NATIONAL

PM inaugurates intergrated terminal building in Agartala

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the New Integrated Terminal Building of Maharaja Bir Bikram (MBB) Airport at Agartala, Tripura.
• The New Terminal building have been constructed at a cost of Rs 450 Crore spreading at an area of 30,000 sqm from 10,000sqm before.
• New Integrated Terminal Building can handle capacity of 1200 Peak Hour Passenger (PHP) having an annual capacity of 3 MPPA & Apron for 6 additional parking bays for A-321 type of aircrafts.
• The integrated Airport will now be able to cater 30 lakh passengers every year instead of 13 lakh in a year.
• The Prime Minister has also launched many key initiatives like Project Mission 100 of Vidyajyoti schools and Mukhiyamantri Tripura Gram Samrriddhi Yojana.

Additional data-

The Agartala Airport has a runway with dimensions-2286m*45m, and is considered as a heritage airport with bamboo architecture and floral jalli pattern to depict the forest cover.

The airport also contains 2 Mega Watt solar panels for renewable energy.

Tripura capital- Agartala

Tripura Chief Minister-Biplab Kumar Deb.

NEAT 3.0 launched

• The Union Education and skill development minister has launched National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT) 3.0, It is a single platform to provide the best-developed ed-tech solutions and courses to students of the country.
• Alongwith, he also launched AICTE prescribed technical books in regional languages.
• The Minister informed that 58 global and Indian start-up ed-tech companies are onboard NEAT and are offering 100 courses & e-resources for bettering learning outcomes, developing employable skills and overcoming learning loss.
• The Ministry also added that, more than 12 lakh socially and economically disadvantaged students have received free ed-tech course coupons worth over Rs 253 crore under NEAT 3.0.

About NEAT-

1. National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT) is an initiative to provide the use of best-developed technological solutions in the education sector to enhance the employability of the youth on a single platform for learners' convenience.
2. These solutions use Artificial Intelligence for a personalized and customized learning experience for better learning outcomes and skill development in the niche areas.
3. AICTE, MoE is acting as the facilitator in the process to ensure that the solutions are freely available to socially and economically backward students.
4. NEAT has 58 Education Technology Companies with 100 products that help to develop employable skills, capacity building, and bridge learning gaps.

Telangana tops in OFD plus

• Telangana tops in list of highest open defecation free(ODF plus)  villages in the country under Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen Phase -II programme till the end of 2021.
• A total of 13,737 out of 14,200 villages (96.74%) in Telangana are in the ODF plus list.
• Telanagana State Government has enacted a new Telangana Panchayat Raj Act to ensure the holistic development of villages.
• A secretary has been posted in every panchayat for smooth execution of welfare programmes, close monitoring, digital reporting and to ensure the prevalence of good governance in villages.
• There are 12,769 dedicated compost sheds in all gram panchayats. Tankers have also been provided to water the plants for greenery in villages.
• Telangana was followed by Tamil Nadu with 4,432 villages(35.39%) and Karnataka with 1,511 villages(5.59%).

Telangana Capital-Hyderabad

Telanagana Chief Minister-K. Chandrasekar Rao.

Largest Single Site Solar Project in India commissioned

• Azure Power has commissioned a 600 MW Solar Power project in Bikaner, Rajasthan connected with Interstate Transmission Systems(ISTS) by the Solar Energy corporation of India.
• This will be largest solar power project in India Owned and Operated at a single location by any developer.
• Azure Power has commissioned the project in various phases, now the company has 2,510MW of high-performing operational solar assets across the country.

Azure Power CEO-Ranjit Gupta

Headquarters-New Delhi

INTERNATIONAL

Apple Inc’s market value touches $ 3 trillion

• Apple Inc’s stock market value crossed the $3 trillion mark and becomes the first company to achieve the mark.

• On 3d January 2022 the Companies share achieved $182.88 in Intraday, making the market value above $ 3 trillion.
• The company achieved the milestone of $ 1 trillion by 2018 and $ 2 trillion by 2020, now has crossed the three trillion mark.

Apple CEO-Tim Cook

Apple Headquartres-California, US

New Covid Variant discovered

• Scientists in France have discovered and identified a new variant of COVID-19, a more mutated variant than Omicron.
• The New Variant B.1.640.2 has been given the name IHU mediterranee infection and have might been orginated from Cameroon.
• The new variant has not been labelled as Variant under investigation by the World Health Organisation.
• Now a total of 12 cases have been reported with the IHU variant near Marsilles.

BANKING, FINANCE AND ECONOMICS

India’s First global index of Cryptocurrencies

• Crypto Wire, A global Crypto Super app is set to launch the India’s First index on Cryptocurrencies naming it ‘Ic15’.
• The Ic15 will track and measure the performance of the top 15 widely traded liquid Cryptocurrencies, which is listed on crypto exchanges of the world.
• The Index is a rule based broad market index by market capitalization.
• The Index is set to monitor-Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Binance Coin, Solana, Cardano, Lite Coin, Chainlink, Polkadot, Uniswap, Terra, Dogecoin, Avalanche and Shia inu.
• The base value of the Index has been set at 10,000 and base date has been set at April1, 2018.
• The Governing Committee of the Crytptowires’s Index consists domain experts, Industry practisioners and academicians.

Crypto Wire CEO-Jigish Sonagara.

Framework for small value digital payments in offline mode

• The Reserve Bank of India has placed on its website the Framework for facilitating small value digital payments in offline mode.
• The framework incorporates the feedback received from the pilot experiments on offline transactions conducted in different parts of the country during the period from September 2020 to June 2021.
• An offline digital payment means a transaction which does not require internet or telecom connectivity.
• Under this new framework, such payments can be carried out face-to-face (proximity mode) using any channel or instrument like cards, wallets, mobile devices, etc.
• Such transactions would not require an Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA). Since the transactions are offline, alerts (by way of SMS and / or e-mail) will be received by the customer after a time lag.
• Transactions are subject to a limit of Rs 200 per transaction and an overall limit of RS 2000 for all transactions until balance in the account is replenished. Balance replenishment can only occur in an on-line mode.
• Offline mode of payment can be enabled only after obtaining specific consent of the customer.

Banks retain D-SIB’s

• The Reserve Bank of India ahs retained and identifies SBI, ICICI bank, HDFC bank to continue as Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs) under the same bucketing structure as in the 2020 list.
• The additional Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) requirement for D-SIBs was phased-in from April 1, 2016 and became fully effective from April 1, 2019.
• The Reserve Bank had announced SBI and ICICI Bank as D-SIBs in 2015 and 2016 respectivly.
• HDFC Bank was also classified as a D-SIB, along with SBI and ICICI Bank, Based on data collected from banks as on March 31, 2017.
• The current update is based on the data collected from banks as on March 31, 2021.

APPOINTMENTS

• Alka Mittal has been elected as the new Chairman and Managing Director of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, by this she becomes the first women to be elected to the post.
• Ashok Elluswamy has become the first Indian to be hired in the Tesla’s Autopilot team.