Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2021

Notes:
A 13-day mega military exercise between Indian and Russian army is scheduled to be organised from August 1 at Volgograd city located in Russia. The name of the Joint military exercise between Indian and Russian army is INDRA. The scheduled exercise is the 12th edition of INDRA and it is named “INDRA-21”.
Accroding to the Indian army, 250 personnel from each side will participate in this 12th edition of the joint military exercise. The military exercise will help in strengthening the bilateral security cooperation and will serve to reinforce the longstanding bond of friendship between India and Russia. It will also conduct counter-terror operations as mandated under the UN’s framework of joint forces against international terror groups.

Notes:
CSIR- Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Chandigarh developed a personal reading machine “Divya Nayan” for visually impaired people. In this device, any printed or digital document can be accessed in the form of speech output. The device can analyse a multi column document and provide seamless reading on the basis of principle of contact scanning. User can place the device over the document to be read and manually scan it. The image is converted into text, text is converted to speech and audio with the help of language dependent optical character.
Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) was established by the Government of India in September 1942. It is an autonomous body and has emerged as the largest research and development organisation in India. Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India is its parent organisation. The institute was founded by Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar.

Notes:
On August 1, “Muslim Women Rights Day” was observed across the country for the first time. This day was observed to celebrate the enactment of the law against ‘Triple Talaq’ for completing its two years.  According to Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Minister of Minority Affairs, the Government enacted the law against Triple Talaq on 1st August, 2019 and this law made the social malpractice of Triple Talaq as a criminal offense. The law was enacted with an aim of liberating Muslim women from the shackles of social evil which they faced in the form of divorce terms.

Notes:
Government of India has appointed Deepak Das as the new Controller General of Accounts (CGA) of India. CGA comes under the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance. Deepak Das is the 25th CGA. He is a 1986-batch Indian Civil Accounts Service (ICAS) officer. He earlier served as the Principal Chief Controller of Accounts in the Central Board of Direct Taxes. He has also been the Director of the Institute of Government Accounts and Finance (INGAF), the training academy of the Indian Civil Accounts Service.
He is an alumnus of Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi.

 

Notes:
Lyu Xiaojun is the oldest man to win an Olympic gold medal at the age of 37. He won Gold medal at Tokyo Olympics recently. He participated in 81 kilogram category. He belongs to China. Till 2018, he participated in 77 Kg category and was two time Olympic champion and five time world champion in this category. After 2018, he started participating in 81 Kg category as the International Weightlifting Federation recognized this category after 2018.

Notes:
A core committee meeting was held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat to review the progress of the vaccination programme across the state. As per the meeting reports, Gujarat is on the top position in terms of vaccinations per million people.
Officials said that about 5 lakh 17 thousand people have been vaccinated in the state against the population of ten lakhs. More than 3.32 crore doses of vaccines have been administered under state wide vaccination drive. In the month of July, more than 75 lakh vaccinations have been done.

Notes:
Penguin Random House India published a new book “Nehru, Tibet and China” which is authored by Avtar Singh Bhasin. Avtar Singh Bhasin is also the publisher of original archival documents. The book “Nehru, Tibet and China” describes about the various details and events that took place from the Independence of India to the 1962 Indo-China war. It focuses on the Indo-China relationship as well as Tibet and its boundary issues, occupation of Tibet by China and the fleeing of the 14th Dalai Lama from Tibet to India.
Avtar Singh Bhasin served in the Ministry of External Affairs for about 30 years. He retired in 1993 as the Director of the Historical Division. He has also served in the Ministry of Defence and National Archives of India. He has written various books on South Asian Affairs like India in Sri Lanka : Between Lion & the tigers,

Notes:
The first orchid conservation centre of North India has been inaugurated in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand. The main purpose of the conservation centre is to conserve orchid species and create ventures for tourism and livelihood for local people.
Orchid is a flowering plant and its scientific name is Orchidaceae.
All orchid species are protected under Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). CITES was enforced on 1 July, 1975.
Ivonne Higuero is the current Secretary-General of CITES. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Notes:
Nikol Pashinyan, the chairman of the Civil Contract Party has been re-appointed as the Prime Minister of Armenia. He was first appointed as the Prime Minister in 2018.
President Armen Srkissian approved Pashinyan’s candidacy for the post of Prime Minister of Armenia.
Armenia is a country in Asia. It lies in the mountainous Caucasus region between Asia and Europe. Yerevan is the capital of Armenia and  Armenian dram is its currency.

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.