PM Modi inaugurates India''s biggest Drone Festival

• Several industry leaders, government officials, foreign diplomats, representatives from Public Sector Units, private companies and drone start-ups are participating in the Mahotsav. They will deliberate upon India’s Civil Aviation sector.
• PM Modi highlighted the importance of drone technology in the fields of defence, disaster management, agriculture, tourism, film and entertainment. He said that the use of this technology is bound to increase in the coming days.
• Appreciating the use of drones in PM-SVAMITVA scheme, he said, 65 lakh property cards have been generated with the help of drones.
• Drone industry in India is estimated to achieve 15 thousand crore rupees turnover by the year 2026. He also narrated the use of drones in his official decision making through examples of PRAGATI reviews and Kedarnath projects.

International Booker Prize Goes to Geetanjali Shree''s Tomb of Sand, Translated by Daisy Rockwell

• Tomb of Sand is the first book originally written in any Indian language to win the International Booker Prize, and the first novel translated from Hindi to be recognised by the award.
• Set in northern India, the novel follows the adventures of an 80-year-old woman who unexpectedly gains a new, and highly unconventional, lease of life.
• Shree and Rockwell will split the £50,000 prize money, giving the author and translator equal recognition. This book has also won the English PEN translation award.
• In 2005, the International Booker Prize opened for English translations of foreign language books and from 2016 onwards, it equally recognised the work of both author and translator.
• The award is given every year to a book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland.
• It’s distinct from the Booker Prize, which has been won by Indian writers like Arundhati Roy and Aravind Adiga in the past.

IISc develops device to improve data encryption

• This can improve data encryption and provide improved security for sensitive digital data such as credit card details, passwords and other personal information. The study describing the device has been published in the journal ACS Nano.
• Cryptographic keys are typically generated in computers using pseudorandom number generators, which rely on mathematical formulae or pre-programmed tables to produce numbers that appear random but are not. In contrast, a TRNG extracts random numbers from inherently random physical processes, making it more secure.
• In IISc’s TRNG device, random numbers are generated using the random motion of electrons.
• It consists of an artificial electron trap constructed by stacking atomically-thin layers of materials like black phosphorus and graphene.

India likely to get its first semi-high speed freight train by this December

• Based on the Vande Bharat platform, the 16-coach ‘Gati Shakti’ train will be able to run at 160 km/hour, and will be manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.
• The overall target of 25 such trains had been set. The final number of trains would depend on how the initial trains will be received by market.
• With these trains, the Railways plans to target the e-commerce and courier parcel segment.
• With the turnover of $50 billion in 2020, India had become the 8th largest market for e-commerce. India’s e-commerce market is expected to reach $111 billion by 2024, $200 billion by 2026 and expected to reach $350 billion by 2030.

New Arunachal monkey named after Sela pass

• Sela macaque (Macaca selai), the new-to-science primate was identified and analysed by a team of experts from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) and the University of Calcutta.
• Their study has been published in the latest edition of Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Phylogenetics relate to the evolutionary development and diversification of a species or group of organisms.
• The phylogenetic analysis revealed that the Sela macaque was geographically separated from the Arunachal macaque (Macaca munzala) of Tawang district by Sela.
• This mountain pass acted as a barrier by restricting the migration of individuals of these two species for approximately two million years, the study said.
• Sela is situated between Dirang and Tawang towns in western Arunachal Pradesh.
• The study says the Sela macaque has a tail longer than the Tibetan macaque, Assamese macaque, Arunachal macaque and the white-cheeked macaque but shorter than the bonnet macaque and toque macaque.
• Sela macaque belongs to the sinica species-group of Macaca, but it differs from all other members of thisgroup through attributes such as brown collar hair and muzzle, and the absence of chin whiskers, the study says.

Errant IAS couple''s transfer raises ''dumping ground'' storm

• The Central government had shunted the duo — both 1994-batch IAS officers of the AGMUT cadre — out of Delhi after they had allegedly forced athletes at the Thyagraj Stadium to finish their training early in order to take their dog for an evening walk.
• AGMUT expands to Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram and the Union Territories.
• But the transfer of Mr. Khirwar to Ladakh and Ms. Dugga to Arunachal Pradesh has not gone down well.
• Many took to Twitter and other social media platforms to ask if the Centre viewed the northernmost and the north-easternmost parts of India as dumping grounds for errant bureaucrats.

Minister of edu Dharmendra Pradhan visits IISER Pune, inaugurates health facility

• The NFGFHD has been set up at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. It has been built by IISER Pune and supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
• This will be one-of-its-kind large facilities providing timely supply of animal models to researchers studying a range of diseases from cancer to diabetes.
• Rats, mice and rabbits will be housed here, doing away with the need to import them.
• With a growing zoonotic disease burden on human health, there is an increased urgency to perform disease studies based on physiological evidence and methods.
• The facility houses molecular biology laboratories and mico-injection setups to generate mouse models, in which scientists will knock out existing genes and replace them with external or artificial genes that are linked to the disease under study. This is done through CRISPR / Cas9 systems.

Chhattisgarh is now the second state after Odisha to have recognised Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights

• The CFR rights of tribals living in Gudiyapadar, a hamlet inside the Kanger Ghati National Park in Bastar district, were recognised, giving the community power to formulate rules for forest use.
• Kanger Ghati National Park is the second national park, after Simlipal in Odisha, where CFR rights have been recognised.
• The community forest resource area is the common forest land that has been traditionally protected and conserved for sustainable use by a particular community.
• The community uses it to access resources available within the traditional and customary boundary of the village; and for seasonal use of landscape in case of pastoralist communities.
• The Community Forest Resource rights under Section 3(1)(i) of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (commonly referred to as the Forest Rights Act or the FRA) provide for recognition of the right to “protect, regenerate or conserve or manage” the community forest resource.

Indian Govt Launches Indian Business Portal For Small Indian Exporters

• FIEO in partnership with GlobalLinker, has designed and developed the “Indian Business Portal”, an International Trade Hub for Indian Exporters and Foreign Buyers.
• This is a B2B digital marketplace to empower SME exporters, artisans and farmers to identify new markets for their products and grow their sales globally.
• Strategic objectives of Indian Business Portal:
  • Digitizing Indian Exporters and help them become discoverable online
  • Encouraging virtual meetings between buyers and sellers
  • Providing a trusted network of Indian Exporters to Foreign Buyers

Government approves guidelines for small business cluster development programme

• The guidelines will be implemented during the 15th Finance Commission Cycle.
• The scheme aims at enhancing the competitiveness and productivity of Micro and Small Enterprises through interventions in Common Facility Centers and Infrastructure Development.
• Government grants for Common Facility Centers will be restricted to seventy percent of the cost of the project from five crore rupees to ten crore rupees and sixty percent of the cost of the project from ten crore rupees to thirty crore rupees.
• However, for North East and the Hill States including Island territories and Aspirational Districts, the grant will be given eighty and seventy percent of the cost of the project as per different project cost ranges.
• Grant for Infrastructure Development will be restricted to sixty percent of the cost of the project from five crore rupees to fifteen crore rupees for setting up of a new Industrial Estate, Flatted Factory Complex.
• Grant will be fifty percent of the cost of the project from five crore rupees to ten crore rupees for up-gradation of the existing Industrial Estate, Flatted Factory Complex.