Important Weekly Current Affairs : Third week of August 2021

National Current Affairs

DRDO develops Chaff technology to safeguard fighter jets

• The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on August 19, 2021, said it had developed an advanced Chaff technology to safeguard the fighter aircraft of the Air Force against hostile radar threats.
• The DRDO said that in today’s electronic warfare, survivability of fighter aircraft was of prime concern because of advancement in modern radar threats.
• It explained that their survivability, Counter Measure Dispensing System (CMDS) was used that provides passive jamming against infrared and radar threats.
• Chaff is a critical defence technology used to protect fighter aircraft from hostile radar threats. Importance of this technology lay in the fact that very less quantity of chaff material deployed in the air acted as decoy to deflect enemy missiles for ensuring safety of the fighter aircraft.

NTPC commissioned 25 Megawatt floating solar PV project

• NTPC Ltd commissioned the largest floating solar PV project in Visakhapatnam. It is a 25 MW project on reservoir of Simhadri thermal power station.

Google commemorated the 117th birth anniversary of freedom fighter and poet Subhadra Kumari Chauhan with a striking doodle on its homepage.

• In a statement, Google described Ms. Chauhan as a “trailblazing writer and freedom fighter” who “rose to national prominence during a male-dominated era of literature”.
• Ms. Chauhan was born on this day in 1904 in Nihalpur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad, now Prayagraj.
• Her poetry and prose primarily focused on hardships that the Indian women overcame “such as gender and caste discrimination”.

India welcomes ASEAN consensus on Myanmar

• India chaired a closed UN Security Council meeting on Myanmar and welcomed the ASEAN five-point consensus on August 17, 2021.
• The ASEAN five-point consensus states that there shall be an immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar and all parties shall exercise utmost restraint; constructive dialogue among all parties concerned shall commence to seek a peaceful solution in the interests of the people.

External Affairs Minister (EAM), S Jaishankar, announced the rollout of “UNITE Aware” tech to help protect UN peacekeepers.

• He made this announcement at th4 UN headquarters in New York while he was chairing UN security council open debate on “Technology and Peacekeeping”. He noted that, UN peacekeeping missions continue to operate in challenging situations involving terrorists, armed groups and non-state actors.
• Because of nature of peacekeeping has become more complex, it is significant that out capabilities are in pace to secure the peace keepers

Ratification of Kigali Amendment to Montreal Protocol

• India has approved the ratification of the Kigali Agreement to the Montreal Protocol in order to phase down Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
• India now requires to reduce its HFCs usage by 80% by 2047. China and the US have to achieve the same in 2045 and 2034.

India- Vietnam: Bilateral Maritime Drill conducted in South China Sea

• Indian Navy and Vietnam People’s Navy conducted joint drills in the South China Sea as part of maritime cooperation between both the countries.

Other Important National NEWS

• Supreme Court allows women to appear for NDA exam
• TCS company has become the second Indian company after Reliance to cross the market value of Rs 13 lakh crore on August 17, 2021.
• Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) signed an agreement for cooperation in remote sensing satellite data sharing, according to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
• The Drug Controller General has granted emergency approval to the Zycov-D, a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Ahmedabad based Zydus Cadilla group, making it the first vaccine in India that can be administered to adults as well as those 12 and above. It’s also the only DNA-based vaccine in the world and can be administered without a needle, purportedly minimising chances of reactions.
• India has decided to vaccinate Afghanistan returnees against polio for free as a preventive measure against the wild polio virus.
  • Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries in the world where polio is still endemic.
• The Quad countries — India, the U.S., Australia and Japan — will conduct the next edition of the high-voltage Malabar naval exercise from August 26 to 29 off the coast of Guam in the face of China’s growing military muscle-flexing in the Indo-Pacific.
• Ahead of the harvesting season, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) has asked Delhi and neighbouring States to ensure the adoption and application of a standard protocol developed by ISRO for estimation of crop residue burning fire events using satellite data.
• Union Minister Raosaheb Danve on Sunday said that the Railways has suffered losses to the tune of ₹36,000 crore during the coronavirus pandemic, and termed goods trains as the real revenue generators for the national transporter.
• Sanskrit Week: being celebrated from August 19 to 25. Sanskrit Week is celebrated to promote and popularise this ancient language.
• Exercise Konkan 2021 was held in English Channel in between INS Tabar (Indian Navy) and HMS Westminster (British Navy).
• World Athletics U20 Championships : Shaili singh has won silver medal in women’s long jump, India finishes with 3 medals.

International Current Affairs

• Indian naval ship Shakti carrying 100 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) reached Sri Lanka on Sunday to help the island nation in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Sri Lanka is currently experiencing a rapid rise in infections.
• Google and Facebook have joined hands to build a 12,000-kilometre long subsea cable, aimed at expanding connectivity in the Asia-Pacific region. The cable system is expected to have an initial design capacity of more than 190 terabits per second to meet rising data demands in the region.
  • The undersea cable will connect Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore, and is expected to be completed in 2024.
• China passed a new Online Privacy Law on August 20, 2021 with the aim of preventing businesses from collecting any sensitive personal data.
• China approves Three-Child Policy : National legislature of China formally endorsed the three-child policy that was mooted by ruling Communist Party.
• Nepal’s main opposition Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) (CPN-UML), the largest communist party of the country, has officially split. The registration of a new party by Madhav Kumar Nepal brings to end a long-standing feud between him and former prime minister K.P Sharma Oli in the CPN-UML.

Economy Current Affairs

• RBI, IRDAI nod must for FDI in bank-led insurance. Applications for foreign direct investment in an insurance company promoted by a private bank would be cleared by the RBI and IRDAI to ensure that the 74% limit of overseas investment is not breached.
• The ‘Ubharte Sitaare Fund’ has been set up by Exim Bank and SIDBI. The fund is expected to identify Indian enterprises with potential advantages by way of technology, products or processes along with export potential, but which are currently underperforming or unable to tap their latent potential to grow.
• After the initial public offering (IPO) of LIC, about 60% of the insurance business will be with listed companies. The IPO of the state-owned life insurer is part of the government’s efforts to raise ₹1.75 lakh crore through disinvestment in the current financial year.
• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the formation of a composite Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) to capture the extent of financial inclusion across the country.
  • The annual FI-Index for the period ended March 2021 stood at 53.9 compared with 43.4 for the period ended March 2017. The FI-Index will be published in July every year, the RBI said in a release.
  • The index captures information on various aspects of financial inclusion in a single value ranging between 0 and 100, where 0 represents complete financial exclusion and 100 indicates full financial inclusion.
• Indian renewable energy project developers have raised ₹26,300 crore through issuance of green bonds during January to June this year.
• National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) :
  • The NMP comprises a four-year pipeline of the central government’s brownfield infrastructure assets.
  • Besides providing visibility to investors, NMP will also serve as a medium-term roadmap for the asset monetisation initiative of the government.
• Payments giant Mastercard has said it will phase out magnetic strips in debit and credit cards starting 2024, and will focus on alternatives like contactless and biometric cards.
  • Changing consumer habits for payments and the development of newer technologies have led to the decline in chip-based payments.

Person/Places in NEWS

• Apurva Chandra has been appointed the Secretary of Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India.
• The Godfather of Sudoku, Maki Kaji, passed away at the age of 69, due to bile duct cancer, on August 17, 2021.
• Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and veteran BJP leader Kalyan Singh died. He was 89.
• Olympic footballer and former National coach Syed Shahid Hakim passed away in Kalaburagi.
• Fifteenth Finance Commission chairperson N.K. Singh has been elected as the president of the Institute of Economic Growth ((IEG) Society after former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stepped down from the post.
• Hakainde Hichilema has won presidential election of Zambia.
• Malaysia’s king appointed Ismail Sabri Yaakob as the prime minister on Friday, replacing Muhyiddin Yassin, who stepped down this week after losing his parliamentary majority.

Science Current Affairs

• Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk said it will probably launch the prototype of a humanoid robot called “Tesla Bot” next year, saying the robot would “eliminate dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks.”
• Tesla unveiled at the event chips it designed in-house for its fast computer, Dojo, to train its automated driving system.
• Japanese space agency scientists said they plan to bring soil samples back from the Mars region ahead of the United States and China, which started Mars missions last year, in hopes of finding clues to the planet’s origin and traces of possible life.
  • The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, plans to launch an explorer in 2024 to land on Phobos, a Martian moon, to collect 10 grams (0.35 ounce) of soil and bring it back to Earth in 2029.
  • The rapid return trip is expected to put Japan ahead of the United States and China in bringing back samples from the Martian region despite starting later.
  • NASA’s Perseverance rover has landed in a Mars crater where it is to collect 31 samples that are to be returned to Earth with help from the European Space Agency as early as 2031.
  • China in May became the second country to land and operate a spacecraft on Mars and plans to bring back samples around 2030.
• The paper by Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay seeks to resolve a crucial part of this perennial puzzle of South Asian prehistory. A recent publication has provided crucial evidence that Ancestral Dravidian languages were possibly spoken by a significant population in the Indus Valley civilisation.
• An international team of researchers has found the mechanism behind Jupiter’s atmospheric heating. Using data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the researchers created the most-detailed yet global heat map of the planet’s upper atmosphere and confirmed that Jupiter’s powerful aurorae are responsible for heating the planet.
• A new plant of the Brachystelma R.Br. species has been found in Tumakuru, and has been named after the district from where its type material was collected. ‘B. tumakurense’ comes from a tuber and belongs to the Apocynaceae family (a family of flowering plants).
• Researchers have discovered a new species of cascade frog from Arunachal Pradesh and named it after the Adi hills, the abode of Adi tribes. Amolops adicola, the new species discovered by a team of Indian and American biologists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), University of Delhi, India, and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, the U.S., is a predominantly brown colour frog, with a size ranging roughly between 4 cm to 7 cm.

Also refer :

• Weekly Current Affairs Dose : Second Week Of August 2021
• Top 50 Science Questions From Previous Year UPSC Prelims