News in Short

• A new Valentine's Day work by UK street artist Banksy, showing a young girl firing a slingshot of flowers, has been defaced after appearing on a building in western England.
• The photograph circulating on social media showed abusive graffiti likely directed at local authorities in the city of Britol scrawled across the artwork.
• Banksy had confirmed that it was his artwork by posting the picture on his social media account.

• Sonam Sherpa who is the founder of the well-acclaimed band Parikrama died in Kurseong due to cardiac arrest. He was 48.
• Sherpa was known to be playing guitars since he was nine years old, and went on to form the band Parikrama in 1991 in Delhi along with Subir Malik who plays organ in the band.
• Some of his popular works include But It Rained, Tears of the Wizard and Am I Dreaming.

• The first underwater metro project in the country and the second metro project in Kolkata has begun services from February 13.
• Services along the much-awaited mega infrastructure project called East West Metro will start along the 5-km route from Salt Lake Sector V to the Salt Lake Stadium.
• The 16.6-km East West Metro Project will connect the Howrah Maidan on the other side of river Hooghly with Rajarahat Newtown on the northeastern fringes of the city.

• ISRO will send up an unusually large number of 10 earth observation (EO) satellites during 2020-21.
• The upcoming EO satellites include radar imaging satellites RISAT-2BR2, RISAT- 1A and 2A; Oceansat-3 and Resourcesat-3/3S.
• The RISAT-2BR2 will form a triad fleet with its predecessors RISAT-2B and RISAT-2B1, all going around 120 degrees apart.
• They will increase the frequency of observation in the areas of interest to provide all-weather, day/night imaging services from space.

• A new cockroach species has been discovered by scientists of the Southern Regional Centre, Zoological Survey of India, at the Western Ghats.
• Since it was discovered during a field survey in Kalakkad-Mudanthurai, it has been named as Allacta Kalakkadensis.
• Although the species is believed to be endemic to Western Ghats and is nocturnal, subsequently they were found in the Eastern Ghats.