• Delhi Declaration, a two-page document, was announced by the participating countries at the 14th Conference of Parties (COP 14) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) with an action plan to save the planet from losing more land.
• It is an ambitious statement of global action by each country on how to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality.
• The world needs to consider land-based solutions for climate action and biodiversity to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement, said the Delhi Declaration adopted by over 190 countries.

• International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is supposed to be a unique identity of a mobile phone device.
• Generally, a phone with one/two slots of SIM card is programmed with one/two IMEI number as the case may be.
• IMEI number being programmable, some miscreants do reprogram the IMEI number, which results in cloning of IMEI causing multiple phone devices with same IMEI number.
• As on date, there are many cases of cloned/duplicated IMEI handsets in the network.
• If such IMEI is blocked, a large number of mobile phones will get blocked being handsets with same IMEI causing inconvenience to many genuine customers.
• Thus, there is a need to eliminate duplicate/fake IMEI mobile phones from the network.
• Accordingly, a project called Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) system has been undertaken by the DoT for addressing security, theft and other concerns including reprogramming of mobile handsets.

The major objectives of the project include following:

1. Blocking of lost/stolen mobile phones across mobile networks thus discouraging theft of mobile phones
2. Facilitate in tracing of such reported lost/stolen mobile phones
3. Prevention of mobile devices with duplicate and fake IMEIs in the network
4. Curtail the use of counterfeit mobile devices
5. Reduced health risks to the users with the control of use of counterfeit mobile phones
6. Improved QoS and reduced call drops with reduction in use of counterfeit mobile devices

• Afghan forces has recently retook Kiran Wa Manjan district in the northeastern province of Badakhshan.
• The Kiran Wa Manjan win is considered significant as the district houses big deposits of lapis lazuli, a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone.
• Unlike most other gem materials, lapis lazuli is not a mineral.
• Instead, it is a rock composed of multiple minerals.
• The blue colour of lapis lazuli is mainly derived from the presence of lazurite, a blue silicate mineral of the sodalite group.

• Drones attacked the world's largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia.
• Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqyaq as the largest crude oil stabilization plant in the world.
• Buqyaq is some 330 kilometres northeast of the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

• ‘K2-18b’ is an ‘exoplanet’ discovered in 2015 by NASA’s ‘Kepler spacecraft’.
• Now, scientists have found signatures of ‘Water vapour’ in the atmosphere of K2-18b.
• This makes it the only planet outside Solar system with temperatures and water vapour that can potentially support life.
• It is about 110 light years from Earth, and 8 times the mass of Earth, orbits a star.
• It resides in a habitable zone, the region around a star in which liquid water could potentially pool on surface of a rocky planet.
• K2-18b is not ‘Earth 2.0’ as it is significantly heavier and has a different atmospheric composition.
• The researchers used data from the ‘Hubble Space Telescope’ and analysed the K2-18b’s atmosphere.
• The results revealed the molecular signature of water vapour, indicating, presence of hydrogen and helium in its atmosphere.

• The Ministry of Home Affairs maintains a list of individuals who supported the Khalistan movement in 1980s and 90s but left India to take asylum in foreign countries.
• This list included the name of “hardliners” who were in favour of a separate Sikh state and had opposed the Operation Blue Star.
• Many of the Sikhs on this list fled India to escape the authorities, acquired foreign nationality and took asylum outside India.
• This list is not restricted to Punjab or the Khalistan movement.
• The list has names of those individuals who are suspected to have links with terrorist outfits or have violated visa norms in their previous visit to India. 

• In a pioneering step, the first-ever public information portal was launched in Rajasthan recently promising to provide information about government authorities and departments suo motu to the public in the true spirit of the Right to Information Act.
• The portal has brought yet another distinction to Rajasthan, where the RTI movement had started in 1990s.

• Scientists have observed unusually high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Pacific Ocean around the western coast of the United States, mainly off the coast of Oregon state.
• The marine heatwave (MHW) can affect marine life and lead to droughts in the surrounding regions.
• MHWs can be caused by locally formed heat fluxes between the atmosphere and the ocean or due to large-scale drivers of the Earth’s climate like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
• Temperature-sensitive species such as corals are especially vulnerable to MHWs.