UPSC Current Affairs 07 July 2026

• Developed By: Built and digitally maintained by the Digital India Corporation under MeitY.
• Governing Body: Managed directly under the Ministry of Textiles, Government of India.
• Primary Objective: To achieve full disintermediation by connecting weavers and artisans directly with buyers, removing trader-middleman chains.

• Zero Commission: The platform charges absolutely no listing fees or transaction commissions from artisans.
• 100% Margin Retention: The full sale price flows directly to the craftsman's bank account.
• GST Inclusivity: Micro-artisans without GST registration can easily register using a basic Enrolment ID.
• Interstate Restrictions: Non-GST enrolled sellers are legally restricted to trading only within their own state borders.

• Zero Shipping Fees: Buyers enjoy completely free nationwide delivery.
• Purchase Protection: Features safe, secure payment gateways and transparent buyer refund support systems.
• Diverse Catalogue: Spans apparel, home decor, furniture, traditional paintings, jewellery, and musical instruments.

• Target Audience: Built to cater to India's vast network of 64.66 lakh handloom and handicraft artisans.
• Women Empowerment: As of recent data, women heavily dominate this workforce, accounting for 71% of handloom weavers and 64% of overall artisans.
• Future Target: The government aims to ultimately onboard over 60 lakh artisans, aligning directly with the Atmanirbhar Bharat vision.

• GI Tag Visibility: Provides explicit digital shelf space to Geographical Indication (GI)-tagged crafts like Pashmina shawls, Aipan art, and Dokra metal decor.
• ODOP Integration: Features regional masterpieces under the One District One Product initiative, including Banarasi silk, Chanderi, and Tangail sarees.
• ONDC Integration: Includes a soft-launch partnership with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to widely broadcast artisan listings across other shopping applications.

• Hybrid Nature: Kinnow is a high-yield hybrid citrus cultivar.
• Parent Lineage: Created by cross-breeding the 'King' mandarin (Citrus nobilis) and the 'Willow Leaf' mandarin (Citrus deliciosa).
• Historical Origin: Developed in 1915 by horticulturist Howard B. Frost at the University of California Citrus Experiment Station before its introduction to Northwest India.

• Physical Profile: Features a characteristically thin, glossy, deep golden-orange skin and a larger size than varieties grown elsewhere.
• Flavor Profile: Known for a uniquely balanced, rich sweet-and-sour taste.
• Juice Content: Contains a substantially high volume of juice, making it excellent for raw consumption and pulp extraction.
• Nutritional Density: A potent source of Vitamin C, potassium, and calcium, alongside 0.2% to 0.3% cancer-fighting pectin.

• Horticulture Share: The Sirsa citrus belt accounts for over 50% of Haryana’s total kinnow production.
• Total Output: Cultivated across roughly 13,106 hectares with an annual yield touching 1.82 lakh metric tonnes.
• Climatic Tolerance: Thrives under Sirsa's local semi-arid climate and sandy loam soil, withstanding extreme seasonal shifts from 0°C to 40°C.

• Indo-Israel Partnership: The massive improvement in Sirsa's crop quality is credited to the Indo-Israel Centre of Excellence for Fruits at Mangiana.
• Precision Farming: The center trains local farmers in modern horticulture practices like drip irrigation, fertigation, high-density orchard design, and advanced nutrient management.
• Official Branding: Alongside the GI status, the fruit has received an exclusive official logo featuring a circular "Sirsa Kinnow" emblem enclosing an orange fruit with a green leaf.

• Parabolic Trajectory: A sub-orbital vehicle reaches outer space or high altitudes but does not achieve the orbital velocity needed to become an artificial satellite.
• No Full Orbit: The vehicle follows a flight path resembling a ball thrown in the air, falling back to Earth after reaching its peak altitude.
• Cost-Efficient Testbed: It allows space agencies to simulate extreme high-velocity atmospheric return forces without deploying massive, expensive multi-stage orbital rockets.

• PSLV Integration: The solid stage of SOLVE is derived from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) Strap-on Motor.
• Slow-Burn Propellant: It features a custom, modified chemical propellant designed to burn slowly. This ensures a steady, controlled climb rather than an explosive hyper-acceleration.
• Advanced Flight Controls: It utilizes a straight nozzle integrated with Secondary Injection Thrust Vector Control (SITVC) for high-precision steering.
• Target Altitude: The vehicle is engineered to transport payloads to an altitude of 10 to 17 kilometers before separation.

• Payload Separation: At its designated flight peak, the vehicle detaches the experimental Gaganyaan crew module prototype.
• High-Velocity Slipstream: Once separated, the module is exposed to actual atmospheric pressure and resistance.
• Parachute Cascade: The system automates the deployment of a series of 10 distinct parachutes.
• Safe Sea Splashdown: The parachute sequence rapidly reduces the module's velocity, validating a safe landing mechanism into the ocean.
• Broader Research: Beyond Gaganyaan, SOLVE will serve as an indigenous platform for hypersonic technology tests and microgravity experiments.

• Joint Venture: Arrow-3 is an advanced anti-ballistic missile system co-developed by Israel (Israel Aerospace Industries) and the United States (Boeing).
• Exo-Atmospheric Shield: It is engineered as a space-flight interceptor, meaning it neutralizes long-range ballistic missiles deep in space, completely outside the Earth's atmosphere.
• Highest Defensive Tier: Within Israel’s multi-layered defence architecture, it occupies the uppermost tier—positioned far above the Iron Dome (short-range) and David's Sling (medium-range).

• Hypersonic Speed: The interceptor travels at hypersonic velocities, exceeding five times the speed of sound (Mach 5+).
• Extended Range: It boasts a highly lethal flyout range of up to 2,400 kilometres.
• Interception Altitude: Destroys approaching targets at an altitude of up to 100 kilometres above the ground.
• Two-Stage Rocket: It uses two-stage solid-propellant boosters (a booster and a sustainer) to achieve rapid acceleration.
• Anti-Satellite Potential: Due to its immense speed and outer-space trajectory, experts note the system can double as an anti-satellite weapon.

• Hit-to-Kill Technology: The system does not use explosive warheads. It relies strictly on kinetic energy, destroying the enemy missile through a high-speed, direct physical collision.
• Debris Reduction: Intercepting toxic, chemical, or conventional payloads in space prevents hazardous materials or submunitions from raining down on populated ground zones.
• Advanced Tracking: The missile features a pivoting seeker head with state-of-the-art electro-optical sensors to map targets mid-flight.
• Thrust Vector Control: The system uses a single pivoting rear thruster to change direction sharply in space, correcting for radar inaccuracies to track maneuvering targets flawlessly.
• System Elements: Each operational system operates via a Citron Tree Battle Management Centre, Super Green Pine fire control radar, and a Hazelnut Tree Launch Control Centre.

• The Core Objective: Launched in 2014, the AEP is a strategic, diplomatic blueprint aimed at promoting extensive economic, cultural, and security relations with Southeast and East Asia.
• The Upgrade: It serves as the modern, more aggressive, and execution-oriented successor to the 1992 Look East Policy.
• The "4 C’s" Pillar: The entire policy framework relies on four foundational pillars: Culture, Commerce, Connectivity, and Capacity Building.
• Geographical Expansion: While the original policy targeted ASEAN nations, the "Act East" mandate extends strategically to include Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations.

• ASEAN Centrality: India treats the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as the central institutional core of its broader Indo-Pacific architecture.
• Strategic Shift: Unlike the older economic focus, the AEP heavily integrates defence cooperation, joint military drills, and maritime domain awareness.
• Gateway Role of North-East India: AEP designates Northeast India as the physical and economic gateway to Southeast Asia, prioritising regional infrastructure development.
• Extended Reach (FIPIC): The horizon extends past the Malacca Strait into the Pacific Ocean via the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC).
• Blue Economy Promotion: Focuses on sustainable ocean governance, deep-sea exploration, hydrographic services, and guarding Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs).

• Trilateral Highway Project: A massive under-construction transport corridor intended to physically link India (Moreh in Manipur) with Myanmar and Thailand.
• Kaladan Multi-Modal Project: Connects India’s eastern ports to Myanmar's Sittwe Port, creating an alternate sea-river-land transit route that completely bypasses the congested Siliguri Corridor.
• Fintech Diplomacy: Standardising India's UPI digital payment network across ASEAN partners like Singapore and Malaysia to allow low-cost, real-time cross-border payments.
• BIMSTEC Integration: Utilizing the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) as an inner economic loop to secure legal and coastal shipping pacts.
• Quick Impact Projects (QIPs): Deploying rapid, high-visibility development assistance grants tailored for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam (CLMV countries).

• Luminous Galatic Cores: Quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources) are the intensely bright centers of distant galaxies.
• Black Hole Engines: They are powered by supermassive black holes fiercely devouring enormous amounts of surrounding gas and dust.
• Extreme Energy: As matter spirals into the black hole, friction and gravity heat it to millions of degrees, releasing energy that can outshine its entire host galaxy by 100 to 1,000 times.

• Designations: The two record-breakers are designated as EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3.
• Redshift Values: They possess extreme cosmic redshifts of 7.77 and 7.69, respectively (higher redshift means older and more distant).
• Extreme Luminosity: Both bodies shine with the collective power of one trillion suns.
• Distance: Their primordial light travelled across the expanding cosmos for more than 13 billion light-years to reach Earth.

• Impossible Speed: These ancient black holes weigh hundreds of millions to billions of times the mass of our sun.
• Growth Anomaly: Scientists do not currently understand how such "monsters" grew so massive, so fast, right at the dawn of the universe.
• Epoch of Reionisation: They existed during the crucial cosmic phase when the first stars and galaxies lit up, burning through the dark, neutral hydrogen fog filling the early universe.

• Overcoming Dust Haze: Looking from ground telescopes is difficult because the universe's expansion stretches quasar light from UV into near-infrared wavelengths, which normally get drowned out by Earth's atmosphere.
• Space-Based Efficiency: The space telescope Euclid, operating 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, bypassed this infrared haze to scan large fields of space cleanly.
• Advanced Code: Astronomers used smart machine-learning algorithms to filter out tens of millions of closer stellar "imposters" to accurately locate the real quasars.

• Not Electronics: Despite its name, it is a transparent, thumb-sized plastic device containing living human cells—not a computer chip.
• Two-Chamber Design: It consists of human placental cells and blood vessel cells grown on opposite sides of a microscopic, porous membrane to simulate the maternal-fetal interface.

• Hormone Secretion: The chip successfully synthesizes and produces vital pregnancy hormones.
• Nutrient & Waste Exchange: It effectively models how essential glucose transfers to the fetal side and how metabolic waste (like urea) is filtered out.
• Selective Barrier Activity: It acts as a gatekeeper, demonstrating how the placenta blocks or permits the passage of specific external molecules.

• Pregnancy Safe Drugs: Pharmaceutical companies can use it to confidently evaluate whether drugs, pollutants, or microbes can breach the placenta to reach an unborn baby.
• Decoding Complications: It allows direct research into dangerous conditions like preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure), gestational diabetes, and fetal growth restriction.
• Disease Modelling: The chip already altered its transport mechanics when exposed to high-sugar environments, perfectly mimicking real-world gestational diabetes.

• Simplified Engineering: While global organ-on-chip variations require expensive, specialized microfluidic equipment, the Mumbai team built a static model compatible with standard workflows.
• Biomedical Self-Reliance: Supported by the Science, Engineering, and Research Board (SERB), the patent-pending platform aligns with India's BioE3 Policy to boost local biotechnology.

• Meaning: The name translates to "Five Rivers" in English.
• Origin: It originates from the Sahyadri mountain ranges at Prayag Sangam, near Chikhlee village in the Kolhapur district of Maharashtra.
• The Five Feeders: It is formed by the confluence of four visible streams—Kasari, Kumbhi, Tulsi, and Bhogawati—along with a fifth subterranean stream believed to be the mythical Saraswati.
• Course and Length: The river flows eastward for approximately 80 kilometres.
• Termination: It serves as a major tributary to the Krishna River, merging with it at Kurundvad (Narsobawadi) near the Karnataka border.

• Fertile Basin: The Panchganga valley is incredibly fertile, producing rich yields of winter crops.
• Sugarcane Hub: The river's water network is heavily utilised to sustain intensive sugarcane cultivation across Kolhapur.
• Key Upstream Dams: Major dams built on its tributaries regulate its flow, including the Radhanagari Dam, Kalammawadi Dam, Kode Budruk Dam, and Tulashi Dam.

• Sacred Confluence: The Prayag Sangam confluence point is considered highly sacred, drawing thousands of devotees during the winter season.
• Temple Towns: The entire length of the river banks is lined with historic temples, shrines, and ghats.

• Rapid Urban Pollution: Untreated municipal sewage and domestic waste from the rapidly growing cities of Kolhapur and Ichalkaranji pour directly into the river.
• Industrial Effluents: Discharges from surrounding sugar mills, distilleries, and textile industries have degraded the water quality, leading to frequent toxic clean-up demands.
• Siltation & Floods: Over the years, deforestation and heavy siltation have made the riverbed shallow, significantly reducing its water-carrying capacity and making the surrounding villages highly vulnerable to flash floods.

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