1) Narendra Singh Tomar inaugurates world’s second-largest refurbished gene bank
•The Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar has inaugurated the world’s second-largest National Gene Bank at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), Pusa, New Delhi.
•The refurbished state-of-the-art National Gene Bank provides the facility for germplasm, to secure the heritage of seeds for years in minus 20 degrees Celsius temperature.
•The new facility will help in the conservation of the diversity of indigenous crops in the country, as well as benefit the farmers by making them self-reliant and providing a source of increasing their income. A National Gene Bank is a facility to preserve the seeds of Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) for future generations.
2) Venkaiah Naidu laid foundation stone of Innovation and Development Centre
•The Vice President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu laid the foundation stone of the Innovation and Development Centre of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru.
•The JNCASR Innovation and Development Centre will be developed into a facility where laboratory inventions will be taken forward for scale-up and technology transfer, and in turn help in meeting the missions of “Make in India” and “Aatmanirbhar Bharat”.
•Scientists will be provided with state-of-the-art processing and prototyping tools to enable the translation of inventions. JNCASR is established by the Department of Science and Technology at Jakkur, Bangalore.
3) Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel announces 4 new districts
•Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has announced the creation of four new districts and 18 new tehsils in the state.
•The four new districts are: Mohla Manpur, Sarangarh-Bilaigarh, Shakti, Manendragarh.
•With the creation of four new districts, the total number of administrative districts in the state have reached 32.
4) President Ram Nath Kovind confers 144 Gallantry awards in 2021
•President Shri Ram Nath Kovind, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, has approved 144 Gallantry awards for armed forces, police and paramilitary personnel on the occasion of Independence Day 2021.
•Besides, President Kovide also approved 28 Mention-in-Despatches to the army personnel for their significant contributions in different military operations.
5) Government announces ‘Prime Minister Gatishakti Scheme’
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a Rs 100 lakh crore Pradhan Mantri Gatishakti scheme while addressing the nation on the 75th Independence Day from Red Fort.
•The Pradhan Mantri Gatishakti scheme aims to adopt a holistic and integrated approach in infrastructure growth and create employment opportunities for the youth of the country.
•The government will soon announce the Master Plan for the scheme, to help boost the productivity of industries, and boost the economic growth of the country, besides creating job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of youths.
6) A book to explore life and works of Jayaprakash Narayan
•A new biography of revolutionary leader and independence activist Jayaprakash Narayan will hit the stands on August 23, publisher Penguin Random House India.
•The book, “The Dream of Revolution: A Biography of Jayaprakash Narayan”, shares anecdotes and never-before-told stories from the life of the man who was known for his “emotional hunger for transformative politics, shunning power and incubating revolutionary ideas”.
•According to the publisher, the book, written by historian Bimal Prasad and author Sujata Prasad, explores “the ambiguities and ironies of a life lived at the barricades, and one man’s unremitting quest to usher in a society based on equality and freedom”.
