Who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recently?

Naval Air Station Shibpur will be commissioned as INS Kohasa by Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba on January 24, 2019. The move is being undertaken to enhance the operational capability of Andaman and Nicobar Command.

For the first time in Meghalaya, braille-enabled ballot papers will be made available at all polling booths. The ballot paper pasted on the EVMs will have the names and symbol of candidates in braille alphabets. The move will facilitate more than 800 visually impaired electorates to vote by a secret ballot.

To counter growing Chinese footprint in Indian ocean region, the Indian Navy has initiated the process to acquire six lethal submarines under the ambitious Project-75 India (I). The project would cost Rs 50,000 crore. Under Project 75-India, the Navy wants to build six conventional diesel-electric submarines which would be almost 50% bigger than the under-construction Scorpene class submarines being built at the Mazagon Dockyards Limited in Mumbai. As per the requirements stated by the maritime force, it wants the submarines to be equipped with heavy-duty firepower as it wants the boats to have at least 12 Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM) along with Anti-Ship cruise missiles (ASCM).

Ministry of Defence (MoD) is expecting to raise a Defence Cyber Agency (DCA) by May to tackle non-civilian cyber issues arise from China and Pakistan, including safeguarding critical infrastructure. Rear Admiral Mohit Gupta, Senior Navy officer will be the first head of this agency, headquartered in New Delhi.As per the clearance given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018, two more agencies are under construction namely, Defence Space Agency and Special Forces Agency.The Special Forces agency would be headed by a Major General rank officer of the Army and is likely to come up at Agra.

Rice Knowledge Bank-Assam, which is an agriculture web portal is dedicated to magnify knowledge on rice production technologies and techniques, best production practices and state agriculture facts, was launched under World Bank funded project - Agri-business and Rural Transformation (APART). This portal is the repercussion of efforts of Assam Rural Infrastructure and Agricultural Services Society, Assam Agricultural University with technical assistance from International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The motive behind this is to curtail the gap between research and on-field rice production practices for small-scale farmers in Assam.