Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
The World’s tallest Pier bridge is being constructed by Indian Railways in Manipur across the river “Ijai”. The height of its tallest pier is 141m. The bridge is a part of Jiribam-Tupul-Imphal railway line project. The existing record for the tallest pier bridge is 139m at Montenegro in Europe.
The bridge is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs.280 crore and the construction work is expected to be completed by March 2020. The total length of the bridge is estimated to be 703 meters.

Notes:
A joint report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) stated that, 41 lakh youth in the country lost jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ‘Tackling the Covid-19 youth employment crisis in Asia and the Pacific’ report stated that construction and farm sector workers account for the majority of job losses. Youth (15-24 years) will be hit harder than adults (25 and older) in the immediate crisis.

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:
Social networking major Twitter released its latest transparency report, which has the data between July -December 2019 on its rule enforcement, legal demands on content removal among others.
As per the report, India stands at fifth position in requesting Twitter and Periscope to remove content, based on local laws. Japan, Russia and Turkey ranked in the top 3 positions in the list. Twitter recorded a 21% rise in global account information requests and 789 requests from India.

Notes:
Madhya Pradesh is set to be the first state in the country to recruit candidates to government jobs on the basis of National Recruitment Agency (NRA) test.
This decision has been informed by the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, a day after the Union cabinet approved setting up of NRA to conduct a Common Eligibility Test (CET), for conducting examinations which are presently conducted by IBPS, RRB, SSC among others

Notes:
Banks Board Bureau has recommended Ashwini Bhatia for the position of Managing Director (MD) of the State Bank of India (SBI).
The Personnel Ministry has appointed Ashwani Bhatia for the said position, up to the date of his superannuation (May 31, 2022). He is currently serving as the MD and CEO at SBI Mutual Fund, and will replace P K Gupta who retired on March 31.

Notes:
The US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), an US based India-centric business advocacy group has announced to honour Anand Mahindra and Shantanu Narayen with 2020 Leadership Awards.
The Mahindra group Chairman and Adobe Chairman and CEO are awarded for promoting US-India bilateral ties. It will be presented at 3rd Annual Leadership Summit of USISPF titled “US-India Week: Navigating New Challenges”, that will be virtually convened from August 31.

Notes:
The state of California in USA is struggling with more than 500 lightning sparked fires, burning more than 9 lakh acres. More than 1.19 lakh people have been evacuated.
LNU Lightning Complex, SCU Lightning Complex and CZO August Complex had some of the largest fires. It has adversely affected the northern part of California. Several people are involved in containing the fire.

Notes:
With more than 15 crore users and more than 6.6 million Bluetooth traced contacts, the official contact tracing application of India, Aarogya Setu is the most downloaded contact tracing app in the world, as on date.
The application team has recently introduced ‘Open API Service’, which is used to obtain answers for real-time queries about the health status of their employees or any other Aarogya Setu User who has consented to share their health status.

Notes:
The Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance has notified the ‘Customs (Administration of Rules of Origin under Trade Agreements) Rules, 2020’.
The norms for enforcing the ‘rules of origin’ provisions has been released by the Government recently. These rules will come into effect from September 21, 2020 and will apply where preferential rate of duty is claimed by importer. The ”Rules of origin” provision mandates minimal processing in the FTA country.