- Talc, or talcum, is a clay mineral consisting of hydrated magnesium silicate which finds wide use including in cosmetics, paints, ceramics.
- In a first-of-its-kind exercise code-named CROSS BOW-18, the Indian Air Force successfully conducted combined guided weapons firing of Surface-to-Air Missiles from the Air Force Station at Suryalanka in Andhra Pradesh on Saturday.
- The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate and permanently forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
- India’s first six-tonne-class ‘big bird’ in space, advanced communication satellite GSAT-11, was put into orbit in the early hours of Wednesday from the European spaceport in Guiana in South America. Its mission is to enable high-speed satellite-based Internet services to users in rural, remote areas and to businesses down home over the next 15 years. The heaviest ever to be built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the 5,854-kg satellite was launched from the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou. Launched in October 2011, Bharat Net (earlier called the National Optical Fibre Network) aims to provide 2.5 lakh village panchayats with e-banking, e-education, e-health and e-governance among others through reliable broadband connectivity. GSAT-11 carries eight transponders for the first time in the complex and efficient Ka frequency band; and 38 transponders in the Ku band. The Ka band enables smart coverage of places with multiple and reusable spot beams. Already up in space are two high-throughput communication satellites (HTS) — GSAT-29 (November 14) and GSAT-19 (June 2017) — while GSAT-11 is due to join them in the near future. They are all to provide high-speed Internet data services at the rate of 100 Gbps (Gigabits per second) to Indian users. GSAT 11 will rest almost 36000 kms away.
- Sabar and Lodha communities belong to West Bengal.
- An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917, but was not recognized as such. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet was in 1988; it was confirmed to be an exoplanet in 2012. The first confirmed detection occurred in 1992.
- Araku is located on the Eastern Ghats bordering Odisha.
- A NASA robotic explorer Osiris-Rex has recently landed on asteroid Bennu.
- Qatar will leave the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) next month in order to focus on gas production.It has been a member of OPEC since 1961, and the decision to pull out after all these decades comes at a turbulent time in Gulf politics, with Doha under a boycott by former neighbouring allies, including Saudi Arabia, for 18 months.
- China has not accepted India’s proposal to carry out bilateral trade in local currencies, which was aimed at bridging the ballooning trade deficit with the neighbour. India had mooted renminbi-rupee trade with China to boost exports and tackle the widening trade deficit concern. The renminbi is the official currency of the People’s Republic of China. The yuan is the basic unit of the renminbi, but is also used to refer to the Chinese currency generally, especially in international contexts where “Chinese yuan” is widely used to refer to the renminbi.
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POINT IAS 