Current Affairs Assam – August 2018
( Covers all important Assam Current Affairs & GK topics for the month of August 2018 )
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August 28
India, Vietnam hold talks to bolster trade, investment and defence ties
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on 28th Aug held talks with her Vietnamese counterpart Pham Binh Minh and discussed measures to strengthen trade, investment, maritime and defence cooperation between the two countries.
Swaraj is in Vietnam on the first leg of her four-day two-nation tour which aims at deepening India’s strategic cooperation with Vietnam and Cambodia. India and Vietnam are connected not only by the common waters but also by a shared vision for peace and prosperity.
Hanoi is therefore a particularly appropriate setting to discuss developments in the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific region.
India and Vietnam have agreed to further strengthen cooperation in the maritime domain, including on anti-piracy, security of sea lanes and exchange of white shipping information.
FACTFILE – Vietnam
- Vietnam is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula.
- It has a population of 6 million, making it the world’s 15th-most-populous country, and the ninth-most-populous Asian country.
- Hanoi is the capital and Ho Chi Minh City is the most populous city.
- The conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam is known as the Vietnam War, with heavy intervention by the US on the side of South Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. The war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.
- Vietnam was then unified under a Communist government but remained impoverished and politically isolated.
- Since 2000, Vietnam’s economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world, and, in 2011, it had the highest Global Growth Generators Index among 11 major economies.
- Its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007, it is also a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.
Centre signs MoU with 6 states for Lakhwar Yamuna basin project
Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) here with six states for the construction of the Lakhwar multi-purpose project in the upper Yamuna basin to deal with water crisis.
Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh (Yogi Adityanath), Rajasthan (Vasundhara Raje Scindia), Uttarakhand (Trivendra Singh Rawat), Himachal Pradesh (Jai Ram Thakur), Haryana (Manohar Lal Khattar) and (Delhi Arvind Kejriwal) signed the MoU. The agreement is an effort to conserve and utilise the monsoon flows of the Yamuna.
Under the agreement, the 204-metres high project will be constructed with live storage capacity of 330.66 million cubic metres (MCM) in the upper Yamuna basin to deal with the water crisis between January and June.
90 per cent of the project will be funded by the Centre while the remaining amount will be paid by the six states. The total project is worth Rs 3,966.51 crore.
The water storage will provide irrigation for 33,780-hectare land and facilitate availability of 78.83 MCM water for domestic, drinking and industrial use in six basin states. The project will also generate 300 mw of power and will be executed by Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited (UJVL)
Indian economy likely to grow at 7.4% in FY19: NCAER
Economic policy think-tank NCAER has retained India’s growth forecast for the current fiscal at 7.4% citing comfortable agricultural sector outlook and a marked improvement in the external sector.
In 2018-19 the real agriculture Gross Value Added (GVA) is envisaged to grow at 4.6%, real industry GVA at 5.1%, and real services GVA at 8.5%.
The NCAER’s annual model forecasts that GDP at market prices will grow at 7.4% for 2018-19 on a year-on-year basis, same as May 2018. The growth rates in exports and imports, in dollar terms, are estimated at 11.9% and 15.1% respectively.
The current account balance and central fiscal deficit, as percentages of GDP, are projected at 2% and 3.3% respectively.
National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) was established in 1956, NCAER is India’s oldest and largest independent, non-profit, economic policy research institute.
India’s ever first biofuel flight by SpiceJet
India’s first ever biofuel flight, operated by SpiceJet, completed its maiden trip on 27th Aug 2018. A 78-seater aircraft Bombardier Q400 aircraft, partially using biojet fuel, took off from Dehradun and landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi.
The fuel used was developed by CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun, contains 75 percent aviation turbine fuel and 25 percent biofuel, produced from Jatropha crop.
Biofuel is a fuel that is produced through contemporary biological processes, such as agriculture and anaerobic digestion, rather than a fuel produced by geological processes such as those involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as coal and petroleum, from prehistoric biological matter.
Biofuels can be derived directly from plants (i.e. energy crops), or indirectly from agricultural, commercial, domestic, and/or industrial wastes.
Renewable biofuels generally involve contemporary carbon fixation, such as those that occur in plants or microalgae through the process of photosynthesis.
Other renewable biofuels are made through the use or conversion of biomass (referring to recently living organisms, most often referring to plants or plant-derived materials).
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