Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2021

Notes:
The Indian Meteorological Department has undertaken installation of Agro-Automatic Weather Stations to provide exact weather forecast to the people, especially the farmers. The installation was done at District Agromet Units located in the Krishi Vigyan Kendras under the Indian Council of Agriculture Research network.

Notes:
Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has constructed the highest motorable road in the world at a height of 19,300 ft at Umlingla Pass in the Eastern Ladakh region. This construction has created a record in high-altitude road construction. BRO has constructed a 52-km long tarmac road through Umlingla Pass, bettering the record of a road which is in Bolivia at 18,953 ft. This newly constructed road by BRO will now connect the important towns in Chumar sector of Eastern Ladakh.

Notes:
The India-Russia joint military training Exercise INDRA 2021 commenced at Prudboy Ranges, Volgograd on 4th August, 2021 with an opening ceremony that saw the unfurling of the national flags of both the countries. An official release stated that exercise INDRA 2021 will enhance interoperability between the Indian and Russian Armies.

Notes:
Indian boxer Lovlina Borgohain won the bronze medal in women’s welterweight (69 kg) category at the Tokyo Olympics on 4th August, 2021. The 23-year-old from Assam lost the semi-final to Turkey’s Busenaz Surmeneli.

Notes:
The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the year 2019. CDRI has 25 countries and seven international organisations as members now with Bangladesh being the latest entrant, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said. MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the objective of the CDRI is to promote the resilience of existing and new infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks in support of sustainable development.

Notes:
Nethra Kumanan is an Indian sailor. She won Bronze medal in World Cup sailing in Miami in 2020. She is the first Indian woman sailor to qualify for Olympics. In January, 2020, Nethra Kumanan became the first Indian woman to win a bronze medal at the Sailing World Cup. Kumanan competed in this year’s Tokyo Olympics in the laser radial class of sailing. The laser radial is a small boat, just big enough to carry one person, who has to navigate the boat.

Notes:
Karnataka has become the first state in the country to issue the order with regard to the implementation of National Education Policy-2020, State Higher Education Minister C N Ashwath Narayan claimed. The state government has issued an order on Saturday on the implementation of NEP-2020 with effect from the current academic year 2021-2022. The implementation will be done as per the guidelines of the NEP.

Notes:
The Indian compound girls’ and mixed teams broke under-18 world records during their ranking round of the World Archery Youth Championships which is being held in Wroclaw, Poland. The girls’ team of Priya Gurjar, Parneet Kaur and Ridhu Senthilkumar combined for a total of 2067 to better the previous record by 22 points. Priya also combined with Kushal Dalal for a mixed pair tally of 1401 to break the previous mark of 1387.

Notes:
IIFL Finance has partnered with Bangalore and Gurgaon-based FinBox to offer innovative digital credit products to its merchants. The investment services company will offer digital credit avenues to its merchants, B2B e-commerce traders; using FinBox’s embedded buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) and working capital credit products. Through this partnership, IIFL and FinBox will disburse ₹1,000 crore in loans over the next 2 quarters, through a completely digital model. Rajat Deshpande, co-founder and chief executive officer FinBox said that the FinBox Embedded Finance Platform powers credit on multiple B2B, e-commerce and retailer aggregator platforms. FinBox’s artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered underwriting capability will enable to extend credit even to MSMEs with thin-to-no credit history.

Notes:

• Asia’s first demonstration facility for medical wastewater treatment using electron beam (EB) technology has started operations in China.
• This is the first pilot scale demonstration (400 cubic meters per day) of EB for medical wastewater treatment.
• This facility is located in the Hubei Province and it disinfects medical wastewater and decomposes antibiotics without the need of additional disinfectant or the production of secondary pollution.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency has played a major role in EB application in China.