Current Affairs

Nikhil Agarwal is the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at MIT and a co-director of Blueprint Labs. He received the Infosys Prize 2025 in Economics for developing empirical methods to study and improve allocation mechanisms — practical systems like school admission lotteries, medical residency matching, and kidney exchange programmes that need to match people to places or resources without using prices.

The conventional Haber-Bosch process produces ammonia (used in fertilisers feeding ~50% of the world) by reacting nitrogen with hydrogen at high temperature and pressure, using natural gas as both fuel and hydrogen source. Manthiram at Caltech developed electrochemical pathways — including lithium-mediated nitrogen reduction and oxygen-atom transfer catalysis — that use renewable electricity instead, at room temperature and pressure, reducing the process's carbon footprint.

Andrew Ollett of the University of Chicago is the world's leading scholar of Prakrit languages — the ancient South Asian spoken languages distinct from Sanskrit, including Pali, Ardhamagadhi, and Maharashtri. His work covers Prakrit grammar, the cultural history of why authors chose Prakrit over Sanskrit, and the circulation of Prakrit texts across the subcontinent. He is the first Prakrit language scholar to win the Infosys Prize Humanities category.

Sushant Sachdeva of the University of Toronto received the Infosys Prize 2025 in Engineering and Computer Science for his advances in mathematical optimisation, particularly developing near-linear-time algorithms for flow networks and linear programs. His results have been described as producing "absurdly fast" algorithms because they approach what theorists consider the theoretical limit of speed for these problems.

Anjana Badrinarayanan at NCBS Bengaluru received the Infosys Prize 2025 in Life Sciences for her work on DNA damage repair, particularly for discovering novel mitochondrial DNA damage response pathways. She is the only winner in the 2025 Infosys Prize cohort who is based in India.

FM Nirmala Sitharaman presented her 8th consecutive Union Budget on February 1, 2025, setting a world record for most consecutive budget presentations.

COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024. A key outcome was the New Collective Quantified Goal of $300 billion/year for climate finance.

RBI MPC cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25% in February 2025, the first reduction since May 2020, amid easing inflation.

The RTI Act 2005 gives citizens the right to access information from public authorities, promoting transparency and accountability in governance.

PM-KISAN provides income support of Rs 6,000 per year in three installments of Rs 2,000, directly to landholding farmer families' bank accounts.

India won 6 medals at Paris Olympics 2024 (1 silver, 5 bronze) but no gold medals. Neeraj Chopra won silver in javelin throw.

4. Gukesh defeated China's Ding Liren to become World Chess Champion in December 2024, at age 18 — the youngest ever.

Droupadi Murmu became the 15th President of India in July 2022 — the first tribal woman and second woman to hold the position.