An earthquake of 6.6 magnitudes hit the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan at 10:17 PM last night, March 21. As per the National Center for Seismology, the tremors struck at a depth of 156 kilometres. The affected countries include India, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, Afghanistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Strong tremors were felt in North India including Delhi-NCR, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The tremors triggered panic among the people as they came out of their homes. So far, no loss of life or property has been reported in India. 

In G-20,  the second Sustainable Finance Working Group meeting will take place at Udaipur in Rajasthan today, March 22. The focus is to identify relevant policies and best practices for mobilising sustainable finance to help ensure global growth and stability.

A workshop on the sidelines of the meeting is being organised to build a better understanding among G-20 members and strengthen policy and other recommendations towards enhanced financing for Sustainable Development Goals. Member countries will try to identify relevant policies and best practices for mobilizing sustainable finance to help ensure global growth and stability.

President Droupadi Murmu will confer Padma Awards for the year 2023, at a Civil Investiture Ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan today evening, March 22. Of the 106 Padma awards that were announced, six are Padma Vibhushan, nine are Padma Bhushan and 91 are Padma Shri. Nineteen of the awardees are women. Oral Rehydration Solution, ORS pioneer Dilip Mahalanobis will be awarded the Padma Vibhushan posthumously in the field of Medicine (Pediatrics). 

He pioneered the wide use of ORS, believed to have saved over five crore lives globally. Former Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav will be awarded Padma Vibhushan posthumously in the field of public affairs. Tabla Maestro Zakir Hussain will also be awarded Padma Vibhushan. Those who will be honoured with Padma Bhushan include Kannada novelist and screenwriter S L Bhyrappa, Industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, and Author and Philanthropist Sudha Murthy.

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has launched an ambitious project to digitize the research material in its possession. Under this project, the goal is to ensure the conversion of the entire India House Collection of the Library. Culture Ministry said, this consists of 40 thousand books, reports, periodicals, 55 lakh pages of archival documents, and microfilms in digital form.

AIR correspondent reports that in order to make all the digitized materials accessible from any part of the world, government has decided to put them on Internet through a state-of-the-art digital platform and, Open Digital Library and Archives. This will allow researchers on modern and contemporary India to search for documents relevant for their research. Users can read them on computer and download the documents by paying service charges. 

Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra today said India and Japan signed two documents on the sidelines of the bilateral talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The agreements include Renewal of Memorandum of Cooperation in Japanese language, and Exchange of notes on JICA loan for 300 billion Yen on Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed railway project. Briefing media in New Delhi this afternoon,  Mr Kwatra said Prime Minister Modi expressed his desire with Prime Minister Kishida to declare the next year as the year of Youth Exchanges between the two countries. He said Mr Kishida formally invited Mr Modi to G7 Hiroshima Summit.
 
The Foreign Secretary said that India and Japan have been talking about how India and Japan can cooperate on the Act East. They are talking about how connectivity projects can be built which link India's north-east with the rest of the countries that fall under Act East.

The three-day Nepal-India Literature Festival concluded with the adoption of a 10-point Biratnagar declaration.
The festival was jointly organized by Biratnagar Metropolitan City and Krantidhara Literature Academy of Meerut, India. A 10-point declaration highlighting the mutual promotion of literature between Nepal and India was adopted on Sunday.

The declaration included translating Nepali literature into Hindi and Hindi into Nepali for mutual promotion, undertaking further research on connecting Mahabharat-era King Birat's palace with the Mahabharat Circuit in coordination with the Department of Archeology and historians and encouraging young literary writers to further explore the archaeological artefacts.

The second Sustainable Finance Working Group (SFWG) meeting under India’s G20 Presidency will begin today at Udaipur in Rajasthan. The three-day meeting will focus on the identification of relevant policies and best practices for mobilizing sustainable finance to help ensure global growth and stability.

This is the first time for the SFWG to go beyond climate-related issues and engage in dialogue for enabling enhanced financing for select  sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) primarily through nature-related data and reporting and social impact investing.

India and Japan have signed two documents on the sidelines of the bilateral talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The agreements include the Renewal of the Memorandum of Cooperation in Japanese language, and Exchange of notes on JICA loan for 300 billion Yen on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed railway project. 

Briefing media in New Delhi yesterday, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said the two leaders discussed an entire gamut of bilateral issues. Mr. Kwatra said Prime Minister Modi expressed his desire with Prime Minister Kishida to declare next year as the year of Youth Exchanges between the two countries. He said Mr. Kishida formally invited Mr. Modi to the G7 Hiroshima Summit. Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral talks with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida in New Delhi. In his statement after the talks, Mr. Modi said, the meeting aimed to strengthen India-Japan relationship and give voice to the global South.

The application process for Common University Entrance Test (CUET-PG) for admission in Postgraduate Programmes in Central and other participating Universities has started.

In a tweet, Chairman of University Grants Commission, M Jagadesh Kumar said that the National Testing Agency (NTA) will conduct CUET-PG Test for admission into Postgraduate Programmes.

The candidates may apply online at
https://cuet.nta.nic.in
till the 19th of next month. The UGC chairman said, Information related to eligibility, scheme of exam, and other are available on NTA's official website.

Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district and the Union Territory of Ladakh have found a place in TIME Magazine’s ’50 extraordinary destinations to explore’ as it unveiled its list of the ‘World’s Greatest Places of 2023’. It noted that while the travel industry is back in full swing in 2023, there are some notable shifts in how and where we travel. To compile this list of the World’s Greatest Places, the magazine solicited nominations of places from its international network of correspondents and contributors, “with an eye toward those offering new and exciting experiences”.

Emma Barker Bonomo, the senior editor at TIME, was quoted as saying by CNN that the list reflects a couple of big trends in travel right now: Sustainability and authenticity. “Many locations on this list are finding ways to let tourists visit with a more limited environmental impact. And many have responded to travellers’ desire to have unique, local experiences by offering indigenous-led tours or curated homestays,” she said.