Living Will
High Court judge becomes first in Goa to register a ‘living will’.
- Written document that a person uses to give his explicit instructions in advance about medical treatment to be administered if he becomes incompetent or unable to communicate.
- Executed voluntarily.
- Common Cause vs. Union of India & Anr. (2018) – Supreme Court held that a person in persistent vegetative state can opt for passive euthanasia (withdrawing life support, medical treatment).
- A person can execute a living will to refuse medical treatment in case of a terminal illness
Variable Repo Rate
The recent VRR auction by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) witnessed a good response from banks.
- Rate at which RBI allows Banks to borrow at a rate decided by the market.
- Repo Rate – Rate at which Banks borrow money from RBI which is fixed by RBI.
- Borrowing duration – More than 1 day and usually up to 14 days.
- A tool to inject short-term liquidity into the banking system.
- Variable Rate Reverse Repo (VRRR) – To absorb the excess liquidity from the system
Global food policy report 2024
Global food policy report 2024 released
- Released by – International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
- Key findings –
- Climate change and biodiversity loss can have complex and interconnected effects on diets, affecting food availability
- More than 2 billion people, many of them in Africa and South Asia, cannot afford a healthy diet.
- Around 38 percent of the Indian population ate unhealthy foods
- As a result of poor diet, 16.6% Indians suffer from malnutrition.
Stromatolites
Recently, the first discovery of living shallow-marine stromatolites was made in the Middle East near the Red Sea.
- Range of microbial communities that are associated with layers of rock.
- Represent the earliest geological record of life on Earth.
- Partially responsible for the Great Oxygenation Event, which changed the composition of our atmosphere by introducing oxygen.
- Typically relegated to extreme environmental niches, thus are found rarely and are sparsely scattered across the globe
Dag Hammarskjold medal
Recently, The Dag Hammarskjöld Medal was presented posthumously by the UN to an Indian peacekeeper Naik Dhananjay Kumar Singh.
- A posthumous award to members of peacekeeping operations.
- 1st Medal was presented to the family of Dag Hammarskjöld in 1998.
- He was Secretary-General of the UN from 1953 until 1961.