Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 25 July 2021

::NATIONAL::

India is discussing a plan to create so-called power islanding systems in several cities to protect critical infrastructure from potential attacks on the electricity grid, power minister Raj Kumar Singh said.
Cities including Bengaluru, known as India’s Silicon Valley, and Jamnagar, which has two of India’s largest oil refineries, are among cities being assessed for an islanding system, Singh told lawmakers in parliament Thursday. Existing systems in cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai are being revamped, he said.
The plan follows a major power outage in India’s financial hub Mumbai last year that brought the city to a halt and prompted speculation about a cyber-attack. The year before, the country’s nuclear power monopoly reported computer systems at one of its generation plants had been attacked by malware. Power grids the world over are increasingly digitalized, leaving them vulnerable to such attacks.

The Philippines has become the world's first country Friday to approve the commercial production of genetically modified "golden rice".
Crops such as rice, wheat, and soybeans, as well as fruits and vegetables have a naturally occurring "glitch" in the way they photosynthesize that causes the plants to use up energy and resources, drastically suppressing productivity.
Experts believe the decision made by the Philippines will combat childhood blindness and save lives in the developing world.

US President Joe Biden on Friday authorized the use of up to $100 million to address migration emergencies related to the situation in Afghanistan, the White House said.
The statement said the money would come from the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund "for the purpose of meeting unexpected urgent refugee and migration needs, victims of conflict, and other persons at risk as a result of the situation in Afghanistan."
The funds will also support those applying to the State Department program of Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), under which some 20,000 Afghans who worked as interpreters for the United States during its war in the country and now fear retribution from Taliban insurgents have applied for evacuation.
The funds could be distributed on both a bilateral and multilateral basis through contributions or funding to international organizations, non-governmental groups, governments and US bodies, the statement added.

The NarendraModi government is ready with a proposal to cap trade margins on medical devices to as low as 30 per cent in a bid to make essential instruments such as pacemakers, catheters affordable to patients.
The trade margin is the difference between the price at which manufacturers sell drugs to stockists (and distributors) and maximum retail price (MRP) to patients.
The government’s think tank NITI Aayog has drafted the proposal for capping trade margins by using various simulations — within a range of 30 per cent to 85 per cent.
The draft has already been sent to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the central drug pricing authority, for final consideration.
The NITI Aayog has suggested a 50 per cent cap on the trade margins and is against 30 per cent limit, ThePrint has learnt.
The aim of the draft is to reduce the margins given by medical device manufacturing firms to the hospitals who in turn sell these expensive devices to patients.

Chinese government scientists have unveiled plans for a first-of-its-kind, experimental nuclear reactor that does not need water for cooling.
The molten-salt nuclear reactor, which runs on liquid thorium rather than uranium, is expected to be safer than traditional reactors because the molten salt cools and solidifies quickly when exposed to the air, insulating the thorium, so that any potential leak would spill much less radiation into the surrounding environment compared with leaks from traditional reactors.
The prototype reactor is expected to be completed next month, with the first tests beginning as early as September. This will pave the way for the building of the first commercial reactor, slated for construction by 2030.
As this type of reactor doesn't require water, it will be able to operate in desert regions. The location of the first commercial reactor will be in the desert city of Wuwei, and the Chinese government has plans to build more across the sparsely populated deserts and plains of western China, as well as up to 30 in countries involved in China's "Belt and Road" initiative — a global investment program that will see China invest in the infrastructure of 70 countries.

It took SumitNagal a second attempt to serve out the match. And when he did eventually beat Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin 6-4, 6-7(6), 6-4, he became the first Indian since 1996 to win a singles match at the Olympics.
It took him two hours and 34 minutes to pull off the win. But that’s just a blink of the eye when compared to the 25-year wait the country has had to endure to get moving at the Olympics in singles.
To put that wait into perspective, Nagal, 23, wasn’t even born when Leander Paes went on to win bronze at the 1996 Games in Atlanta.