a whole will fail to achieve even low hunger by 2030.
• Based on the values of the four indicators – undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting and child mortality- the GHI determines hunger on a 100-point scale, where 0 is the best possible score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst.

• Former film journalist and producer Mahesh Koneru passed away in Vizag following a cardiac arrest.
• Koneru worked as a reporter and reviewer for the website 123Telugu.com before he handled the publicity of high-profile films such as S SRajamouli’sBaahubali.
• He then turned to film production and produced films such as 118 starring Kalyan Ram, Miss India starring Keerthy Suresh and the Satya Dev starrer Thimmarusu under East Coast Productions.
• He also distributed the Telugu dubbed versions of actor Vijay’s Tamil films Bigil and Master in the Telugu states.

• Australia has announced a rover to be sent on the Moon with the Artemis mission that will collect lunar regolith, which contains oxygen.
• The rover would collect soil that contains oxides and Nasa would use separate equipment to extract oxygen from that soil.
• Oxygen extracted from the lunar surface would ultimately be used to sustain a human presence on the moon and support future missions to Mars.
• The Australian rover provides a complementary capability. The small-scale technology demonstration will aid in the design of larger, more capable units in the future.