The Weekly Focus Edition 91
Economic impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The Russia Ukraine war has had devastating impacts on the world and has resulted in a countless loss of lives. This week we will be covering an economic analysis of the war and seeing the results on the global markets. To begin with, the Euro; Euro has been a vital and strong currency ever since the PIIGS eurozone crisis, with austerity and promising reforms, we have seen the Euro become one of the strongest currencies. The Euro fell to less than 1.10$ on Friday, and we have not seen a result like this in the last two years! It has shed over 3% against the dollar, this was the largest weekly fall since March 2020. Moving on to metal prices, due to the sanctions on Russian goods, key metal supplier prices have soared to astronomical heights, approximately 40% since the war started! Along with that energy and gas prices have flown up by near 21% due to similar reasons. This has taken a huge toll on European banks and global economies. Countries will have challenging times in diversifying economies and reducing dependency on foreign goods, seeing that this war could take turns by the minute.
What effects could happen in the long term? We have seen that in the last major euro crisis, heavy debts and massive pay-cuts were in order, economies crashed like dominoes and people had extremely dire levels of low income. We could also see that a new superpower comes out of this situation or Asian nations have an upside as a ton of manufacturers are planning to relocate and want cheap labour. Countries are currently searching for alternatives but there have been no economic upsides from this war, on nations as of now. We hope to see that economies can bounce back and supply of any goods which are needed do not decrease, this world does not need another crisis, especially an economic one.
Is the magnetic field on the moon protecting our ICE?
Ice on the moon?
For years, scientists have believed that the cold craters at the poles of the Moon contain water ice, a scientific benefit and a potential resource for manned Mars missions. Now, researchers have discovered why ice remains in an otherwise dry world. Some polar craters may be protected by ancient magnetic fields.
"It's really exciting," says Jim Green, a former NASA Chief Scientist who wasn't involved in this task. “It makes these areas even more attractive.” Hundreds of polar craters are a permanent shadow due to the low lunar tilt of the Moon to the Sun at 1.5 ° compared to the Earth's 23.4 °. The sun never rises beyond the edge and temperatures are kept low to -250 ° C. In some pits, orbiting spacecraft radar devices have detected signs of water ice reflections, probably from comet collisions. And in 2018, scientists using equipment onboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in India reported measurements showing how polar ice molecules absorbed infrared light. This is some of the clearest evidence to date.
Other News
Japan to invest over 3.2 lakh crores into India over the next 5 years, India and Japan to further strengthen ties.
Russia uses hypersonic missiles in Ukraine to target weapons storage facilities.
Europe experienced a second wave of Omicron, cases spike after 2 months of lows.
2 Chinese jets and a helicopter entered Taiwanese airspace after an aircraft carrier sailed through the Taiwan strait recently.
Russia bomb theatre where refugees were hiding in Mariupol, face intense criticism
Indian Badminton star Lakshya Sen entered his first global final at All England
LeClerc’s Ferrari ended up on pole in the first qualifier race of the F1 season, Verstappen ends second.
The Asia cup is set to take place on August 27th in the T20 format.
India lose to Australia in the ongoing Women’s world cup.
Fact or Fiction
1) Over 6,000 new computer viruses are created and released every month. 90% of emails contain some form of malware!
2) One Petabyte (PB) = 1024 (TB). To put this in perspective, a 50PB hard drive could hold the entire written works of mankind from the beginning of recorded history in all languages.
3) Alexa is always listening to your conversations. Alexa stores all of your dialogue history in the cloud to improve the Alexa experience.
4) On average, people read 4% slower from a screen than from paper.
5) The first computer mouse was made in 1964 by Doug Engelbart. It was rectangular and made from wood!
6) On average, there is only one reply per 12 million spam emails sent.
7) Surgeons that grew up playing video games more than three hours per week make 37% fewer errors and have a 42% faster completion rate when performing laparoscopic surgery and suturing.
8) NASA’s internet speed is 80 GB per second.
9) Until 2010, carrier pigeons were faster than the internet.
10) In 1991, the first ever computer virus was developed. Named Creeper, it was made as an experiment just to see how it spread between computers. The virus simply displayed the message: “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!”
Fantasy, Fiction
14+
Cassandra Clare
★★★★★
The first book of the Last Hours series, the fantasy novel in continuation to the Shadowhunter series, is set in the 1900s and is about a young Shadowhunter, Cordelia Carstairs, who is moving to London with her mother and brother after her father is accused of a terrible crime. She meets her old friends, James and Lucie Herondale, but what she feels for James is not something a friend would feel for the other. However, James is sworn to marry someone else. Soon, Cordelia realises her life in London is not going to be as perfect as she planned as a series of deadly demon attacks threaten her city and dear friends.
Written by Vivaan Dharamshi
Edited by Nirvaan Zaveri
Article 1 by Arhaan Zaveri
Article 2 by Krishnav Bubna
Fact or Fiction by Nikunj Gupta
Review by Saveer Solanki
Fact or Fiction Answers:
1) Fact
2) Fact
3) Fact
4) Fiction (It’s actually 10% slower, and it might not sound like a lot but it makes a huge difference in the long run)
5) Fact
6) Fact
7) Fact
8) Fiction (Their internet speed is not 80, but 91 GBPS!! That means you can download all of your favourite video games in a matter of seconds!!)
9) Fact
10) Fiction (It was created all the way back in 1971, and that time technology wasn’t even that advanced, so it would have been quite a task to make a fully functioning virus)