Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
Research team from Indian Institute of Science, IISc and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have developed a process for making “Brick like structure” on lunar surface.
The researchers suggest that these bricks could be used for assembling structures in lunar surface. The raw material used is urea and lunar soil. It is developed by using bacteria and guar beans to consolidate the land into load bearing brick like structures.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has recently approved to rename the Manduadih railway station in Uttar Pradesh as ‘Banaras’.
The state government of Uttar Pradesh had earlier sent a request to the Home Ministry for renaming the railway station in its Varanasi district. The Home Ministry issued a no-objection certificate after consulting with the Ministry of Railways, Department of Posts and Survey of India.

Notes:
People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has acquired a small equity stake in the leading Indian private sector bank, ICICI Bank.
It is one among the 357 institutional investors which had subscribed to the issue of the Qualified institutional investors (QIP) placement, of Rs 15,000 crore. PBOC has invested Rs 15 crore in the issue. It had earlier bought a stake in leading institution, HDFC.

Notes:
The President of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has recently stepped down from his role, after the prevalent military rebellion in the country.
The soldiers had detained the President and the country’s Prime Minister Boubou Cisse. The country was seeing a large number of protests against alleged corruption and worsening security. People were demanding the resignation of the President for some time.

Notes:
Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda has virtually launched the tertiary processing centres of ‘Trifood Project’.
It is an initiative of TRIFED, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, in association with Ministry of Food Processing (MoFPI). The Minister launched the project in Raigad of Maharashtra and Jagdalpur of Chhattisgarh. It aims to enhance the income of tribal population by making value addition in the Minor Forest Produces.

Notes:
Government owned power major NTPC Limited has recently announced that it is to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary for its renewable energy business.
The company has recently obtained the approval from the Niti Aayog and Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), Ministry of Finance for formation of a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Notes:
IIT Kharagpur has recently inaugurated the Academy of Classical and Folk Arts on its campus, to offer training on music, fine arts and other performing arts.
This is in lines with the New Education Policy, 2020 to spark innovation and multidisciplinary teaching. The academy hosts a ‘100 ragas’ initiative, which will be headed by the Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty.

Notes:
The water technology company “Va Tech Wabag” has been conferred with the Global Water Award. This award has been given to the company for setting up a tertiary treatment reverse osmosis plant (TTRO) with a capacity of 45 million litres a day, at Chennai.
The award has been given under ‘wastewater project of the year’ category. With this project, Chennai is the first Indian city to reuse more than 20 % of its treated wastewater.

Notes:
The administration of New Delhi has launched a new campaign named ‘Nirmaan Mazdoor Registration campaign’ from August 24 to September 11.
Through the campaign, the Government fast-tracks the process of analysing the applications received under the initiative for online registration of construction workers. Delhi has received over 70,000 applications for the registration.

Notes:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently announced that the African continent is completely free of Polio.
A commission headed by Rose Gana Fomban Leke has certified that no wild Polio cases occurred in the African region for the past four years. The threshold for eradication of poliovirus is also four years. Africa had earlier eradicated smallpox disease.