Current Affairs Update – 20th – 22nd August, 2016

• The Union Ministry of Mines on 18
  August 2016 launched a web portal for star rating of major mineral mines.
• The portal was launched by Piyush
  Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Mines, Power, Coal and New &
  Renewable Energy.
• A web enabled online system for
  evaluation of measures has been developed with the help of National Institute
  of Smart Governance (NISG), Hyderabad.
• The main objective of the system
  is to bring all mines to a minimum standard of Star Rating in the shortest
  possible time frame to adopt sustainable practices. A two layered system
  providing self-evaluation templates to be filled in by the mine operator
  followed by validation through Indian Bureau of Mines.

• State-run GAIL (India) Ltd on
  Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with California-based Bloom
  Energy for developing natural gas-based fuel cell power generation.
• The agreement was signed by GAIL
  chairman and managing director B C Tripathi and Bloom Energy chief executive K
  R Sridhar.
• The new technology converts fuel
  into electricity through an electro-chemical process and the use of water is
  less too in this mode of power generation.

• Union Government on 20 August
  2016 appointed Dr. Urjit R Patel as the 24th governor of Reserve Bank of India
  (RBI). He will be having tenure of three years with effect from 4 September
  2016.
• He will succeed the present RBI
  Governor Dr. Raghuram Rajan, the former International Monetary Fund chief
  economist.
• At present, Dr Patel is the
  Deputy Governor of RBI and is holding this assignment since 2013. With this
  appointment, he also becomes the eight Deputy Governor to be elevated as the
  Governor at RBI.

• Former CCI head Ashok Chawla will
  take over as Non-Executive Part-time Chairman of YES Bank from October as the
  lender has received approval from the Reserve Bank for this appointment.
• YES Bank said Chawla’s
  appointment is for a period of three years, with effect from the date of
  joining the bank.
• He was appointed as an
  independent director on the Board of YES Bank on March 5, 2016.
• A career bureaucrat, Chawla
  served as the chairman of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) post
  retirement.

• Amul Managing Director RS Sodhi
  has been appointed as independent director on the board of India Post Payment
  Banks (IPPB) – the payments bank arm of postal department.
• Gujarat Cooperative Milk
  Marketing Federation (GCMMF) sells the Amul brand of milk products.
• Sodhi is one of the five
  independent members to be appointed on the board IPPB, which is set to be
  operational in March 2017.
• The board will have four in-house
  representatives.
• IPPB came into existence after it
  received certificate of incorporation from the Registrar of Companies on August
  17.

• BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
  China and South Africa) women parliamentarians’ forum on 21 August 2016 passed
  unanimously the Jaipur Declaration. The declaration was adopted by them on the
  concluding day of the BRICS Women Parliamentarians’ Forum meet held in Jaipur,
  Rajasthan.
• The declaration has emphasized
  the need to inform, communicate and educate citizens about developmental
  schemes.
• The Declaration mentions the need
  to address climate change and protection of ecological system and forest as
  well as food security, expeditious parliamentary approval of SDG related
  legislation and adequate budgetary resources.
• It calls upon international
  financial institutions to extend support to developing and least developed
  countries and help them gain easier access to new and affordable technologies
  as envisaged under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris
  Agreement

• World Humanitarian Day was
  observed on 19 August 2016 with the theme One Humanity.
• The theme explains how our shared
  human experiences bind us across divides, and create a common responsibility to
  demand action for the most vulnerable and at risk of being left behind.
• The digital campaign for the
  World Humanitarian Day 2016 was The World You’d Rather.
• The day is dedicated to recognize
  humanitarian personnel and those who have lost their lives working for
  humanitarian causes. It is also an opportunity to celebrate the spirit that
  inspires humanitarian work around the globe.

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• The 2016 Summer Olympics
  concluded on 21 August 2016 at ceremony held at the Maracana Stadium, Rio de
  Janeiro, Brazil.
• More than 11000 athletes from 207
  National Olympic Committees, including first time entrants Kosovo, South Sudan
  and the Refugee Olympic Team, took part in the games.
• The games featured 28 Olympic
  sports, including rugby sevens and golf, which were added to the Olympic
  programme in 2009.
• The United States topped the
  medal table for the fifth time in the past six Summer Olympics, winning 46 gold
  medals and 121 medals overall. Great Britain and China finished in second and
  third respectively.

• The Indian Olympic Association
  (IOA) had sent a total of 117 athletes, the nation’s largest ever delegation in
  Summer Olympic history.
• Indian bagged a total of two
  medals, one silver and one bronze, in the games, and stood at the 67th place in
  the medal tally.
• Badminton player P V Sindhu won
  historic silver medal in women’s singles badminton event. With this, she became
  the first Indian woman to clinch a silver medal in Olympics.
• Wrestler Sakshi Malik secured a
  bronze in the 58 kg category to become India’s first female wrestler to win an
  Olympic medal.
• India had qualified one artistic
  gymnast into the Olympic competition for the first time since 1964. Dipa
  Karmakar became the first Indian female ever to book an Olympic spot in the
  apparatus events and all-around event at the Olympic Test Event. She narrowly
  missed out in the bronze medal, finishing 4th in the finals of the event with a
  score of 15.066.
• Abhinav Bindra came fourth in the
  Men’s 10m Air Rifle singles event after losing a shootoff for the top 3 to
  Serhiy Kulish, who finally won the silver.
• At the 2016 Summer Olympics,
  Indian long distance runner Lalita Babar scored a time of 9:19.76 in her heat,
  qualifying to the final. With this, she became the first Indian in 32 years to
  enter a final in any track event. At the final, she finished 10th with a time
  of 9:22.74.

• The opening ceremony took place
  in the Maracana Stadium on 5 August 2016.
• The Games were officially opened
  by Acting President of Brazil Michel Temer.
• These were the first Summer
  Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Thomas Bach.
• Rio became the first South
  American city to host the Summer Olympics.
• The two new sports for 2016
  Olympic Games were golf and rugby sevens.
• Due to the European migrant
  crisis and other reasons, the International Olympic Committee allowed athletes
  to compete as Independent Olympians under the Olympic Flag.
• Due to the suspension of the
  National Olympic Committee of Kuwait, participants from Kuwait were allowed to
  participate under the Olympic Flag as Independent Olympic Athletes.
• The official mascot of the 2016
  Summer Olympics was Vinicius. It is named after musician Vinicius de Moraes.
  The mascot represented Brazilian wildlife and carries design traits of cats,
  monkeys and birds.

• Badminton player P V Sindhu on 18
  August 2016 won historic silver medal in women’s singles badminton event at Rio
  Olympics.
• With this, Sindhu became the
  first Indian woman to clinch a silver medal in Olympics. She also became the
  fourth Indian to win a silver at the Olympics after shooters Rajyavardhan Singh
  Rathore (2004, Athens) and Vijay Kumar (2012, London) and wrestler Sushil Kumar
  (2012, London). Moreover, she became the fifth woman player from India to win a
  medal in Olympics.
• Sindhu lost to Carolina Marín of
  Spain in the final by a score of 19-21, 21-12, 21-15.
• In her quarterfinal match, Sindhu
  defated World No.2 Wang Yihan by 22-20, 21-19.

• The International Kabaddi
  Federation (IKF) on Monday announced that the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup will be
  hosted in Gujarat’s leading city, Ahmedabad. The tournament is set to take
  place from October 7th and will conclude on 22nd of the same month.
• Gujarat will play host to 12
  Kabaddi teams from around the world including India, USA, Canada, UK,
  Australia, Iran, Poland, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Korea, Japan and Kenya. A
  special consideration of the IKF in inviting these countries is to make the
  Kabaddi World Cup representative of all the five geographies of the Olympic
  Games.
• The Kabaddi World Cup matches
  will be held in Ahmedabad’s upcoming state-of-the-art stadium, The Arena by
  TransStadia.

• The Minister of Culture and
  Communication, France, in the third week of August 2016 selected Kamal Haasan
  for the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Knight in the National Order
  Arts and Letters).
• The distinction is in recognition
  of his high level of artistic excellence and his distinguished career
  achievements.
• Haasan is the second Tamil star
  after thespian Sivaji Ganesan to be honored with the prestigious French award.

• The Sursagar Society of Dilli
  Gharana in third week of August 2016 announced that it will confer the annual
  Sangeet Martand Ustad Chand Khan Lifetime Achievement Award on santoor maestro
  Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma.
• The society has been felicitating
  stalwarts of Indian classical music and dance with the award since 1986 to
  recognise their contribution towards enriching the art forms.
• In 2015, the honour was conferred
  upon Kathak exponent Pandit Birju Maharaj. Other recipients of the award
  include Pandit Jasraj, Ustad Abdul Haleem Jaffar Khan, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and
  a centenarian Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan.
• The award carries a cash prize of
  50000 rupees, a memento and a citation.

• N. Ramachandran, President of
  Indian Olympic Association (IOA), on 21 August 2016 was awarded the Olympic
  Order for his outstanding services to the Olympic movement.
• The President of the
  International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, formally presented the
  award to Ramachandran.
• The Olympic Order is the highest
  award of the Olympic Movement which is awarded in recognition of efforts worthy
  of merit in the cause of sport.

• Hindi scholar and writer Sunita
  Jain was on 17 August 2016 awarded with the prestigious 25th Vyas Samman 2015
  for her poetry collection Kshama. She received the award by West Bengal
  Governor K N Tripathi.
• Jain, through her poetry,
  portrays the fine emotions between poet Tulsidas and his wife Ratnavalli in
  Kshama. She has managed to aptly convey the sentiment of forgiveness between
  Tulsidas and his wife using very fine language.
• The award instituted by the K K
  Birla Foundation carries a cash prize of 2.50 lakh rupees. It is given annually
  to outstanding literary work in Hindi authored by an Indian citizen.

• Intel on 16 August 2016 unveiled
  Project Alloy, an all-in-one virtual reality solution, in San Francisco, the
  USA.
• Alloy delivers a set of new and
  immersive experiences thanks to Intel’s RealSense technologies that are optimized
  for VR usages. It is a headset that uses the RealSense technology enabling
  people to use their hands to interact with elements of the virtual world. There
  is no need for cables to connect to the computer.
• The device can be operated
  without cords dangling from the VR headset connecting to the computer. The
  computing power is located in the Alloy Head-Mounted Device (HMD), which allows
  the user to experience VR untethered.
• The device uses Intel RealSense
  technology, which allows one to see elements from the real world. One can also
  use one’s hands to interact with elements of the virtual world, merging
  realities.

• Noted Odia filmmaker, actor and
  director Gobind Tej passed away on 18 August 2016 following a brief illness in
  Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He was 88.
• In his career spanning over 50
  years, he has contributed in many Odia feature films either as an actor,
  director or producer.