• President Ram Nath Kovind has approved 84 gallantry awards for defence personnel, including nine Shaurya Chakra.
• The Kirti Chakra has been posthumously awarded to Abdul Rashid Kalas, Head Constable, Jammu and Kashmir Police.
• The Shaurya Chakra is awarded for 'gallantry otherwise than in the face of the enemy'.
• It is the third highest gallantry award in peacetime.     
• The President has also approved 19 Mention-in-Despatches to the Army personnel for their significant contributions in different military operations, which include eight posthumous for 'Operation Meghdoot' and 'Operation Rakshak'. 
• Operation 'Meghdoot' was launched in 1984 to secure control of the heights predominating the Siachen Glacier.
• 'Operation Rakshak' is also an ongoing counter-insurgency operation in Jammu and Kashmir.

• In Gujarat, two over bridges of Ahmedabad city have been named after late Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj. The Railway over the bridge in Ranip area of the city will be known as Atmanirbhar Gujarat Railway Flyover.
• The newly built flyover at Income Tax circle will be known as Arun Jaitley flyover, while another flyover at Anjali crossroad will be known as Sushma Swaraj Bridge.

• Former Indian skipper, MS Dhoni announced his retirement from international cricket on August 15, 2020. The 39-year-old World Cup-winning captain made the announcement through his social media account.
• Dhoni announced his retirement through a post on Instagram, which read "Thanks a lot for your love and support throughout. From 1929 hrs consider me as Retired."

• The search engine giant Google has announced new education tools for teachers and students to facilitate learning in the virtual education space. This feature will be available with all the products of Google such as Meet, G Suite and Classroom.
• This new tool will have some of the features rolled out in the coming months whereas the rest of the features will be available later this year. In this platform, a larger titled view with up to 49 participants and a collaborative whiteboard with Jam-board have been made available in Google Meet.
• Google announced $10 billion towards education in India in the next five years and the company will also train more than 1 million teachers in the country within 2020 offering a range of free tools such as G Suite for Education, Google Classroom and YouTube to help digitize the education experience in the nation. As part of this, Google has tied up with CBSE and Maharashtra government also for digitizing the education space in the country.

• The astronomers have found a baby galaxy billions of light-years from the Earth that has been seen to be similar to our planet. This discovery is going to change the perception of the scientists regarding the formation of galaxies in the world.
• This galaxy is named as SPT0418-47 is located around 12 billion light-years away from Earth, as per the study published in the Nature Journal. The astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics could spot this galaxy using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, one of the most powerful telescopes of the world. However, this galaxy is known to be surprisingly unchaotic, unlike all the turbulent and unstable young galaxies.

• Pune based Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, DIAT (DU) developed a Nanofibres of Ayurvedic based Biodegradable Face Mask which acts a virus neutralizer to resist against the bacteria/virus and is named “Pavitrapati”.The Company now launched its first-ever Ayurvedic based biodegradable face mask named “Pavitrapati” for sale.
• M/s Siddheshwar Techtessile Pvt. Ltd., Maharashtra developed initially 10,000 Nos of this mask and has got responses from distributors, sales teams, pharmaceutical companies and the same will be made available on online platforms like Amazon, Flipkart etc. Another ToT has been transferred to M/s. Siddheshwar Techtessile Pvt. Ltd., Maharashtra by DIAT for development of antimicrobial bodysuit in the name of “Aushadatara”.This suit has superhydrophobic, breathing, anti-microbial, comfort feeling properties.

• Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has launched a portal SRIJAN which is a one-stop shop online portal that provides access to the vendors to take up items for indigenization.
• This will help industry partners to play an active role in the goal of self-reliance in the defence sector.
• The Defence Minister called upon the Indian industry partners to show complete commitment and take proactive participation in the pursuit of Indigenization and self-reliance in the Defence Sector.

• Uttar Pradesh has become number one in conducting COVID tests in the country. Cumulative COVID testing figures reached 36 lakh samples. The state is conducting around one lakh COVID test daily.
• With at least 9 districts in the state recording more than 100 new cases of COVID infection in the past 24 hours, the number of active cases in the state crossed 50,000.
• The state now has 50426 active cases and the list is topped by Lucknow, which has 7,188 active cases. Kanpur is in second place with more than 4 thousand active cases.

• The RBI Board has approved the transfer of 57,128 crore rupees as surplus to the central government for the accounting year 2019-20.
• RBI has informed that it has also decided to maintain a Contingency Risk Buffer at 5.5 percent.
• The Board, chaired by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, discussed the bank’s operations in the past year and approved its annual report and statement of accounts.

• The 73-year-old Chetan Chauhan, who was also a Cabinet Minister in Uttar Pradesh government passed away today. He was admitted to the Sanjay Gandhi PGI Hospital in Lucknow after testing COVID-19 positive on July 12.
• The health condition of former India opener Chetan Chauhan, who tested positive for COVID-19 last month, was worsened after he developed multi-organ failure and he was now on ventilator support at a medical facility in Gurugram.

Click here to download Daily GK PDF of 16 August 2020