Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs has formed a five-member central team under Smart Cities Director Rahul Kapoor.
The panel will formulate project reports for both the cities, to improve infrastructure and employment opportunities in Ladakh. These cities have been selected in addition to the 100 smart cities in different states. This idea was initially proposed by the Home Affairs Ministry.

Notes:
Mizoram has recently launched the Green-Ag project, funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF). It is the only North Eastern state to be named for the project.
In addition to Mizoram, four states namely Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand are implementing the scheme. The project aims to promote sustainable transformation of agriculture without compromising the country’s food security and farmers income.

Notes:
The Union Government has extended the deadline for filing income tax returns for 2018-19 fiscal by two months till September 30.
The reason for the extension is constraints due to the Covid-19 induced lockdown. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has extended the deadline for the third time to September 30. Earlier it was postponed from March 31 to June 30 and then to July 31.

Notes:
State-owned oil and gas company and the largest commercial oil company in the country, Indian Oil has partnered with France’s Total.
The Joint Venture has been formed to make Superior Quality Bitumen derivatives and specialty products for India’s road construction industry. The JB would initially take over the existing plant of Total at Jodhpur, Rajasthan and then invest Rs 226 crore to set up six new plants across India.

Notes:
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has recently launched the official YouTube channel of the National Cooperative Development Corporation.
It is called the ‘Sahakar Cooptube NCDC Channel and is a new initiative by NCDC, a statutory Corporation under the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. The Union Minister also launched instruction videos produced by NCDC on ‘Formation and Registration of a Cooperative’.

Notes:
Union Ministry of Defence, IIT Kanpur and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding.
The MoU is for developing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques to analyse public grievances. The grievances received on the web-based Centralised Public Grievances Redress and Monitoring System of the Ministry would be subjected to predictive analysis.

Notes:
Malayalam movie ‘Moothon’ has won the best film award at the New York Indian Film Festival 2020 (NYIFF).
In addition to the best film award, Malayalam star Nivin Pauly won the best actor award and Sanjana Dipu won in the best child artist category. The Malayalam-Hindi bilingual movie was directed by Geetu Mohandas and was released in the year 2019.

Notes:
The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has recently developed a mobile application named ‘COVID19BWM’.
Municipal corporations and state pollution boards are directed to upload data regarding collection and disposal of Covid-19 biomedical waste from residences and quarantine centres, in the app. This was also mandated by the Supreme Court.

Notes:
The state government of Chhattisgarh has launched a social security scheme for Tendupatta (Tendu leaves) collectors.
The scheme was named as ‘Saheed Mahendra Karma Tendupatta Sangrahak Samajik Suraksha Yojana’, after the Congress leader Mahendra Karma, who was killed by rebels in the year 2013. The scheme aims to provide financial support to families of tendupatta labourers.

Notes:
Pune-based Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), a deemed university under the Defence Ministry’s Department of Defence Research and Development, has won the first prize in the Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2020.
SIH is a national-level digital product building competition, jointly organised by the Ministry of Education and AICTE. The DIAT team developed a technology called ‘DRISHTI’ to recognise face, expression and gesture using artificial intelligence (AI).