What is an order book?
An order book is the list of orders that a trading venue uses to record the interest of buyers and sellers in a particular financial instrument. The Reserve Bank of India has launched the latest round of quarterly order books, inventories and capacity utilization survey (OBICUS) of the manufacturing sector. The survey provides valuable input for monetary policy formulation. The information collected in the survey includes quantitative data on new orders received during the reference quarter, backlog of orders, pending orders, total inventories with a breakup between work-in-progress (WiP) and finished goods (FG) inventories and item-wise production.
Various pandemics:
Justinian Plague: Broke out in the sixth century in Egypt and spread fast to Constantinople, which was the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The plague was named after the then Byzantine Emperor Justinian. The outbreak had killed up to 25 to 100 million people.
Black Death: The Black Death, or pestilence, hit Europe and Asia in the 14th century. It killed some 75 to 200 million people. Black Death led to improved wages for serfs and agricultural labourers. The land became more abundant relative to labour. It also led to the weakening of the Catholic Church.
Spanish Flu: Broke out during the last phase of the First World War. Germans and Austrians were affected so badly that the outbreak derailed their offensives.
Zero yield:
Zero yield refers to a nuclear test in which there is no explosive chain reaction of the type ignited by the detonation of a nuclear warhead. U.S. state department suspects that China may have secretly set off low-level underground nuclear test explosions despite claiming to observe an international pact banning such blasts.
U.S. concerns about Beijing’s possible breaches of a “zero yield” standard for test blasts have been prompted by activities at China’s Lop Nur nuclear test site throughout 2019.
Dollar Swap:
Dollar swap is a kind of currency swap, the word swap means exchange. A currency swap between the two countries is an agreement to exchange currencies with predetermined terms and conditions. In a dollar swap arrangement, the US Federal Reserve will provide dollars to a foreign central bank. The parties agree to swap back these quantities of their two currencies at a specified date in the future, which is the next day or as far ahead as three months, using the same exchange rate as in the first transaction.
Trimeresurus Salazar:
Trimeresurus Salazar is a new species, the fifth variety of reptiles to have been discovered in Arunachal Pradesh in a little more than a year. Salazar’s pit viper belongs to the genus Trimeresurus Lacépède comprising charismatic venomous serpents with morphologically as well as ecologically diverse species. he other two species are the Arunachal pit viper, India’s fifth brown pit viper but with a reddish tinge, and a natricid burrowing snake similar to the shieldtail snake found in the Western Ghats.