Current Affairs Daily Digest – August 23 2020
1. Indore tops as the cleanest city 4th time in a row on 2020 Swachh Survekshan
Indore topped the list of the cleanest city in India for the fourth consecutive time in the Swachh Survekshan, 2020, India’s annual survey on cleanliness. The results were declared on 20th August by the Union Minister of State (independent charge) for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri. Surat in Gujarat and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra ranked second and third among the cleanest cities with more than a million population.
2. Turkey discovers a large natural gas reserve in Black Sea
Turkey discovered large natural gas reserves in the Black Sea coast. The announcement was made by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The discovery included 320 billion cubic metres of natural gas. If the natural gas reserve can be extracted, it could help the country to reduce its energy dependence on imports from countries such as Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan.
3. India working on supply chain with Japan, Australia to counter dependence on China: Report
India, Japan and Australia are working on a supply chain agreement to counter dependence on China by creating a alternative. The countries plan to launch a trilateral Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI), which was first proposed by Tokyo, according to a report by The Economic Times.
4. International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is observed on august 23
This International Day is intended to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples. In accordance with the goals of the intercultural project “The Slave Route”, it should offer an opportunity for collective consideration of the historic causes, the methods and the consequences of this tragedy, and for an analysis of the interactions to which it has given rise between Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean.
5. Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla attends 5th world conference of speakers of parliament via video conferencing
Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla attended 5th world conference of speakers of parliament on August 20 via video conferencing. Om Birla is leading an Indian Parliamentary Delegation to the conference. The conference is being organized jointly by Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva and Parliament of Austria on 19 and 20 Aug with support of UN.
6. DRDO lab comes up with contactless sanitation cabinet for gadgets, bank notes
For those who had been scratching their heads on how to sanitize currency notes, paper stuff and electronic gadgets, here’s good news.
The device is called Notesclean. The Notesclean’s role is essential as DRUVS can’t sanitise individual notes in a bundle optimally and it will take a long period of time. The Notesclean can disinfect currency notes in a quick time.
7. Government appoints Ashwani Bhatia as SBI MD
The government appointed Ashwani Bhatia as the managing director of lender State Bank of India.
In an order from the Personnel Ministry, the government said Bhatia has been appointed as the managing director up to the date of his superannuation, that is May 31, 2022. Bhatia will be appointed in place of P K Gupta who superannuated on March 31.
