# Covid

• India logged over 3800 new covid cases on Saturday, the highest daily tally in six months.
• India recorded over 18450 fresh cases in the past week (March 26-April 1), a 2.1 times rise over the previous seven days tally of 8781.
• The doubling times of cases has reduced to less than seven days.
• On the positive side, the daily cases remain relatively low and the rise in covid deaths has been modest, 36 fatalities were recorded up from 29.

# Dams

• A parliamentary panel has expressed concerns over the safety of Aging dams in the country.
• Panel said there are 234 functional large dams in India which are more than 100 years old – some of them over 300 years old – but so far none of these dams have been decommissioned.
• Dam decommissioning is a very long process which includes removal of hydro electric generation facilities and recontouring of river channels through ecologically viable interventions in the catchment areas.
• The centre legislated the Dam safety act in 2021 to provide for surveillance, inspection, O&M of a specified dam.

# ISRO

• In a significant milestone in developing India’s Own reusable launch vehicle that is similar to a space shuttle, ISRO in collaboration with the IAF and DRDO successfully conducted the RLV autonomous landing mission at Chitradurga in Karnataka on Sunday.
• In a first in the world, a winged body (RLV) was carried to an altitude of 4.5 KM by IAF Chinook helicopter and released for carrying out an autonomous landing on a runway.
• The autonomous landing was carried out under the exact conditions of a space re entry vehicle’s landing.

# Railways

• The Indian Railways has recorded the highest ever earning of ₹2.31 lakh crore from the freight and passenger segment in 2022-23.
• It is 26% more than the previous financial year.
• This is also a rare occasion when the national transporter’s revenue from these two key segments has also surpassed the revised estimate of ₹2.29 lakh crore.