Daily Current Affairs Quiz – 9th & 10th August 2020

For the first time big cat count will be conducted in the agricultural belt of Pilibhit’s Amaria tehsil, where a tigress and three cubs had moved into eight years ago. The official estimation is to begin within two-three days said the chief director of Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, Uttar Pradesh.

The HQ of Serum Institute of India located at Pune, Maharashtra.

A fire broke out on a coastal shipping boat in the Visakhapatnam Port Trust West Q5 berth on August 9, 2020. The BD51 ship from Chennai reached the port at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. This coastal ship is used to transport crew into ships.

A male swamp deer, commonly known as Barasingha died due to a prolonging illness at the Nandankanan Zoological Park at Bhubaneswar’s Odisha.

The landslides have been reported at the Nayamakkad tea estate at Pettimudy which is located about 30 km from Munnar, adjacent to the Eravikulam National Park (ENP), Kerala. The park is in continuity with the neighboring Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Anamudi Shola National Park, Pampadum Shola National Park, Kurinjimala Sanctuary and Anamalai Tiger Reserve.

Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) a GMR Group-led consortium, has developed AIR SUVIDHA, a first-of-its-kind portal allowing international arriving passengers to fill a mandatory self-declaration form and eligible passengers to apply for exemption from compulsory institutional quarantine for coronavirus. It will make passengers’ journeys more convenient and comfortable in a contactless way as they won’t have to fill the physical copies of the forms on arrival. The online forms have been developed in collaboration with various state governments, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Indira Gandhi International Airport was operated by DIAL.

The Union Minister of Textiles and Women & Child Development, Smt Smriti Zubin Irani, launched the Mobile App & Backend Website for Handloom Mark Scheme (HLM) for the weavers on the occasion of 6th National Handloom Day held virtually on 7th August 2020, organized by the Ministry of Textiles, GoI (Government of India). Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, Shri Jai Ram Thakur joined the virtual board from Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. The mobile app was developed by the Textile Committee of Mumbai to digitalize the process of Registration.

On August 08, 2020 Government of India commemorated the 78th Anniversary of the “Quit India Movement”. On this day in 1942, the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi gave the clarion call of ‘Do or Die’ to all Indians to drive away Britishers from the country. This day is observed as August Kranti Day every year.

The former Member of Parliament (MP), Nandi Yellaiah had passed away due to COVID – 19 infections at 78 in Telangana. He was born on July 1, 1942, in Hyderabad, Telangana. He was the six-term member of Lok shaba. He also represented the Rajya Sabha twice until 2014.

International Cricket Council (ICC) confirmed that India will host the Men’s Twenty-20 (T20) Cricket World Cup 2021 (7th edition) between October – November 2021 as the Board of Control for Cricket in India(BCCI) retained the hosting rights and Australia will host the 2020 Men’s World Cup (8th edition), which was postponed due to the global pandemic in 2022.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley are aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft as it is lifted onto the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship shortly after landing in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. The Demo-2 test flight for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program was the first to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth onboard a commercially built and operated spacecraft. Behnken and Hurley returned after spending 64 days in space.

Serum Institute of India(SII) Private Limited has entered into a new partnership with Gavi, the International Vaccine Alliance, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to accelerate the process of manufacture and delivery of up to 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for India and other low and middle-income countries(LMICs) by 2021 as part of the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), a mechanism within the COVAX Facility. The vaccines will be made available to the 92 countries included in Gavi’s COVAX AMC. SII has set a ceiling price of USD 3 per dose.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, India, and Imperial College London, United Kingdom, have developed nanoparticles called the ‘meta-grid’ or ‘metamaterial grid’ that makes the light-emitting diodes (LED) brighter, energy-efficient and durable. It was jointly developed by Dr. Debabrata Sikdar, assistant professor at IIT Guwahati along with Prof. Sir John B. Pendry and Prof. Alexei A. Kornyshev from Imperial College London. The findings have been recently published in Light: Science and Application journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

The Government of India under the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue has set up a three-member committee headed by Secretary (retired) G.K. Pillai for determination of ceiling rates under the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) scheme. The two other members are Y G Parande, retired Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs member, and Gautam Ray, retired chief commissioner of customs and central excise.

Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, Union Minister for Education inaugurated the global conference on “Reimagining and Transforming the University: Confluence of Ideas during and Beyond the COVID-19 Disruption” hosted by O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) and International Institute for Higher Education Research and Capacity Building (IIHEd) on 6th and 7th August 2020.

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) was selected as one of the ten global organizations for the Food system vision prize by Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with SecondMuse, and OpenIDEO for the ‘Eat Right India’ movement. Also, the Naandi Foundation, a Hyderabad based non-profit organization, as one of the top 10 ‘Visionaries’ in the world for the Food Vision 2050 Prize.

Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Awards 2020 is bestowed to a group of researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur for developing a mechanism for generating electricity from wet clothes left under sunlight to dry. The work has been published in Nano Letters, a high-impact journal in the field, and the innovation has been patented by them.

E-commerce platform Flipkart signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Uttar Pradesh Government’s One District, One Product (ODOP) scheme. As part of the MoU, artisans, weavers and craftsmen under the One District, One Product (ODOP) scheme will be brought into the ‘Flipkart Samarth’ initiative. This partnership will enable the under-served communities to showcase their specialized products and crafts in the e-commerce platform.

An agreement was signed between Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for collaborative research and information dissemination in the area of food and nutrition, during a ceremony which was presided Health Minister Harsh Vardhan

Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) amended the clause 4 (2) of SEBI international financial services centre (IFSC) guidelines, 2015 pertaining to eligibility criteria and the shareholding limit for clearing corporations that wish to operate in such centres. Under the norms, any Indian recognized stock exchange or clearing corporation, or, any recognised stock exchange or clearing corporation of a foreign jurisdiction, will form a subsidiary to provide the services of a clearing corporation in IFSC wherein at least 51% stake is held by such exchange or clearing corporation.

The Rajasthan government is going to start with the ‘Indira Rasoi Yojana’ in urban areas of the state from August 20, in which poor and needy people will get nutritious food for just Rs. 8, said Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.

PM Modi symbolically laid a 40-kilogram (88-pound) silver brick foundation stone to formally start the construction of a temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Ram in the city of Ayodhya in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Modi also released a postage stamp on the Ram Janmabhoomi temple. The temple will be constructed in Nagara style of architecture and will have five domes instead of two.

In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (t) of sub-section (1) of section 196 read with section 240 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (31 of 2016), the New Delhi headquartered Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India has amended the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Voluntary Liquidation Process) Regulations, 2017 by Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Voluntary Liquidation Process) (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2020.

Conrad Kongkal Sangma, Chief Minister of Meghalaya informed the cabinet’s approval for the passage of the “Policy on Reservation of seats for Women in Village Employment Councils(VECs)”, the policy of reserving 50% seats for women in the village level community institutions. This policy ensures the empowerment of women by establishing a forum for women to exercise their leadership and freedom.

Gujarat Government announced the New Industrial Policy 2020 for the State, with an expected average annual outlay of up to Rs 8,000 crore, which is meant to provide incentives to the industries. It aims to provide an estimated Rs 40,000 crore as subsidies to industries in the next 5 years. The new policy is in line with the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. It replaces the Gujarat Industrial Policy 2015. Under the new policy, Gujarat will become the 1st state to “delink incentives from State Goods and Service Tax (SGST)”, where Large industries will be provided up to 12% of fixed capital investment (FCI) to set up manufacturing operations in the state in form of capital subsidy.