News in Short

1. Meteorite samples from an ancient impact site situated in Germany, hint towards the possibility that oceans and life existed on Mars.
2. According to a recent study done on the meteorite samples of the RiesCrater, formed roughly 15 million years ago, Mars may have been warm enough to surface oceans and life.
3. Though it is unlikely that Mars would have had enough oxygen to support complex life structures like humans and animals, simpler microorganisms could have possibly sustained themselves if Mars had water with a neutral pH level and was highly alkaline.

• Senior IPS officer S N Shrivastava will be the next Delhi police commissioner. Incumbent Amulya Patnaik demits office on Saturday.
• SN Shrivastava was appointed as Special CP of the Delhi Police on Tuesday. Shrivastava was serving as the DG (Training) in Central Reserve Police Force.

• The West Bengal government is planning to opt out of the Centre's 'One Nation, One Ration Card' scheme due to differences of opinionwith the central government.
• Under the scheme, beneficiaries can buy subsidised foodgrains from ration shops in any part of the country.
• The system ensures that no poor is deprived of PDS entitlement even if that person shifts from one place to another.

• Two swimmers from the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) swam across the Palk Strait between Thalaimannar in Sri Lanka and Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu.
• The two swimmers, Adam A. G. Moss (UK) and Eddie Al-Ming Hu, began their expedition at 5 a.m. from Sri Lanka and crossed the Indian Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) at 12.05 p.m.
• Since the swimmers did not have permission to cross over the mainland in Dhanushkodi, they stopped one nautical mile from the shore and returned on their boats back to Sri Lanka.

• Historian S. Shettar, 85, breathed his last early on February 28 in Bengaluru.
• Shettar was known for his multi-disciplinary work, encompassing linguistics, epigraphy, anthropology, the study of religions and art history.
• He had extensively worked on the Jain practice of ritual death in Karnataka and Asoka edicts. He had studied and compiled early edicts in Kannada and worked extensively on the growth of Kannada language down the ages.
• His 2007 book “ShangamTamilagam” is considered a seminal work in the study of the early period of Dravidian languages. It won him Bhasha Samman from Central Sahitya Akademi.