Notes:
The United States Trade Representative releases the “Special 301 Report” on effectiveness of US trading partners’ protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.
The recent report has placed India, China, Russia and four other countries namely Argentina, Chile, Indonesia and Venezuela on its annual Priority Watch List. All seven countries on this year’s list were also on the last year’s list. Twenty trading partners are on the Watch List.

Notes:
Chief Justice of India NV Ramana chaired the 39th conference of Chief Justices of various High Courts of the country, at the premises of the Supreme Court, New Delhi.
The first Chief Justices’ conference was held in November 1953 and 38 such conferences have been organised so far. The last Conference was held in the year 2016. It aims to address the issues concerning the judiciary and to discuss the steps to be taken to improve the justice delivery system.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet approved an additional funding of Rs 820 crore for India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) for expansion of its services to all post offices in the country.
Out of the 1.56 lakh post offices, IPPB currently operates from 1.3 lakh post offices. Since the launch, it has opened over 5.25 crore accounts with 82 crore aggregate number of transactions. The Cabinet has approved a future fund infusion worth Rs 500 crore for meeting regulatory requirements and technological upgradation.

Notes:
IndiGo became the first airline in Asia to use the indigenously developed satellite-based navigation system ‘GAGAN’ during landing.
The system has been jointly developed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Indian Space Research Organisation. It provides corrections to the global positioning system (GPS) signal to improve air traffic management, with the help of reference and uplink stations.

Notes:
According to the Labour and Employment Ministry’s third Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) report, over 4 lakh jobs were created in firms with 10 or more workers in 9 selected sectors in October-December 2021.
The Ministry’s survey, which covered 10,834 units established before 2013-14 in the third round, found employment had increased from 3.10 crore in July-September 2021 to 3.145 crore in the next quarter.