Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

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 cabinet of Odisha has approved the tender amounting Rs.1138 crore for implementation of its ambitious irrigation project named “Gangadhar Meher Lift Canal System”.
The irrigation project would irrigate 25,600 hectares of agricultural land in drought hit regions of Barghar and Sonepur districts of Odisha. The project was first announced in the year 2017. The implementing agency will be announced soon.

Notes:
Indian cricket icon and former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has announced retirement from international cricket.
The 39-year-old star is the only captain in the world who led his team to win all three ICC trophies so far. Under his captaincy, India won the ICC World Twenty20 in 2007, Asia Cups in 2010 and 2016, the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011 and the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013. Another Cricketer Suresh Raina also announced his retirement.

Notes:
National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) has built an infrastructure at Rihand project in Uttar Pradesh.
The project has been designed to transport fly ash in bulk at affordable rates to cement plants. NTPC has committed to utilise the fly ash completely from power plants. The power plants will upgrade their infrastructure for utilising the fly ash using the loading facilities of the Indian Railways.

Notes:
IPS officer Rakesh Asthana has been appointed as the Director General of Border Security Force (BSF). The incumbent head RK Shukla is set to retire in February 2020.
Prior to this appointment, he was the head of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security since January 2019. SS Deswal is set to replace him in the said post. Asthana was a 1984-batch IPS Officer and a former official of the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Notes:
A 180-feet Bailey bridge in Jauljibi sector of Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand has been constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), amidst frequent landslides and heavy rains.
The 50-metre span concrete bridge was damaged in the month of July as the area was hit by a cloud burst. The bridge construction by BRO will help around 15,000 people in 20 villages of the district.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan has recently announced that all of the state government jobs will be reserved to the people belonging to its state.
This is the first country in the state to reserve all its jobs to the people of the state. The state government is set to form legal provisions in this regard. During his Independence Day address, the Chief Minister announced that the state will give preference to their youths in government jobs.

Notes:
The state Government of Uttar Pradesh has launched a new Electronics Manufacturing policy to make the state the new global electronics hub.
The policy aims to invite investment up to Rs.40,000 crore in five years and generate nearly 4 lakh direct employment. The new policy has a special focus on Purvanchal and Bundelkhand regions.

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.