News in Short

• After a long wait, Indian Premier League (IPL) is all set to begin in United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 19th September.
• The tournament is held behind closed doors due to the current Covid pandemic. There will also be no presence of cheerleaders.
• Chennai Super Kings take on Mumbai Indians in the delayed tournament opener. The matches will be played across three UAE venues of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah.

• The tallest grass on earth at its smallest could be among the cheapest immunity boosters for increasing the human body’s resistance to viral attacks, according to experts.
• The term ‘nutraceutical’ is used to describe medicinally or nutritionally functional foods while bamboo shoots are the edible sprouts of the perennial grass.
• The bamboo, considered the grass of life in the northeast, takes care of almost every requirement from birth to death.
• Bamboo shoots are emerging as high-value and safe edibles and growing in utility globally along with all other value-added bamboo products.
• The protein content in fresh bamboo shoots, considered as nutraceutical, can range between 1.49-4.04%. They also contain 17 amino acids, eight of which are essential for the human body.

• A study commissioned by the Observer Research Foundation, has found that the retreat of glaciers in the Himalayan Hindu Kush region is now affecting the surface water and groundwater availability in the region, and has adversely affected springs.
• Studies by ISRO show that approximately 75 percent of the Himalayan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate.
• The Himalayan Hindu Kush region has the biggest reserves of water in the form of ice and snow outside the polar regions.
• These retreats will increase the variability of water flows to downstream areas and endanger the sustainability of water use in the earth’s most crowded basins.
• The decline in groundwater due to anticipated decline of glacial meltwater is likely to affect the Ganges basin the most.

• US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an iconic champion of women's rights, has died of cancer at the age of 87.A prominent feminist, she became a figurehead for liberals in the US.
• Ginsburg was the oldest justice and the second ever woman to sit on the Supreme Court, where she served for 27 years.
• US Supreme Court justices serve for life or until they choose to retire, and supporters had expressed concern that a more conservative justice could succeed Ginsburg.

• Writer Winston Groom, whose novel Forrest Gump was made into the hugely successful Oscar-winning 1994 film, has died aged 77.
• While he will be remembered for creating Forrest Gump, Winston Groom was a talented journalist and noted author of American history.
• The film, seen through the eyes of Forrest Gump, has the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson as a backdrop, along with the Vietnam War and Watergate.
• Groom went on to write a follow-up in 1995 called Gump and Co and also wrote non-fiction including a book on the American Civil War.