What is the new Repo Rate revised by the six-member monetary policy committee chaired by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das?

Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) have inked Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for setting up a Centre of Excellence for Waste to Wealth Technologies in India as a commemoration of 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on 2 October 2019. The MoU has been signed by Principal Scientific Advisor to the Govt of India, Prof K. Vijay Raghavan and Director, IIT Delhi, Prof V. Ramgopal Rao in New Delhi. The Centre will work towards the implementation of sustainable, scientific and technological solutions for waste management by deploying available technologies for transformation of waste to wealth. The project has been approved under the recently constituted Prime Minister's Science Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC).

Stockholm International peace research institute (SIPRI) has launched a new initiative named Global Registry of Violent Deaths (GReVD) to establish the annual number of violent deaths worldwide.GReVD will count deaths caused by all forms of violence and display these in an open-source database and enable monitoring of progress on the world's commitment to 'significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere' by 2030 as set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-Goal 16. The database will enable policymakers and researchers and the general public to track trends in violence at global, regional, national, provincial, city and municipal levels. GReVD will hold a single entry for every violent death, including perpetrator, time, location, victim and type of violence. The sources will be verifiable news reports of lethal events and processing will involve machine coding to manage the volume of entries, as well as human coding to ensure accuracy and consistency.

International Firefighters' Day (IFFD) is observed on 4th May of every year. It was instituted after a proposal was emailed out across the world on January 4, 1999, due to the deaths of five firefighters in tragic circumstances in a bushfire in Australia. May 4 used to be a traditional Firefighters' Day in many European countries because it is the day of Saint Florian, patron saint of firefighters. Fire prevention and the need for more intensive and thorough training is one of the main aspects of International Fire Fighters Day. Firefighters and their agencies around the world are constantly stressing fire prevention: in schools, to the community, at public events, at assemblies and even to their own families. The safest way to keep firefighters alive and home to their families is training. This ideal is one that International Fire Fighters Day stresses.

For the 4th consecutive time, the Northern Command based in Udhampur has won the 15th edition of General J J Singh air weapon championship. Between 25th March to 3rd April, the championship was conducted at Army Marksmanship Unit, Mhow in Madhya Pradesh. The objective of the competition was to train young male and female army-officers for effective participation in national and international shooting competitions. More than 100 male and female Indian-Army shooters competed in the 10-metre air rifle and air pistol categories. The winning team bagged the overall inter command championship by clinching "Burma Shell Trophy" after competing against 9 other teams. The winning team also won the women's overall trophy with 1 gold and 3 silver medals individually.

The International Nurses Day was celebrated globally to commemorate the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale also known as 'The Lady with the Lamp', was famous as manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War. The theme for the International Nurses Day 2019 is -'Nurses - A Voice to Lead -Health for All'. In 1860, Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment of "Nightingale School of Nursing" at St Thomas' Hospital in London. It was the first secular nursing school in the world and is now part of King's College London.The Florence Nightingale Medal is the highest international distinction a nurse can achieve.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has set up an Indo-Pacific division in the foreign office to integrate the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), ASEAN region and the Quad. The new division is a brainchild of foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale and is intended to give a coherent architecture to the Indo-Pacific policy. It is a big step by the Government and it is expected to give thrust to the Indo-Pacific centred policymaking. The Indo-Pacific Wing is currently headed by joint secretary Vikram Doraiswami.

Recently, Indian and the US navies conducted joint submarine hunting exercise near Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in which India's P8I Neptune Aircraft and US P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft along with the USS Spruance have participated. The objective of this exercise is to lay the groundwork for coordinating maritime patrol and reconnaissance.The Indian P-8I anti submarine aircraft which participated in the exercise is from Naval Air Squadron 312 based at Naval Station Rajali in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu and US P-8A Poseidon aircraft which participated in the exercise is from Patrol Squadron VP-8 'Fighting Tigers', based in Jacksonville, Florida.

A Pune-based IT firm is developing software for the world's largest ground-based telescope, the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), which is likely to come up on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The telescope is being constructed jointly by India, US, China, Japan and Canada and is likely to become operational in the mid-2020s. India is building the telescope's complex optical structure, called the Segment Support Assembly (SSA), which will comprise 492 hexagonal mirror segments, collectively forming the primary mirror. An eight-member team at the IT firm, ThoughtWorks, is designing three different software - Common Software Services (CSS), Data Management Services(DMS) and Executive Software (ES) - to deal with the control systems to manoeuvre the telescope and manage the big data that will be generated once it becomes operational.

For the first time in India, under the 'Honey Mission' initiative, (KVIC) Khadi and Village Industries Commission (in less than 2 years) distributed more than 1 lakh bee-boxes among farmers and jobless youths across India. KVIC has helped in creating more than 10,000 new jobs and 25,000 additional man-days through the manufacturing of bee boxes and honey extractors. Bee-keeping would also open many job avenues for aspiring young entrepreneurs. In August 2017, the initiative of 'Honey Mission' was launched in accordance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for 'Sweet Revolution' in 2016 while introducing Banas Honey project at Deesa, Gujarat. The KVIC had offered the beekeepers training on the effective examination of the honeybee colonies, wax purification, and management of the bee colonies.

Bajaj Allianz General Insurance collaborated with Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance to launch their 1st product titled 'Total Health Secure Goal'.The product is a combination of 2 existing plans, namely, Health Guard policy by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and iSecure policy by Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance.This combined plan offers customers a 5% extra discount on the total premium and also provides the flexibility of availing service or communication on the product.The product provides an overall insurance solution and ensures that health and security needs of the customer are taken care of without compromising on their savings.