CURRENT AFFAIRS

In 2022, Indian start-ups including Byju’s, Ola, Unacademy, Vedantu, Chargebee, WhiteHat Jr, Udaan and CityMall and at the global level, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and Apple, among others, announced lay-offs.

CAR T-cell therapy for treatment of any cancer currently holds the attention of many researchers worldwide.

Over the last decades, Nordic countries have been at the forefront of developing new green technologies and solutions such as hydrogen, offshore wind, batteries and carbon capture and storage.

The stagnant allocations in the Budget for health, education and nutrition reflects the failure of our political leadership, since Independence, in understanding the centrality of universal education and health to growth.

The rise in terror-related strikes in the relatively peaceful Jammu division, especially in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, become a cause of concern.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently forecast that global trade would slow down from 5.4% in 2022 to 2.4% in 2023.

In the Union Budget for 2023-24, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chose the path of relative fiscal prudence and projected a decline in fiscal deficit to 5.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in FY24, compared with 6.4% in FY23.

Just Energy Transition Partnership (JET-P) is emerging as the key mechanism for multilateral financing by developed countries to support an energy transition in developing countries.

The Union Budget for 2023-24 announced an initiative for mangrove plantation along the coastline and on salt pan lands, under MISHTI (Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes).

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and other health crises, the focus on public health in foreign policy around the world appears to have shifted from ‘low politics’ (humanitarian endeavour) to ‘high politics’ (national and international security concerns).