Indian swimmer, Aryan Singh Dadiala, on Apr 21  equalled the existing world record of the fastest male swimmer to swim the Sea of Galilee, braving extreme weather conditions.

Sea Of Galilee is the second lowest water body in the world, approximately 214 metres below sea level, and poses multiple challenges such as whirlpools and indefinite wind storms.

Dadiala, 21, who set a world record in November 2022 in Goa finishing 32 km open water sea swimming in 5 hours 36 minutes, is the first Asian swimmer to swim the Sea of Galilee.

The event was observed and certified by Galilee Marathon Swimming Association, Israel and flagged off by Indian diplomat Pawan K.

Pal, who leads the public diplomacy division at the Indian embassy in Tel Aviv.

Q1. Name the joint exercise in which fighter jets of the air forces of India and the United States took part at Kalaikunda Air Force Station in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district recently ?

1. Yudh Abhyas 2023
2. Pitch Black 2023
3. Cope India 2023
4. Yudh Abhyas 2023
5. None of These

Q2. Name the jail   where Waris Punjab De chief Amritpal Singh and nine of his aides are lodged ?

1. Jorhat
2. Silchar
3. Dibrugarh
4. Guwahati
5. None of These

Q3. Name the prominent member of  the UK's main opposition Labour Party who has been  suspended  by the party for her comments that Jewish people were not subject to racism "all their lives" ?

1. Hastings Lees-Smith
2. Diane Abbott
3. Harriet Harman
4. Margaret Beckett
5. None of These

Q4. India has climbed six places on the World Bank's Logistic Performance Index (LPI) 2023, now  it has been ranked at

1. 25^th
2. 30^th
3. 35^th
4. 38^th
5. None of These

Q5. Name the sport with which Sudirman Cup  is associated ?

1. Badminton
2. Chess
3. Tennis
4. Hockey
5. None of These

Answers

1-----------------------3  Cope India 2023

2-----------------------3  Dibrugarh

3------------------------2   Diane Abbott

4------------------------4  38th

5------------------------1   Badminton

The process to repatriate the human remains of Nagas from a museum in the United Kingdom is underway, with a collective at the helm of the initiative.

The Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) in Oxford, which houses 213 human remains of Nagas among other artefacts from across the globe, had in 2020 announced it would remove the human remains and other "insensitive exhibits" from the display.

Coming to know of it, an Australia-based Naga anthropologist, Dolly Konyak, roped in a fellow Naga social scientist, Dr Arkotong Longkumer, who is based in Edinburgh in Scotland, and approached PRM director Laura Van Broekhoven, who in turn urged Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) to be the facilitator in the repatriation process.

FNR has been playing an active role in reconciliation among various Naga factions that have been holding peace talks with the Centre. These human remains were taken from Nagaland and other Naga-inhabited areas in the region by the British more than a century ago for an exhibition of the colonised people and the repatriation is part of the "decolonisation" process.

FNR convenor Wati Aier said the organisation is working as a facilitator in the process, which is in the initial stage.

Ellen Konyak Jamir, a member of FNR, said the forum, along with Dolly Kikon and Arkatong Longkumer and some other members of the Naga society, formed a Recover, Restore and Decolonise (RRaD) team in 2020 for the repatriation process.

Around seven months ago, a grand ceremony was held in Rode village in Punjab's Moga district to anoint radical preacher Amritpal Singh as the head of "Waris Punjab De", an organisation founded by actor-activist Deep Sidhu who died in a road accident in February last year.

Rode, the place chosen for the "dastarbandi" (turban-tying) event on September 29, 2022, happens to be the ancestral village of slain militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.

On Apr 23  morning, Amritpal Singh, the 29-year-old Khalistan sympathiser, was arrested from the same place more than a month after the Punjab Police launched a crackdown against him following the storming of the Ajnala police station by his supporters to secure the release of an arrested associate.

Police said Amritpal was arrested from Rode and sent to a jail in Assam's Dibrugarh, while countering certain claims, including of the radical preacher that he had surrendered.

The claims surfaced in a video purportedly shot inside a Gurdwara in Rode.

Police said they did not enter the gurdwara to maintain the sanctity of the place, but conveyed the message to Amritpal that he was surrounded and there was no chance of an escape.

Israel's army early on Apr 24  shelled a position belonging to a pro-Iran group in southern Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "Israeli ground forces" bombarded a location on the outskirts of Quneitra where fighters from the Syrian Resistance to Liberate the Golan are located, without reporting any casualties.

The Hezbollah-linked, Iran-backed group was formed to launch attacks in the Israeli-occupied zone.

Syrian state media did not report the bombardment, but two local media outlets close to the government reported an "Israeli aggression" that targeted the outskirts of Quneitra.

The Israeli army had bombed positions in the Quneitra countryside on April 18, the Observatory said, targeting areas where Iran-linked groups are present, also without reporting any casualties.

Earlier this month, amid escalating violence in the region, Israel launched strikes on Syria after several rockets were fired from there and landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The 1,200 square kilometre (460 square mile) region -- patrolled by Israeli soldiers and bordering Lebanon -- was seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel later annexed it in a move that was never recognised by the international community.

United Nations proscribed Pakistani terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) has been seen openly collecting funds in Peshawar, according to several accounts.

JeM remerged after Financial Action Task Force (FATF) relaxation last year. They are openly backed by Pakistan security personnel. Global terror-financing watchdog FATF in October 2022 announced Pakistan's removal from its grey list, stating that the country has largely completed its action plans on anti-money laundering and financing of terrorism. Pakistan has been on the FATF grey list since June 2018.

With the ground situation in Sudan going from bad to worse, foreign nations are racing against time to evacuate their citizens from the conflict-ridden country.

On Apr 23 , the US and the UK said they have pulled out their diplomats from Khartoum, while other countries including France, Italy and Belgium have begun the process to evacuate their citizens.

India has put two Indian Air Force C-130J aircraft on standby in Saudi Arabia’s  Jeddah, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said , adding that INS Sumedha has reached Port Sudan, a port city in eastern Sudan.

According to sources, Saudi Arabia is a safer option for evacuation as they have been able to evacuate their nationals and also nationals of many other countries. India has an estimated 3,000 nationals in Sudan. Reports said three Indians were among the 66 foreign nationals that Saudi Arabia evacuated on Apr 22 .

The army headed by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (who became President after a coup in October 2021) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti) who is Sudan’s vice-president and commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The violence comes as a setback in a much-delayed transition to a civilian government that followed the ousting of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, after months of street protests. It is understood that there is a disagreement between the General and Hemeti over the command and integration of the paramilitary force into the army.

After years of friction, Seoul and Tokyo are working to repair relations as they tighten their three-way security cooperation with Washington to counter the threat posed by North Korea. Pyongyang has used the distractions caused by the war to accelerate testing of nuclear-capable missiles.

South Korean officials expect Tokyo to restore Seoul as a favored trade partner too, but expect that step to take more time based on the procedures to revise Japan's export regulations.

In September 2019, South Korea dropped Japan from its "white list" of countries receiving fast-track approvals in trade, reacting to a similar move by Tokyo.

Japan had also tightened export controls on key chemicals South Korean companies use to make semiconductors and displays, prompting South Korea to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization.

Seoul accused Tokyo of weaponizing trade to retaliate against South Korean court rulings that ordered

Japanese companies to offer reparations to South Koreans forced into slave labor before the end of World War II, when Japan had colonized the Korean Peninsula. The 2018 rulings irked Japan, which insists all compensation issues were settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations.

Relations between the U.S. allies began to thaw in March when the government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office in May 2022, announced plans to use South Korean funds to compensate the forced laborers without requiring Japanese contributions.

Yoon traveled to Tokyo to meet with Japanese Prime Minster Fumio Kishida and they vowed to rebuild the countries' security and economic ties.

Yoon's push to mend ties with Tokyo has triggered criticism from some forced labor victims and from his political rivals.

Following the Yoon-Kishida summit, South Korea withdrew its complaint at the WTO against Japan as Tokyo simultaneously confirmed its removal of export controls over a set of chemicals seen as vital to

South Korea's technology industry. The Japanese restrictions had covered fluorinated polyimides, which are used in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for TVs and smartphones, and photoresist and hydrogen fluoride, used for making semiconductors.