Bedti-Varada Link 

• Bedti-Varada Link proposal envisages diversion of 242 Mcum of surplus waters of Bedti basin to water short Tungabhadra sub-basin, to be utilized under Tungabhadra Project Command. 
• The head works of this project consists of two dams viz. Pattanadahalla dam on Pattanadahalla stream and Shalamalahalla dam on Shalamalahalla stream and interlinking systems between these two reservoirs. 
• The irrigation that proposed under the link canal is 60,200 hectares in the drought prone Raichur district of Karnataka. 
• Provision for compensatory afforestation on account of submergence of forest land has been made.
• No important historical monuments and archaeological structures  will be coming under submergence. 

Talaq-e-Hasan

• Talaq-e-Hasan is pronounced with a gap of at least one month or one menstrual cycle. Only a single revocable divorce takes place through the first pronouncement of Talaq-e-Hasan.
• The husband and wife are supposed to live together after this pronouncement and have the option of rapprochement.
• Talaq-e-Hasan mode by her husband Yousuf, also prayed that Section 2 of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937 that permits Muslims to practise unilateral divorce be declared void. 
• Talaq-e-Hasan unconstitutional as it is violative of Articles 14, 15, 21 and 25 of the Constitution. 
• The Quran clearly mentions the process of Talaq-e-Hasan. 

Azooxanthellate corals

• Azooxanthellate corals are a group of corals that do not contain zooxanthellae and derive nourishment not from the sun but from capturing different forms of plankton.
• These groups of corals are deep-sea representatives, with the majority of species reporting from between 200 m to 1000 m.
• Their occurrences are also reported from shallow coastal waters.
• These new corals were found from the waters of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) scientist said that all the four groups of corals are from the same family Flabellidae.

Quantum diamond microscope

• Researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) at Mumbai and Kharagpur have built a microscope that can image magnetic fields within microscopic two-dimensional samples that change over milliseconds.
• This has a huge potential for scientific applications, such as in measuring biological activity of neurons and dynamics of vortices in superconductors.
• This is the first time that such a tool has been built to image magnetic fields that change within milliseconds. 
• The key aspect of this sensor is a “nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect centre” in a diamond crystal.
• Such NV centres act as pseudo atoms with electronic states that are sensitive to the fields and gradients around them (magnetic fields, temperature, electric field and strain).

Private access tokens

• Apple in collaboration with internet and digital infrastructure providers has come with Private Access Tokens that offer assurance that a person using certain devices iPhones or Macs, is a genuine person and gets automatic entry .
• With Private Access Tokens, Apple devices will block all types of tracking, skip CAPTCHA verification and offer direct entry to the website or an app.
• Private Access Tokens are a powerful alternative that help you identify HTTP requests from legitimate devices and people without compromising their identity or personal information.