INDIA
- Some of the decisions announced by the GST Council on Saturday:
+ GST Council affirms 28% tax on online betting from October 1.
+ Extra Neutral Alcohol (ENA), in liquor production kept outside GST.
+ States empowered to tax ENA.
+ Blended flour, with at least 70% millets, made tax-free when sold loose.
+ Levy on molasses slashed from 28% to 5% to lower cattle feed costs, help sugarcane farmers.
- The Uttar Pradesh government is introducing a digital platform from Monday for madrasa students to equip them with first-hand experience about Artificial Intelligence and coding, aimed at bringing them in line with digital education and other educational boards. The platform UPAI will be functional in recognised madrasas across the state with students taking sessions daily.
- The Indian Space Research Organisation, which is planning to commence unmanned flight tests for the Gaganyaan mission, has started to make preparations for the Flight Test Vehicle Abort Mission-1 (TV-D1).
- The Indian Navy has institutionalised a new ‘transformative initiative’ of ‘360 Degree Appraisal Mechanism’ for various promotion boards, which it said is aimed to address the shortfall in the present assessments by “encompassing large-scale surveys from suitably identified peers and subordinates for every officer being considered for promotion.”
SCIENCE
- New radiocarbon (Carbon 14) and optically simulated luminescence ages have confirmed the controversial antiquity of the ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National park, and reported in a study in 2021.
Researchers now report that the independent ages from multiple resolved sources show that the footprints were left behind between 23,000 and 20,000 years ago, demonstrating that humans were present in southern North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).