Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
The Online Performance dashboard of Ministry of Tribal Affairs called the “Empowering Tribals, Transforming India” has been launched. The dashboard was launched by Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog and Ramesh Chand, Member of NITI Aayog.
The Dashboard is an interactive online platform that shows the real-time details of 11 schemes / initiatives of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. It also displays performance of 5 Scholarship Schemes of the Ministry.

Notes:
The Government of Goa has signed a tri-partite agreement with Siemens and GIZ, a German based agency, for vocational education and training at ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) of the state.
The Indo-German agreement would facilitate in-plant trainings to students, so that they would be exposed to hands-on experience in their respect domain, thereby improving the employability of the students.

Notes:
Google has collaborated with the Central Water Commission (CWC) for providing flood forecasting and public alerts.
Users in the affected region will receive alerts through their Android smartphones if they have enabled the location services. The timely and critical information is being used by several users amidst the heavy rains and floods across the country.

Notes:
The Death Valley is a desert valley which is located in Eastern California, USA. Recently, the temperature at the Death Valley’s Furnace Creek is recorded at 54.4°C. This would be hottest temperature officially verified since 1913, as per World Meteorological Organization.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, Death Valley’s all-time record high is 56.7°C that was recorded in the year 1913. It still stands as the hottest ever temperature recorded on the surface of the earth.

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.

Notes:
The island nation of Sri Lanka has proposed to draft a new Constitution. It will also discard the 19th Constitutional Amendment passed in 2015 which imposes restriction on presidential powers.
It sets a limit of 2 years for the President to be in power. The new President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has stated that new constitution would prioritize the concept of ‘One country, One law for all the people.’

Notes:
Five sportspersons were named as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna awardees and 27 sportspersons as Arjuna awardees.
Rohit Sharma (Cricket), Rani Rampal (Hockey), para athlete Mariyappan Thangavelu, Vinesh Phogat (Wrestling) and Manika Batra (Table Tennis) were selected for the prestigious Khel ratna award. They will be virtually conferred with the award on August 29 on the National Sports Day.

Notes:
The President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has recently announced that the country has discovered a large natural gas reserve along the Black Sea coast.
Around 302 billion cubic meters area of natural gas reserve has been discovered that will reduce the import dependency of the country. As per the country, it will start extracting and using the gas by 2023, when Turkey marks the centenary of the founding of Republic.

Notes:
HSBC India launched its ‘Green Deposit Programme’, to finance green initiatives including renewable energy.
Under this new initiative, the bank will ask their corporate clients to deposit money, which will in turn be used for financing green projects by letting the clients indirectly participate in the sustainability projects. The product offers stable principal, pre-agreed return and protection.

Notes:
A team of scientists of Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune has discovered Ultra Violet light originating from a galaxy named AUDFs01 which is 9.3 billion light years away from Earth.
The UV light was detected by India’s first multi wavelength satellite “Astrosat”. This discovery was made by the team of scientists, led by Dr Kanak Saha.