Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 01 October 2022

::NATIONAL::

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has recently reported 26 Buddhist caves in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve.

About:

The 26 caves that were found are associated with the Mahayana sect of Buddhism.
These date back to the same time as the Ajanta caves in Aurangabad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Besides the caves, the ASI team also found the remains of 26 temples, two mathas, two stupas, 46 idols and sculptures, 26 fragments and 19 water bodies.
ASI also mentioned a Buddhist pillar fragment containing a miniature stupa carving, dating to the 2nd-3rd century CE, and 24 Brahmi inscriptions from the 2nd-5th century CE.

General Anil Chauhan recently assumed charge as the country’s second Chief of Defence Staff (CDS).

About:

General Anil Chauhan was commissioned into the 11 Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army in 1981 and has served a range of staff and operational appointments including that of Director General of Military Operations.
The CDS post has been vacant for over nine months since the death of the first CDS Gen Bipin Rawat in a chopper crash in December 2021.
This is the first instance since independence, of a three-star Lieutenant General rank officer taking over as a four-star General after retirement.
The Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces (CDS) is the military head and permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) of the Indian Armed Forces.
The Chief of Defence Staff is the highest-ranking uniformed officer on active duty in the Indian military and chief military adviser to the Minister of Defence.
The Chief also heads the Department of Military Affairs.

Significance of CDS:

Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, at 66thInternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) GeneralConference in Vienna, stated that India has suppliedCryolines for ITER project in France.

About:

IAEA promotes peaceful uses of nuclear energyand application of safeguards to prevent diversionof nuclear energy for military use.
ITER is located in France and launched in 1985.
It aims to prove feasibility of nuclear fusion as afuture source of energy and build world’s largesttokamak through an international collaboration of35 nations.
Tokamak is an experimental magnetic fusiondevice designed to harness energy of fusion.
Inside a tokamak, energy produced through fusionis absorbed as heat in walls of vessel, which will beused by a fusion power plant to produce steamand then electricity.

About:

A Sherpa is a personal representative of the leader of a member country at an international Summit meeting such as the G8, G20 or the Nuclear Security Summit. The term is derived from the Nepalese Sherpa people, who serve as guides for mountaineers in the Himalayas.
The Sherpa engages in planning, negotiation and implementation tasks through the Summit.
They coordinate the agenda, seek consensus at the highest political levels, and participate in a series of pre-Summit consultations to help negotiate their leaders’ positions.

New framework, applicable from January 1, 2023, aims at enhancing transparency and improving the rating process for CreditEnhancement (CE) ratings.

About CRAs:

Credit Rating Agencies(CRAs) evaluates and assesses an individual’s or a company’s creditworthiness.
In India, they are regulated by SEBI (Credit Rating Agencies) Regulations, 1999.
There are many CRAs in India viz, CRISIL, CARE, ICRA, SMREA, Brickwork Rating etc.

Credit Enhancement:

CE are used to reduce risks to investors of certain structured financial products.
With CE, lender is provided with reassurance that borrower will honor its obligation through insurance, additional collateral, orthird- party guarantee.

New norms:

CRAs can assign suffix ‘CE’ to rating of instruments having explicit credit enhancement.
SEBI has specified a list of support which includes Guaranteed bond, Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities, etc. for CE-suffix.
Credit ratings, with or without CE-suffix, backed by specified support considerations shall contain disclosures.

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) recently arrested a Bolivian woman from Mumbai airport for allegedly carrying black cocaine.

About:

“Black cocaine” is a rare drug, is a mixture of regular cocaine and other chemicals of administrated quantity.
In a bid to ensure that sniffer dogs used at airports do not detect cocaine, it is being used by drug peddlers coming to India from South American countries.
It neutralises the smell of cocaine so that it can pass through checkpoints easily.
Black cocaine is a mixture of regular cocaine base with various substances to camouflage typical appearance (e.g. charcoal), to interfere with colour-based drug tests (cobalt salts form deep red complexes in solution), to make the mixture undetectable by drug-sniffing dogs as activated carbon may sufficiently absorb trace odours.