1) World Cotton Day: 07 October
•World Cotton Day (WCD) is observed globally on 7th October since 2019. The international day aims to celebrate the advantages of cotton, ranging from its qualities as a natural fibre to the benefits people obtain from its production, transformation, trade and consumption.
•The day was inaugurated by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva on October 7, 2019. WCD Day was initiated by the Group of Cotton-4 countries namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali to the reflect the importance of cotton as a global commodity.
2) Indian-built Sittwe port in Myanmar to be operational in 2021
•India and Myanmar are working towards the operationalization of the Sittwe port in the Rakhine state of Myanmar in the first quarter of 2021. The port is part of the Kaladan multi-modal transit transport project which is being viewed as India’s gateway to Southeast Asia.
3) Indian Coast Guard 7th Offshore Patrol Vessel ‘Vigraha’ launched
•The seventh offshore patrol vessel of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG), ”Vigraha” was formally unveiled at the Kattupalli port, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The vessel, built by Larsen and Toubro, is the last in the series of seven OPVs contracted to the company by the Ministry of Defence in 2015. It was the first time a private sector shipyard has undertaken the design and construction of offshore patrol vessel class of ships.
4) Quad Countries’ Foreign Minister Meet held in Tokyo
•Quad Countries’ Foreign Minister meet held in Tokyo, Japan. All four Quad countries the United States, Japan, India and Australia to hold bilateral discussions over “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) initiative amid coronavirus pandemic. This is the second Quad FM meeting. The first was held in 2019.
•The Quad FM meeting was represented by External Affairs Minister of India S Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi. They discussed the post-COVID-19 international order and the need for a coordinated response to the various challenges emerging from the pandemic.
5) IPS officer MA Ganapathy appointed DG of BCAS
•Senior IPS officer, M A Ganapathy has been appointed as the Director-General of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS). He is a 1986 batch IPS officer of Uttarakhand cadre. The post of BCAS chief fell vacant after Rakesh Asthana was appointed as the Director-General of Border Security Force in August.
•The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Ganapathy to the post of Director-General, BCAS, for a tenure up to his superannuation on February 29, 2024.
6) Dinesh Kumar Khara becomes new Chairman of SBI
•The government of India has appointed Dinesh Kumar Khara as the new Chairman of State Bank of India for a period of three years. His appointment is effective from October 7. Currently, Khara is the Managing Director in-charge of Global Banking & Subsidiaries.
•The Banks Board Bureau (BBB) had recommended Khara for the post of Chairman of SBI on August 28, ruling out an extension to Rajnish Kumar, whose term is ending on October 6.
7) GoI appoints three new economists as RBI’s MPC members
•The Government of India has appointed three new economists as members of the six-member rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee(MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The government had formed a committee for selection of these three new members of MPC. This search-cum-selection committee for MPC was headed by Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj.
8) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 announced
•The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing”. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.
Genetic scissors: a tool for rewriting the code of life
•Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.
9) C-DAC to commission India’s fastest Supercomputer ‘PARAM Siddhi – AI’
•The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will be commissioning India’s largest HPC-AI supercomputer ‘PARAM Siddhi – AI’. This initiative will place India among the top countries in global AI supercomputing research and innovation. The initiative was headed by Abhishek Das, Scientist and Program Director (HPC-AI Infrastructure Development) at C-DAC, who conceived the idea and designed the architecture for the largest HPC-AI infrastructure in India.
