Test: August 2021 Weekly Current Affair - 3 - UPSC MCQ

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated the country’s first smog tower at Baba Kharak Singh Marg in the Connaught Place area in the national capital. The tower will purify 1,000 cubic metres of air per second within a radius of around 1 km.
The tower, built at a cost of Rs 20 crore, has been funded by the Delhi government.

The Centre has notified Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products- RoDTEP Scheme Guidelines and Rates. Ministry of Commerce and Industry in a statement said that the scheme for zero rating of exports will boost the country’s exports and competitiveness in the global markets .The rates of RoDTEP will cover 8555 tariff lines.

1988 batch Maharshtra Cadre IAS officer Apurva Chandra has been appointed as Secretary in Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Senior BJP leader from Tamil Nadu La Ganesan was appointed the new governor of Manipur. The post of the governor had fallen vacant after the retirement of Najma Heptulla earlier this month.

At a time when drones emerge as a major security threat in the country, the Kerala police launched a first-of-its-kind Drone Forensic Lab and Research Centre with an aim to address the rising concerns in this regard.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said they would jointly sponsor a $50 million loan portfolio guarantee to Kotak Mahindra Bank to support increased financial access to women borrowers, and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India.

The book titled “Operation Trojan Horse: A Novel Inspired by True Events” coauthored by Abhishek Sharan and D.P. Sinha has been released recently.

As part of its Persian Gulf deployment, INS Kochi is at Manama in Bahrain. The ship will participate in the four-day Maritime Partnership Exercise.

Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar inaugurated the world’s second-largest refurbished state-of-the-art National Gene Bank at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), Pusa in New Delhi.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed banks to maintain a branch-wise list of vacant lockers as well as a wait-list for the purpose of allotment of lockers and ensure transparency in allotment of lockers. Revised instructions will come into effect from January 1, 2022, the RBI said.

Godrej Industries Limited (GIL) Chairman Adi Godrej will step down from the board of Godrej Consumer Products Limited, the company said in a regulatory filing. Nadir Godrej, who is currently the GIL MD, will replace Adi Godrej as the new chairman. The changes will come into effect from October 1, 2021.

Mohammad Azam from Karimnagar district in Telangana has been awarded the National Youth Award recently by the Union Youth Affairs and Sports Minister Anurag Singh Thakur in Delhi for displaying exemplary leadership qualities.

Union Minister Dr.Jitendra Singh released “IndiGau’, India’s first Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) based chip for the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Ongole etc.
This indigenous chip was developed by the concerted efforts of scientists of National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NAIB), Hyderabad.
IndiGau is purely indigenous and the largest cattle chip of the world. It has 11,496 markers (SNPs) more than that placed on 777K Illumina chip of US & UK breeds.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) launched ‘Son Chiriya’ – a brand and logo – for marketing the products of Urban Self Help Groups (SHGs).

Former Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob was appointed as the new Prime Minister of Malaysia. He will succeed Muhyiddin Yassin

NTPC Limited has commissioned the largest floating solar PV project of 25 MegaWatt on the reservoir of its Simhadri thermal station in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

The second edition of the joint naval exercise, Zair-Al-Bahr, between the Indian Navy and Qatar Emiri Naval Force (QENF) was conducted in the Persian Gulf.

Taking the process of decentralisation further in Chhattisgarh, four new districts will be created – namely Mohla-Manpur, Sakti, Sarangarh-Bilaigarh and Manendragarh, while 18 new tehsils will also be formed.

The book titled ‘Mission Domination: An Unfinished Quest‘ — is co-authored by Boria Majumdar and Kushan Sarkar.

India Ratings and Research (Ind Ra) revised upwards its 2021-22 GDP growth forecast to 9.4% considering the surprisingly faster recovery after the second wave of Covid, higher exports and sufficient rainfall.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi released capitalization support funds to the tune of Rs. 1625 Crore to over 4 lakh Self Help Groups (SHG). In addition, he released Rs. 25 crore as seed money for 7500 SHG members under the PM Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME) Scheme of Ministry of Food Processing Industries and Rs. 4.13 crore as funds to 75 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) being promoted under the Mission.

India and Vietnam navies have carried out bilateral maritime exercise in the South China Sea, the Indian navy said. Accordingly, Indian Naval Ship (INS) Ranvijay and INS Kora undertook bilateral maritime exercise with the Vietnam People’s Navy frigate VPNS Ly Thai To (HQ-012).

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched an ambitious ‘Ubharte Sitaare Fund’ -USF for export-oriented firms and startups in a program at Lucknow. The Fund aims at arranging funds for promotion of micro, small and medium companies. The fund has been set up by Exim Bank and SIDBI.

The Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve (KNP &TR) of Assam, globally feted for being a sanctuary to the one-horned rhino, has become the first national park in the country to equip its forest guards with satellite phones as an anti-poaching measure. BSNL will be the service provider and the park authorities will bear the monthly expenses.

Privatisation-bound Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), has launched Urja, a virtual assistant with AI/NLP (Artificial Intelligence/Natural Language Processing) capabilities and trained on more than 600 use cases.