News in Short

• For the first time in UN’s 75 years history that the high- level session of 193 member states organization will be held in a virtual mode as heads of the governments and the states will not be physically attending the annual gathering due to COVID-19 pandemic.
• The landmark 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly will begin on September 15. The General Debate is held at the beginning of each session of the General Assembly.
• The General Assembly meeting to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations will take place on September 21 and the Declaration will be formally adopted at the meeting.

• The India League, a U.K.-based diaspora group which dates back to 1916, will launch the first-ever British-Indian Census to collate data of around 1.5 million Indian-origin citizens.
• The census will be conducted online in collaboration with the University of Oxford and will culminate in a British Indian Report later this year, reflective of the true make-up of Britain's Indian diaspora and their concerns in 2020.
• The survey intends to explore the diversity of heritage, identity, beliefs and behaviour of the Indian community-based in the U.K., whilst identifying key issues of concern to British Indians.

• The Flipkart Group will acquire the loss-making wholesale cash-and-carry business of its parent US retail behemoth Walmart in India and launch Flipkart Wholesale.
• It will be a business-to-business (B2B) platform that will cater to independent retailers and small and medium businesses, including Kirana stores.
• Walmart India, which currently operates 28 Best Price stores across India, will see its employees transition to the Flipkart Group. The acquisition will create an asset-light model that will enable Flipkart to bank on Walmart’s muscle to service independent retailers and kiranas.

• China successfully launched its first Mars probe, aiming to complete orbiting, landing and roving in a single mission, taking an ambitious step towards the planetary exploration of the solar system.
• A Long March-5 rocket, China’s largest and most powerful launch vehicle, was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of southern China’s island province of Hainan.
• The Chinese Mars probe named Tianwen 1 or Quest for Heavenly Truth 1, will fulfill three scientific objectives: orbiting the red planet for comprehensive observation, landing on Martian soil, and sending a rover to roam the landing site.

• The defence ministry has finally issued the formal order to grant permanent commission (PC) to women officers in eight more branches of the Army, in accordance with the Supreme Court directive in February.
• women short-service commission (SSC) officers will be granted PC - if found eligible by a selection board - in Army Air Defence (AAD), Signals, Engineers, Army Aviation, Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME), Army Service Corps (ASC), Army Ordnance Corps (AOC), and Intelligence Corps.
• Women officers, unlike their male counterparts, were not mandated to undergo the "junior command course" and other "adjunct courses" as young captains or majors to be eligible for "command appointments" till now.