UNESCO World Heritage List

Three Hoysala temples of Karnataka and Santiniketan were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

• Santiniketan – Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan, the university town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, has been inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
• Santiniketan becomes the 41st UNESCO World Heritage Site in India and the third in West Bengal, after the Sundarbans National Park and the Darjeeling Mountain Railways.
• The state’s Durga Puja got space in Intangible Cultural Heritage of humanity under UNESCO.
• It was established in 1901 by the Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.
• Santiniketan was a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions and a vision of the unity of humanity transcending religious and cultural boundaries.
• A world university, Visva Bharati, was established at Santiniketan in 1921.
• Three Hoysala Temples – The Hoysala temples at Belur, Halebidu and Somanathapur in Karnataka were declared as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
• The Chennakeshava temple at Belur and Hoysaleshwara temple at Halebidu, both in Hassan district have been on the UNESCO’s tentative list since 2014.
• The Keshava temple at Somanathapur in Mysuru district was appended to the other two monuments.
• All three temples are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the nominations were entered as The Sacred Ensembles of Hoysalas.
• The Hoysala temples are known for evolving a distinct style that is ornate with temple architecture following a stellate plan built on a raised platform.
• The material used in temple construction is choloritic schist which is also known as soapstone that are soft and amiable to carving.

Taiwan Strait

No ‘median line’ in Taiwan Strait: China asserts after sending 103 warplanes around Taiwan.

• Taiwan Strait or Formosa Strait separates the island of Taiwan (Formosa) and continental Asia (coast of China’s Fukien province).
• It is an arm of the Pacific Ocean found in the South China Sea.
• It is 160 km wide at its narrowest point. It reaches a depth of about 70 m.
• It contains the Pescadores Islands (controlled by the government of Taiwan). The area lies in a typhoon zone.
• It is the primary shipping route between China and Japan, and Europe.
• The strait is currently part of the South China Sea and connects to the East China Sea to the north.

Montreal Protocol

Ozone Day 2023 celebrates the success of the Montreal Protocol, which has helped put the ozone layer on track to being intact again.

• It is a global agreement to protect the Earth's ozone layer by phasing out the ozone-depleting chemicals.
• It includes both production and consumption of ozone-depleting chemicals.
• It was signed in 1987 and enacted in 1989.
• The parties to the protocol meet annually to make a decision and review the execution of its operations to date.
• Kigali agreement is the recent amendment to the material protocol which envisages the phase-down of HFCs in 2016.
• India – India became a signatory to the Montreal Protocol in 1992.
• India is an Article 5 country and is entitled to assistance from the Multilateral Fund in its efforts to phase out ODSs and switch over to non-ODS technologies.

Chausath Yogini Temple

Curtains for old Parliament building.

• It is located in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
• The temple was built by the Kachchhapaghata king Devapala.
• The king belonged to the Pala dynasty.
• The Mitaoli temple has 64 chambers dedicated to the 64 yoginis.
• The Madhya Pradesh temple believed to have inspired the old Parliament building.

Psyche Mission

In a first-ever visit to a metal rich asteroid of the same name, NASA's Psyche spacecraft could reveal secrets of Earth’s own core.

• The Psyche mission is a journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
• The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped ring of icy objects around the Sun, extending just beyond the orbit of Neptune.
• What makes the asteroid Psyche unique is that it appears to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of the building blocks of our solar system.
• As per the Outer Space Treaty, a state or other legal entity cannot own a planet or space object (such as an asteroid), but such entities can extract and sell resources derived from these objects for private profit.