6 october 2021 current affairs

6 october 2021 current affairs

1. CURRENT AFFAIRS 6 OCTOBER 2021 Dr . A. PRABAHARAN www.indopraba.blogspot.com

2. UAE to launch mission to explore asteroid between Mars and Jupiter The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on October 5, 2021 announced plans to launch a probe to explore an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to collect data on the origins of the universe. If the nation manages to successfully land its spacecraft on the asteroid, it will join an elite club of nations- the US, Japan and the European Union that have successfully landed probes on either an asteroid or a comet. This latest announcement comes after a UAE probe reached the red planet earlier this year. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

3. Indian Air Force to procure 114 fighter aircrafts under Make in India: IAF Chief VR Chaudhari Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari informed on October 5, 2021, that the  Indian Air Force will be taking forward the proposed procurement of 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA)  and that it will be carried out under the ‘Make in India’ initiative. The Indian Air Force, in April 2019, had issued an RFI (Request for Information), or the initial tender, to acquire 114 jets at a cost of around USD 118 billion. The tender was billed  as one of the world’s biggest military procurement programmes in recent years. The Indian Air Force Chief said that the response to the Request for Information (RFI) has been received from several aerospace firms and that the acquisition process has been taken forward to the next phase. The top contenders for the deal included Boeing’s F/A-18, Lockheed Martin’s F-21, Dassault Aviation’s Rafale , Russian aircraft MiG 35, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Saab’s Gripen . www.indopraba.blogspot.com

4. FIH Hockey Star Awards 2021: Gurjit Kaur wins FIH Hockey Player of the Year Gurjit Kaur won the FIH Women’s Hockey Player of the Year at the International Hockey Federation's (FIH) Hockey Stars Awards 2020-21. The results of the FIH Hockey Stars Awards 2020-21 were announced on October 6, 2021. A total of 5 Indian Hockey players and two head coaches of both the Indian men’s and women’s Hockey teams each claimed the hockey awards across different categories. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

5. Vehicle Scrapping Policy: Check List of incentives & disincentives The Union Transport Ministry on October 5, 2021 issued a list of incentives and disincentives of the Vehicle Scrapping Policy. The list has been issued to encourage the vehicle owners to discard their old polluting vehicles that are high maintenance and have a higher fuel consumption cost.  Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had first announced the Vehicle Scrapping Policy during her budget speech in February 2021. The policy was introduced to bring transformational changes in the automobile sector by phasing out old, unfit and polluting vehicles.  Under the vehicle scrapping policy, all personal vehicles will have to undergo fitness tests in automated centres after 20 years and commercial vehicles will undergo the test after 15 years.  www.indopraba.blogspot.com

6. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 jointly awarded to Benjamin List and David W.C. Macmillan The  2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been jointly awarded to  Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan.   Benjamin List from Germany and Scottish-born David MacMillan have been honoured for developing new tools for building molecules that have helped in making new drugs and are more environmentally friendly. List and MacMillan share the 10-million Swedish crown ($1.14 million) prize for their separate work on  asymmetric organocatalysis . According to the award-giving body, it was a new and indigenous tool for molecule building.  Benjamin List, of the Max-Planck- Institut fuer Kohlenforschung , and David MacMillan, of Princeton University, United States, will share the prize in equal parts for the breakthroughs that were achieved independently of one another.  www.indopraba.blogspot.com

7. What is NASA’s Psyche mission, which can unveil secrets of early Solar System? NASA’s Psyche mission  will be the first to be launched in August 2022 that will explore a giant metal asteroid known as (16) Psyche in the main asteroid belt. The asteroid Psyche is orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche mission is one of the two missions of NASA to explore the early Solar System. The  Lucy mission  is another mission that will set out in September 2021 to explore  Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids  to study the early Solar System. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

8. NAV- eCash card: SBI, Indian Navy launch new card to remove cash dependency when ship is at high seas NAV- eCash card:  The Indian Navy and State Bank of India (SBI) together on October 4, 2021 launched  SBI's NAV- eCash card  aboard country's largest naval aircraft carrier-INS Vikramaditya .  The  NAV- eCash card,  which has a dual-chip technology, will enable online as well as offline transactions. This would remove all difficulties faced by personnel onboard in handling physical cash during deployment of the ship at high seas. The same concept will then be replicated at other naval ships and various defence establishments as well to create a secured, convenient and sustainable payment ecosystem.  The current infrastructure at naval ships inhibits traditional payment solutions, especially when the ship is at high seas as there is no connectivity at that time. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

9. Government proposes amendments to Forest Conservation Act The Ministry of Environment has proposed to  amend the Forest Conservation Act in order to do away with the requirement of prior government approval for the development of border infrastructure on forest land.  The Ministry has claimed that it causes delays in the implementation of critical projects. The Environment Ministry has also invited suggestions from States and UTs and all the people concerned on the proposed amendments to the Forest Conservation Act, within the next 15 days. The ministry, in addition, has proposed to allow the states to permit non-forest use of forest land for the implementation of strategic and security projects that are required to be completed in a given time frame. It has also proposed removing safaris, zoos, forest training infrastructure from the definition of non-forestry activities. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

10. Hockey India withdraws from 2022 Commonwealth Games in England India on October 5, 2021, pulled out of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games’ hockey competition stating the risk of contracting COVID-19 and the discriminatory quarantine rules by the United Kingdom (UK) for travellers coming from India. The UK has refused to consider India’s COVID-19 vaccination certificates and imposed a 10-day quarantine on travellers coming from India even if fully vaccinated. India has also imposed reciprocal rules on all UK nationals arriving in the country following UK’s discriminatory quarantine rules. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

11. Himachal Pradesh becomes first Indian state to begin organised cultivation of Cinnamon Cinnamon cultivation in Himachal Pradesh has been introduced by CSIR’s Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT) on a pilot basis. Organised Cinnamon cultivation in Himachal Pradesh  was launched on 29 September 2021, with State Agriculture Minister Virendra Kanwar planting the first sapling in the Una district. India imports 45,318 tonnes of Cinnamon annually from Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Nepal. Of the 45,318 tonnes of imports, 37, 166 tonnes of Cinnamomum cassia (species banned in various countries) are imported by India from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. On the occasion, the director of CSIR-IHBT informed that as much as 2000 hectares of the area was under Cinnamomum Verum cultivation in Kerala but was in an unorganized sector. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

12. Annual Durga puja carnival cancelled in West Bengal The West Bengal state government has decided to cancel the annual Durga Puja carnival for the second year in a row. The government urged the people to strictly follow COVID-19 protocols. The Annual Durga puja carnival involves the display of top pandal themes before idol immersion. The puja was cancelled for the second year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The state in a recent order made the wearing of masks and carrying of hand sanitizers mandatory for all people attending the puja. The state has also banned cultural programmes near the pandal.  www.indopraba.blogspot.com

13. Tamil Nadu local body elections today: Voting for first phase begins, AIADMK, DMK in close fight The polling for Tamil Nadu local body elections has started and will be held on October 6 and October 9, 2021.  The voting for the local body polls in Tamil Nadu is being conducted in 9 districts of the state that are Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram, Tenkasi , Vellore, Tiruppatur , Ranipet , Tirunelveli, Kallakuruchi , and Villupuram.  The polling in Tamil Nadu will take place from 7 am to 6 pm. Reportedly over 1 lakh officials have been deployed across Tamil Nadu to ensure smooth polling in the mentioned nine districts. Before the upcoming local body elections in Tamil Nadu, on September 15, 2021, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) had announced that it will contest the elections independently in the upcoming local body polls in nine districts of Tamil Nadu. www.indopraba.blogspot.com

14. www.indopraba.blogspot.com