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📰 Nations reach accord to protect marine life on high seas: • For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas - representing a turning point for vast stretches of the planet where conservation has previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws. • The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept. The treaty agreement concluded two weeks of talks in New York. • An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. The unified agreement treaty, which applies to nearly half the planet's surface, was reached late Saturday. • The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/nations-reach-accord-to-protect-marine-life-on-high-seas/article66584851.ece

📰 Assam’s moidams meet UNESCO technical requirements for heritage centre: • Assam’s pyramid-like structures known as moidams or maidams have met all the technical requirements of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre. • The Charaideo Maidams enshrine the mortal remains of the members of the Ahom royalty, who used to be buried with their paraphernalia. After the 18th century, the Ahom rulers adopted the Hindu method of cremation and began entombing the cremated bones and ashes in a Maidam at Charaideo. • Moidams (or Maidams) represent the late medieval (13th-19th century CE) mound-burial tradition of the Tai Ahoms in Assam, which lasted almost 600 years. • Out of 386 Moidams explored so far, 90 royal burials at Charaideo are the best preserved, representative, and most complete examples of this tradition". • The Ahom rule lasted for about 600 years until the British annexed Assam in 1826. • Charaideo, more than 400 km east of Guwahati, was the first capital of the Ahom dynasty founded by Chao Lung Siu-Ka-Pha in 1253. • Lachit Barphukan is a legendary Ahom general he battled against the Mughals in 1671.

🗞 India scores 74.4 in World Bank index on life cycle of working women: • The laws affecting the Indian working woman’s pay and pension do not provide for equality with Indian men, dragging India’s score in a World Bank index on the life cycle of a working woman down to 74.4 out of a possible 100. • A score of 100 on the Index means that women are on an equal standing with men on all the eight indicators being measured, according to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2023 report. • India scored higher than the 63.7 average for the South Asian region, though lower than Nepal which had the region’s highest score of 80.6. • Out of the 190 economies covered in the Index, only 14 scored a perfect 100: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. • For India, the Index used data on the laws and regulations applicable in Mumbai, viewed as the country’s main business city. • “When it comes to constraints on freedom of movement, laws affecting women’s decisions to work, and constraints related to marriage, India gets a perfect score,” the report said. • However, India lags behind when it comes to laws affecting women’s pay, laws affecting women’s work after having children, constraints on women starting and running a business, gender differences in property and inheritance, and laws affecting the size of a woman’s pension. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-scores-744-in-world-bank-index-on-life-cycle-of-working-women/article66576659.ece

■ Proton Beam Therapy (PBT): • Proton therapy, also called Proton Beam therapy, is a type of radiation therapy. It uses protons to treat cancer. • The PBT is considered a viable alternative to radiation for treating solid tumours, especially for head and neck cancers. • Unlike radiation which uses X-rays, PBT uses protons to tackle cancer. While radiation can prove toxic to the whole body, protons can destroy cancer cells precisely by targeting tumours, thus saving adjoining organs. • A PBT machine is a huge contraption, up to three storeys tall and costs nearly ₹500 crore. • Proton Beam Therapy is more expensive than traditional radiation. • Doctors may use proton therapy alone. They may also combine it with x-ray radiation therapy, surgery, chemotherapy, and/or immunotherapy. • Like X-ray radiation, proton therapy is a type of external-beam radiation therapy. • It painlessly delivers radiation through the skin from a machine outside the body. • Apollo Hospital in Chennai  is the only centre in the whole of South and West Asia offering the PBT. • With the Indian government shelving a project to install a PBT unit in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Jhajjar), there is a huge unmet need for access to the treatment. • Another project that is yet to see the light of day is the proposed PBT unit at the National Hadron Beam facility of Tata Memorial Hospital in Navi Mumbai. • Currently there are 42 PBT machine installations in the U.S., followed by Europe (35), Japan (26), China (seven), Taiwan (three) and South Korea (two), while India has only one. • In the U.S., each unit of proton beam therapy serves a population of 7.9 million, while in India there is one unit for 1,412 million people. □ How PBT works? • A proton is a positively charged particle. At high energy, protons can destroy cancer cells. • A machine called a synchrotron or cyclotron speeds up protons. The high speed of the protons creates high energy. • This energy makes the protons travel to the desired depth in the body. The protons then give the targeted radiation dose in the tumor. • With proton therapy, there is less radiation dose outside of the tumor. In regular radiation therapy, x-rays continue to give radiation doses as they leave the person's body. This means that radiation damages nearby healthy tissues, possibly causing side effects.

🗞 Two Australian public universities to set up campuses in GIFT City: • Two Australian government universities, Deakin University and University of Wollongong, will be the first foreign education institutions to set up campuses in GIFT City, Gujarat. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/two-australian-universities-to-set-up-campuses-in-gujarats-gift-city-dharmendra-pradhan/article66567555.ece

■ Gross Domestic Climate Risk Report 2023: • The report, titled “Gross Domestic Climate Risk”, was released by the Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI), a global organisation specialising in climate risk analysis for regions, banks and companies. • The index calculated the ‘physical climate risk’ to built environments such as buildings and properties across 2,600 States and provinces globally in 2050. • Physical risk refers to vulnerability from eight climate change events: heat waves, coastal flooding (and sea level rise), extreme wind, forest fire, soil movement (or other drought-related hazards), free thaw, riverine and surface flooding. • The report compared the risk across territories based on modelled projections of damage, using global climate models, local weather and environmental data. • What is climate change? - As per United Nations, long-term changes in temperature and weather patterns are referred to as climate change. • The report states that China, the United States, and India are where 80% of the climate change danger exists. • India came in third place among the top 50 nations most in danger from the effects of climate change in 2050, according to the assessment report. • China has 26 high-risk states, the US has 5, and India has 9 of them. • The most vulnerable states in India are Bihar (22nd spot), Uttar Pradesh (25), Assam (28), Rajasthan (32), Tamil Nadu (36), Maharashtra (38), Gujarat (48), Punjab (50) and Kerala (52). • Together, the index assigned an Aggregated Damage Ratio (ADR) to each region, which signifies the total amount of damage a region’s built environment would sustain in 2050. A high ADR signifies more peril. • According to the report, Assam, Bihar and Tamil Nadu had the highest ADR among other Indian States. Assam, in particular, would witness the maximum increase of climate risk: rising up to 330% by 2050 as compared to 1990. • Other countries with multiple provinces and states in the top 50 include Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia. In Europe, high-ranking states encompass the cities of London, Milan, Munich and Venice. • This is the first time there has been a physical climate risk analysis focused exclusively on the built environment, comparing every state, province and territory in the world. • The Climate Risk Index in 2019, which ranked countries based on their vulnerability to fatalities and economic losses, found India to be the seventh-worst hit due to extreme weather events.

■ New START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty): • Recently, Russia suspended its participation in the New START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). □ What is New START treaty? • The name START comes from the original “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty”, known as START-I, which was signed between the US and the erstwhile USSR in 1991, and came into force in 1994. • START-I, which capped the numbers of nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that each side could deploy at 6,000 and 1,600 respectively, lapsed in 2009, and was replaced first by the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, also known as the Treaty of Moscow), and then by the New START treaty. • New START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation. • It was signed by then-US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, the New START treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy. • It came into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for five more years after US President Joe Biden took office. • It allows both American and Russian inspectors to ensure that both sides are complying with the treaty.

⚖️ Kerala High Court becomes first HC in India to publish judgements in regional language: • The Kerala High Court has published two of its recent judgments in Malayalam on February 21, which was also observed as International Mother Language Day--becoming the first high court in the country to publish judgments in the regional language. • The development comes a day after the Supreme Court launched a trial of a live transcription service to transcribe its proceedings using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology powered by Natural Language Processing. • It is to be noted that the Supreme Court formed an Artificial Intelligence committee to develop a dedicated open-source judicial domain language translation tool called SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuwad Software) to translate judgments from English to vernacular languages. • The Kerala High Court made use of this tool to translate the judgments. • In January 2023, the Chief Justice had said that the judgments of the apex court would be translated to four languages, namely, Hindi, Gujarati, Odia, and Tamil, on noting that the English language in its “legal avatar” was not comprehensible to 99.9% of Indian citizens.

■ UNESCO’s International Mother Language Award 2023: • Dr Mahendra Kumar Mishra, an eminent linguist and a folklorist from Odisha, was conferred with UNESCO’s International Mother Language Award 2023 for his lifetime service for promotion of mother language in India. • Dr Mishra is the first one in India to receive the UNESCO award for mother language promotion. • He was the pioneer in promoting the endangered languages in school education using community knowledge. • He was also the pioneer in adopting Mother tongue based multilingual education in Odisha adopting ten tribal languages in primary schools. • Dr Mishra is also a well-known folklorist for his work among the indigenous languages. • February 21 - International Mother Language Day.

■ Seattle becomes first U.S. city to ban caste discrimination: • The Seattle City Council added caste to the city’s anti-discrimination laws, becoming the first U.S. city to specifically ban caste discrimination. • Hence, Seattle becomes the first U.S. city to ban caste discrimination and the first in the world to pass such a law outside South Asia. • The origins of the caste system in India can be traced back 3,000 years as a social hierarchy based on one’s occupation and birth. • Caste discrimination has been prohibited in India since 1948, a year after the nation’s independence from British rule.