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- As per the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear installations, India and Pakistan exchanged list of their nuclear installations and facilities with each other. This is the 27th consecutive annual exchange of such list between two countries after first list was exchanged on 1 January 1992.
- GAIL India Ltd has commissioned India’s second largest rooftop solar power plant in Uttar Pradesh. It is 5.76 MWp (Mega Watt peak) solar plant installed at GAIL’s petrochemical complex at Pata in UP. The plant has over roofs of warehouses covers a total area of 65,000 square meters.
- Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) became first countries of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to introduce Value Added Tax (VAT) for the first time to increase their revenue away from oil reserves. The other members of 6 member GCC– Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar — have also committed to introduce VAT, though some have delayed plans until at least 2019.
- NASA is going to launch Parker Solar Probe in 2018 to explore the sun’s outer atmosphere. It will be launched onboard of Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle. It will be tracing how energy and heat move through solar corona. It will perform its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation.
- Arunachal Pradesh was officially declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) state. It is second State from Northeast, after Sikkim and overall fifth state after Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Haryana to be declared ODF state.
- Scientists have discovered new species of frog named Mewa Singh’s night frog (Nyctibatrachus mewasinghi) in Kozhikode’s Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kerala in Western Ghats.
- Botanical Survey of India (BSI) scientists have discovered two new species of ginger named Hedychium chingmeianum and Caulokaempferia dinabandhuensis in easternmost districts of northeast India. Both the plants belong to the family of Zingiberaceae, to which the commonly found ginger (Zingiber officinale) belongs.
