The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has awarded the contract of setting up India’s first multi-modal logistics park (MMLP) near Chennai to Reliance Industries (RIL).

• The ?1,424-crore project will facilitate efficient, cost-effective and value-added logistics services such as cargo aggregation and disaggregation, distribution, inter-modal transfer, sorting, packing, repacking, etc.
• The National Highways Logistics Management (NHLM) had received three bids, including Adani Group, for the Chennai MMLP. Two bidders had technically qualified for the financial bid opening.
• The model concession agreement for MMLPs is on a Design, Build, Finance, Operate, and Transfer (DBFOT) model.

The Methane Alert and Response System, or MARS, will integrate data from a large number of existing and future satellites that have the ability to detect methane emission events anywhere in the world, and send out notifications to the relevant stakeholders to act on it.

• The UN has decided to set up a satellite-based monitoring system for tracking it and alerting governments and corporations to respond in n keeping with the relatively new focus on cutting methane emissions.
• The Methane Alert and Response System, or MARS, will integrate data from a large number of existing and future satellites that have the ability to detect methane emission events anywhere in the world, and send out notifications to the relevant stakeholders to act on it.
• In the last few years, there has been a lot of emphasis on reducing methane emissions. Methane is the second-most common of the six major greenhouse gases, but is far more dangerous than carbon dioxide in its potential to cause global warming.

The fifth edition of the Paris Peace Forum was organized based on the theme “Riding out the multicrisis”.

It focuses on:

1. Providing solutions for ways to overcome the socio-economic consequences of multiple crisis
2. Developing international cooperation on major issues
3. Support multilateralism and strengthen global cooperation mechanisms
4. Multicrises that were focused on during this gathering are war in Ukraine, global hunger crisis, environmental crisis and inflation. Latin America was also part of the agenda.
5. Over 4,000 individuals, including world leaders, humanitarians and business figures participated in this event.

The 2022 G20 Bali summit is set to be held on November 15 and 16 this year.  The summit in Bali is the 17th meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20) countries that represent 85 per cent of the global GDP, 75 per cent of the global trade and 66 per cent of the global population.

The G20 summit will be held in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. Indonesia’s presidency commenced on December 1, 2021. It will end during this summit.

The theme for the event is ‘Recover Together, Recover Stronger’. As part of the G20 Agenda, 3 working sessions will be organized.

They are:

1. Sustainable energy transition
2. Global Health Architecture
3. Digital transformation

The AEAN members agreed in principle to admit East Timor as the 11th member of the bloc.

East Timor started applying for ASEAN membership in 2011. The ASEAN decided to admit the island nation as its 11th member more than a decade after Timor-Leste requested membership.

This decision was made at Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, where the 40th and 41st ASEAN and related summits officially began recently.

East Timor was granted observer status at ASEAN meetings, including summit plenaries, until it is formally inducted into the regional bloc.

India’s national grid operator Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO) was renamed as Grid Controller of India Limited.

• The Grid Controller of India Limited (Grid-India) is a wholly owned central government enterprise that comes under the aegis of the Ministry of Power.
• Previously, it was a fully owned subsidiary of the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (Powergrid) – the central public sector undertaking (PSU) owned by the Union Power Ministry.
• It was set up in March 2009 to take care of the power management functions of the PGCIL.

A bilateral agreement worth 74.5 million USD was signed by Britain and France to boost their efforts to curb illegal migration from the English Channel crossings.

• The agreement, worth $74.5 million (72.2 million euros), aims to stop migrants crossing the Channel to England in small boats.
• It calls for a 40 per cent increase in the number of French officers patrolling the French beaches in 2022-23 with British funding over the next 5 months.
• This comes after more than 40,000 people crossed the British channel in 2022. In 2021, the number of immigrants via the channel were just 28,526. Most of these migrants are from Albania, Iran and Afghanistan.

The government proposes to launch the world’s longest luxury river cruise—from Varanasi to Dibrugarh via Bangladesh— next year in what it hopes will give a push to inland waterways development in India.

“Ganga Vilas cruise will sail from Varanasi to Dibrugarh in a longest river journey of 50 days covering 27 river systems and visit over 50 tourist sites including World Heritage Sites.

• This will be the single largest river journey by a single river ship in the world and would put both India and Bangladesh on the river cruise map of the world,
• The 50-day cruise will set sail from Varanasi on 10 January and cover 4,000 km, passing through Kolkata and Dhaka before reaching Bogibeel in Dibrugarh district of Assam on 1 March.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday unveiled the 'Statue of Prosperity', the 108-feet tall bronze statue of Bengaluru founder Nadaprabhu Kempegowda on the premises of the Bengaluru International Airport.

• It has been built to commemorate the contribution of Kempegowda towards development of the city.
• After unveiling the statue, the Prime Minister poured sacred water on the feet of the statue of Kempegowda. No other airport in the world has such a tall statue of its founder and this goes as a record in the World Book of Records, Karnataka Higher Education Minister Ashwathnarayan said.
• The project comprising the Kempegowda statue and a 23-acre theme park has been built at a cost of around Rs 84 crore.

The 7th edition of the Amur Falcon Festival was celebrated in Manipur’s Tamenglong district on Monday with a day-long programme. 

• Organised by Tamenglong Forest Division in collaboration with Rainforest Club Tamenglong, the festival was celebrated with the objective to spread awareness about the protection and conservation of the Amur Falcon, the world’s longest-flying migratory bird.
• The festival is celebrated to strengthen the human-nature relationship and acknowledge the importance of this small raptor in the lives of people in the region.
• Forest, environment and climate change minister, Thongam Biswajit Singh, water resources minister, Awangbow Newmai and principal chief conservator of forest AK Joshi attended the festival.

On November 13th, as part of World Kindness Day, we are encouraged to spread kindness like an infectious cold. We want to share it more than usual because studies show when others observe kindness in action they are more likely to carry out an act of kindness, too.

• This day help us to move forward in a helpful and kind spirit toward the people. There are many ways in which a person can show kindness toward the other person.
• The World Kindness Movement started World Kindness Day in 1998 and has spread to 28 countries.