Jan 23, 2025 | Current Affairs for UPSC, State PCS & other Govt. Exams

In 2025, Brand Finance published a report identifying the 500 most valuable brands in the world. The top 10 most influential and valuable brands of 2025 are: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Walmart.

Tata's brand value grew by 10% to $31.6 billion, making it the first Indian brand to exceed the $30 billion mark. This achievement firmly places Tata as India's most valuable brand for the 15th consecutive year. Meanwhile, LIC has emerged as the fastest-growing Indian brand.

The world’s most valuable IT services brands are: Accenture (US), TCS (India), and Infosys (India). HCLTech has emerged as the world’s fastest-growing IT services brand in 2025.

In January 2025, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai launched the 'Deendayal Upadhyay Bhoomiheen Krishi Majdoor Kalyana Yojana' in Raipur. Under this scheme, more than 5.62 lakh landless agricultural labourers, Baigas, and Gunias of the state will receive financial assistance of Rs 10,000 annually.

A total amount of more than Rs 562 crores was released to the beneficiaries of the scheme.

The US has withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO), citing the organization's mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, failure to implement reforms, and lack of independence from the "political influence" of certain member states, a reference to China. Trump has also halted all US foreign aid for a period of 90 days to assess its efficacy and consistency with US foreign policy.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) recently demonstrated a cutting-edge “active cooled scramjet combustor ground test” for 120 seconds, marking the first such test in India. This successful ground test is a crucial milestone in the development of next-generation hypersonic missiles.

Hypersonic missiles are a class of advanced weaponry that travel at speeds greater than Mach 5, or more than five times the speed of sound. These advanced weapons have the potential to overcome existing air defence systems of major military powers worldwide and deliver rapid, high-impact strikes. Several nations, including the US, Russia, India, and China, are actively pursuing hypersonic technology and have demonstrated varying levels of development.

The key to hypersonic vehicles is scramjets, a variant of a category of jet engines called air-breathing engines. These engines are capable of handling airflows at speeds multiple times the speed of sound, without using any moving parts, which allows them to operate at such high speeds.

Yala Glacier in Nepal has retreated by 680 meters (36%) between 1974 and 2021 and is projected to vanish by the 2040s due to accelerated climate change.

UNESCO, MeitY, and Ikigai Law hosted a consultation on the AI Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) in India to align the country's AI ecosystem with global ethical standards. The event aimed to identify growth opportunities and enhance AI governance through multi-stakeholder engagement.

Officials from the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), along with a host of experts, are scheduled to meet in Gujarat to discuss strategies and innovative economic models for financing and building "sustainable" sports infrastructure.

This will help India position itself as a strong contender to host the 2036 Olympics. The discussions will take place during the 1st International Olympic Research Conference from January 27-30. The event will be held at the Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU) campus in Gandhinagar. IOA President PT Usha and Vice-President Gagan Narang will also be attending.

President Trump signed an executive order soon after taking office in January 2025, directing the US' withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. This is the second time Trump has ordered the US to abandon the Paris Agreement—he did so in a 2017 order as well.

The Paris Agreement aims to keep long-term global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels (the average between 1850 and 1900), and if that is not possible, to limit it to below 2 degrees Celsius.

The US is the second largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world (after China) and, historically, the largest polluter. The US is responsible for 20% of historical CO2 emissions globally between 1850 and 2022, as per the United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report of 2024.

The US decision comes at a time when 2024 was declared both the warmest year on record and the first year when the average global temperature exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold over pre-industrial levels.

The US now joins countries such as Iran, Libya, and Yemen, which have not ratified the Paris Agreement. The COP29 climate talks ended in Azerbaijan in November last year, with developed countries not budging beyond the $300 billion offer for climate finance.

This amount has been described as "too little, too late" by negotiators from developing nations and activists alike. The amount, at the center of an acrimonious couple of closing days, is far short of the $600 billion some developing nations have sought, and may not entirely be in the form of grants from rich nations, which have historically contributed the lion's share of greenhouse gases.

The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) is meant to build on the $100 billion a year funding that the developed world agreed to give the developing world in 2009, but which was only finally met (depending on how it is calculated) in 2022.