News in Short

• China’s Communist Party has appointed a new party chief for its Xinjiang region, replacing Chen Quanguo, an official who spearheaded a crackdown of Uighurs.
• The Central Committee has decided to appoint Ma Xingrui, the governor of southern Guangdong province as the new party secretary of Xinjiang.
• The controversial Politburo member was the highest ranked Chinese official sanctioned last year by the U.S. government for his role in the crackdown on Xinjiang’s Uighurs.

• NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary instrument built to peer the farthest yet into the cosmos, was launched by rocket from French Guiana.
• The telescope is dubbed as the successor to Hubble telescope and was launched on board Ariane 5 rocket of European Space Agency.
• Webb mainly will view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

• Shubham Arora’s unbeaten ton eclipsed Dinesh Karthik’s as Himachal Pradesh clinched the title against Tamil Nadu in the Vijay Hazare Trophy domestic One-Day championship in Jaipur.
• The play was stopped after 47.3 overs in the second innings due to bad light, and Himachal were awarded the win by 11 runs as the match was decided by the VJD method.
• While Tamil Nadu had won the trophy five times in the past, Himachal were playing in their first final and became the latest team to clinch the trophy named after the Indian legend.

• The Chinese government denounced a U.S. law that restricts imports from Xinjiang as a violation of international law and dismissed complaints of abuses against Muslim minorities.
• President Joe Biden had signed the measure. It prohibits U.S. businesses from importing goods from Xinjiang unless they can be proven not to have been made by forced labour.
• Foreign governments and researchers say more than 1 million Uyghurs and other minorities have been confined in camps in Xinjiang in China’s northwest. Chinese officials are accused of using forced abortions, forced labour and mass indoctrination.

• A new rose variety has been named after the eminent agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan.
• M.S. Viraraghavan has bred a new rose variety and named it “The M S Swaminanthan Rose”.This rose wearing a magenta purple is highly disease resistant.
• This variety of rose plant, which results from a series of crosses between “news” variety of rose and other purple roses, grows up to a height of 4 to 5 feet with a dark green granular surface, large leaves with regular thorns.