1) Iran successfully carried out test of medium range Ghadr-110 ballistic missile.
- Iran has successfully carried out test of medium range Ghadr-110 ballistic missile near the Chabahar, a port city in southeast of country along the Gulf of Oman.
- The test was held in November 2015, but was disclosed by the western intelligence agencies in December 2015. With this Iran so far has breached of two United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions which compels it to refrain from any work on ballistic missiles for 8 years.
Key facts:
- Ghadr-110 ballistic missile is an improved and advance version of Shahab 3 missile which is similar to the precision guided missile that was tested by Iran in October 2015.
- It has a range of 1,800 – 2000 km and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as well as conventional warheads.
- Missile test ban
- Currently under the 2010 UNSC resolution all ballistic missile tests have been banned in Iran until a nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1 nations is implemented.
- Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) reached on July 2015 between Iran and P5+1 nations most sanctions on Iran were lifted in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
- But the deal had refrained Iran from working on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years.
- P5+1 nations: It is group of six world powers which had joined together in 2006 to reach diplomatic efforts with Iran with regard to its nuclear program. The term P5+1 refers to the UNSC five permanent members China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States plus Germany.
2) IISc bagged a United States military contract for research and development (R&D) on solar powered micro-grid.
- The prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Banglore bagged a US military contract for research and development on solar powered micro-grid.
- It is one of the rare instances that an Indian scientific institute has been awarded a federal contract by the US military.
Highlights of the contract:
- The federal contract worth 52900 US dollars was awarded by the US Pacific Air Forces, Yokota Air Base in Japan.
- The contract is awarded to develop solar powered micro-grid with battery and supercapacitor energy storage system.
About Indian Institute of Science (IISc):
- IISc is a public university for scientific research and higher education located in Bangalore, India.
- It was established in 1909 with active support from industrialist and philanthropist Jamsetji Tata.
- IISc is widely regarded as India’s finest institution in its field. It is the first Indian institute to feature on Times Higher Education World University Rankings for engineering and technology at 99th position in the year 2015-16.
3) The Mexican authorities approved the use of the first-ever vaccine against dengue fever.
- The Mexican authorities approved the use of the first-ever vaccine against dengue fever, which will be publicly available for the first time.
- French manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur declared that the Mexican authorities have granted marketing authorization to Dengvaxia, the vaccine against dengue fever.
Key facts:
- Dengvaxia has been manufactured by French pharmaceutical manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur.
- It has been designed to protect people in the 9-45 age groups from all four subtypes of the virus.
- The vaccine was produced as the result of an extensive clinical development programme of the French company than ran for almost two decades.
- Sanofi Pasteur has requested authorization to roll out the vaccine in 20 countries.
About Dengue:
- Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus.
- Overall, the disease is a potential threat to almost half of the world’s population.
- Of the estimated 100 million people infected annually, 500000, mostly children, develop dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), a severe form of the disease.
About Sanofi:
- Sanofi is a French multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris, France.
- It was founded in 1973 as subsidiary of Elf Aquitaine.
4) Pakistan has successfully test-fired nuclear-capable Shaheen-III ballistic missile.
- Pakistan has successfully test-fired nuclear-capable Shaheen-III ballistic missile. The missile was test fired in the Arabian Sea and validated all the desired parameters including various design and technical parameters of the weapon system.
About Shaheen-III ballistic missile:
- The Shaheen-III (in English means White Falcon-III) is a land-based surface-to-surface medium range ballistic missile.
- It is capable of carrying nuclear as well as conventional warheads up to 2,750 kilometres. It has been designed in response to India’s Agni-III missile.
- It is multi-stage solid-propellant missile that can hit targets anywhere in India including Northeast India and Tri-service command of India located in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
5) Power Minister Piyush Goyal will launch a mobile App.
- Power Minister Piyush Goyal will launch a mobile app, on the occasion of the National Energy Conservation Day, to help consumers compare and choose energy efficient appliances available in the market.
- The mobile application will allow consumers to instantly compare personalised energy savings across all products of a specific class and thus enable them to choose more efficient products available in the market.
- To mark the National Energy Conservation Day at Vigyan Bhawan, the Ministry of Power and Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) will felicitate companies who have been the best energy performer in various sectors.
- The participating units of 2015 Awards programme have collectively invested Rs. 2,384 crore in energy conservation measures and achieved an annual monetary savings of Rs. 2,928 crore.
6) Typhoon Melor struck the Philippines.
- Typhoon Melor struck the Philippines. The typhoon was ranked as a Category 3 storm by the US military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center which is located at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.
- The storm is expected to trigger flooding, landslides and 4 meter storm surges in the coastal region.
- As a precaution, authorities evacuated about 750000 people in three provinces of the Central Philippines to protect people from torrential rain and high winds.
- As per an estimate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison the wind speeds have reached 220 km/h speed when it hit the coast.
- The typhoon is known locally as Typhoon Nona. The Philippines experiences approximately 20 typhoons annually.
7) Coloured images of Pluto released by NASA.
- NASA has released an enhanced colour mosaic that combines some of the sharpest views of Pluto which the U.S. space agency’s New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its historic flyby of the icy-dwarf planet.
- The images form a strip 80 kilometers wide, trending from the edge of `badlands` northwest of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, onto the shoreline of Pluto’s ‘heart’ feature, and just into its icy plains.
- They combined pictures from the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) taken approximately 15 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto (from a range of only 17,000 kilometers) with colour data gathered by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) 25 minutes before the LORRI pictures.