Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Bhupesh Baghel has announced the launch of a new scheme called ‘Indira Van Mitan Yojana’.
The scheme was announced on the occasion of World Tribal Day. It aims to make the forest dwellers in the state self-reliant. Under this scheme, groups of youth will be formed in 10,000 villages of the state and all forest-based economic activities will be conducted via these groups.

Notes:
Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries has gone 10 places ahead in the Fortune Global 500 list and entered into the world’s top 100 companies.
As per the recent 2020 ranking released by Fortune, Reliance has been ranked at 96th place globally. This is the highest rank ever of any Indian company on the Fortune Global 500 list. Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) slipped to 151st rank, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is ranked 190th while State Bank of India (SBI) is at 221st rank.

Notes:
Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has virtually launched the Minimum Standards of Architectural Education Regulations, 2020.
These regulations have been prepared by the experts of the Council of Architecture (CoA). It aims to address the major challenges lying in the field of human habitat in the country. The Minister asked the Council to use innovation in the field of Architecture.

Notes:
International Youth Day is celebrated every year on 12th August. The theme of this year’s International Youth Day is, “Youth Engagement for Global Action”.
In 1998, a resolution to observe August 12 every year as International Youth Day was passed in the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth, which was hosted by the Government of Portugal in cooperation with the United Nations.

Notes:
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a new platform ‘Transparent Taxation – Honoring the Honest’.
The platform aims to ease the compliance and fast- track the refunds so that all honest taxpayers are benefitted. Three main features of the platform include faceless assessment, faceless appeal and tax payers’ charter.

Notes:
The Union Steel Ministry, in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), has proposed to organise a webinar titled ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat: Fostering Steel Usage in Housing & Building Construction and Aviation Sectors’.
The webinar would be conducted with the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and Ministry of Civil Aviation. It would focus on promoting designs and construction in Building, Housing, and Airport Projects.

Notes:
An application called the ‘Interactive Neural Machine Translation (INMT) tool’, has been developed by the Microsoft Research Lab.
Microsoft Lab has collaborated with CGNet Swara, an Indian voice-based online portal and IIIT Naya Raipur for developing this tool. It translates sentences from Hindi to South-Central Dravidian language Gondi and vice-versa. The application aims to motivate youth from the Gond tribal community to learn the language.

Notes:
The Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka has stated that an industrial corridor between Mysuru and Bidar would be built by the state to promote the development of industry and commerce.
The proposed industrial corridor would be in line with Bengaluru-Chennai and Bengaluru- Mumbai corridors. This project forms a significant part of the state’s target to make it a USD 500 billion market in next 5 years.

Notes:
Vijay Rupani, the Chief Minsiter of Gujarat has given approval for construction of sky scrapers and high-rise buildings of 70 floors or more in five major cities of the state namely Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot and Gandhinagar.
The present rule governing the construction of buildings permits construction only up to 23 floors. A special technical committee would be set up to give approval to such projects.

Notes:
Iran has displayed a surface-to-surface ballistic missile, that has a range of 1,400 kilometres, named martyr Qassem Soleimani.
The country also displayed a new cruise missile called martyr Abu Mahdi, with a range of over 1,000 km, amidst the demand from the United States to stop its missile programme. The head of Iran’s Quds Force, Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in a U.S. strike.