Weekly Update: August 31, 2020 - September 04, 2020

My blog has officially completed a period of one month. This became possible only because of your support and feedback. There is still a lot to accomplish and i hope that i continue to receive your support and feedback.

Now let's get started.

Did you know, that most of the Disney characters wore gloves to keep the animation process simple? Well, it is true.

Image Credit: Treeshousetoysms.com

Additionally, Disney wanted to keep its animal characters more like humans and hence, it decided to keep their gloves on.

August 31, 2020 (Monday)
:::The number of Corona Cases as reported on Aarogya Setu app were:
Confirmed - 36,21,245
Recovered - 27,74,801
Deceased - 64,469

:::Arkady Dvorkovich, President of FIDE, made a decision to give gold medals of FIDE Chess Olympiad jointly to India and Russia after India appealed the decision of making Russia a sole winner. Initially, Russia was declared as the sole winner after both the Indian players, Nihal Sarin & Divya Deshmukh, lost out on time in the second leg of the final after they suffered from server disconnection. Vishwanathan Anand called this a fair decision by the game's governing body. He had earlier given up hopes thinking that the failure was from the players' side.

Image Credit: Firstpost

This is India's maiden Olympiad gold. A bronze medal by the men's team during the 2014 Olympiad in Norway was the previous best.

:::Sundaram Finance, a non-banking finance company, cut interest rates on fresh deposits and their renewals by 100 bps. The revised deposit rates are:

5.75% for twelve months (earlier 6.75%);
6% for twenty-four months (earlier 7%); and,
6.25% for thirty six months (earlier 7%).

The revised deposit rates for senior citizens are:

6.25% for twelve months (earlier 7%);
6.50% for twenty-four months (earlier 7.25%); and,
6.75% for thirty-six months (earlier 7.25%).

Image Credit: https://www.sundaramfinance.in/

The revised rates have come into effect from September 01, 2020. This is for the second time that Sundaram Finance has reduced the deposit rates. It earlier reduced the interest rates by 25 bps in May 2020.

:::Lewis Hamilton won Belgian Grand Prix by finishing ahead of his Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull's Max Verstappen. Hamilton recorded the finishing time of 01:24:08.761. Bottas finished eight seconds late and Verstappen was a further seven seconds down. While Verstappen maintained his record of finishing on the podium at every race he has been classified in this year, Hamilton won Belgian Grand Prix for the fourth time in his career.

Image Credit: https://www.planetf1.com/

Sebastian Vettel and Charles LeClerc from Ferrari gained no points and finished outside of the top ten.

:::The Supreme Court allowed the states to grant the benefit of reservation of seats to in-service doctors in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) postgraduate degree courses, on a condition that they must sign a bond for five years to serve in remote or rural areas. The bench, comprising of Justices Arun Mishra, Vineet Saran, Indira Banerjee, MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose, also held that the regulation of Medical Council of India (MCI) that barred such reservation was unconstitutional & arbitrary, and it asked the states to formulate a scheme for rural/remote service by in-service doctors after completing PG degree. The judgement came on a plea filed by petitioners, challenging the validity of the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations (2000), framed by MCI, that reserved 50% of the seats in PG Diploma courses for the medical officers in Government service.

Image Credit: https://ehealth.eletsonline.com/

It is being said that the reservation benefits would encourage those who work in Government hospitals and in rural areas.

:::Pranab Mujherjee, former President of India, passed away in Delhi at the age of eighty-four. He was admitted to Army's Research and Referral Hospital after undergoing emergency life-saving surgery for a brain clot. He had earlier developed lung infection and he had also tested positive for COVID-19. He was born in 1935. He first became a Member of Parliament (MP) in Rajya Sabha in 1969 on a Congress nomination. He held various ministerial positions at Defense, Finance and External Affairs in his career. He was the thirteenth President of India and occupied the office for the duration of five years starting from 2012 till 2017. Some of the national honours he was awarded were Padma Vibhushan (2008) and Bharat Ratna (2019). Some of the foreign honours he was awarded were Bangladesh Liberation War Honour (March 05, 2013), Grand Cross of the National Order of the Ivory Coast (June 2016) and Grand Collar of the Order of Makarios III (April 28, 2017).

Image Credit: The Indian Express

He is survived by two sons and one daughter. His death was confirmed on twitter by Abhijeet Mukherjee, his son and former Lok Sabha MP.

September 01, 2020 (Tuesday)
:::The number of Corona Cases registered were:
Confirmed - 36,91,166
Recovered - 28,39,882
Deceased - 65,288

:::The Supreme Court granted telecom companies a period of ten years to clear their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues of around Rs.1.5 lakh crore. The companies have been allowed to deposit the dues in installments till 2031, with a strict direction to pay 10% of their dues by the end of current fiscal year. The bench, headed by Justice Arun Mishra, has asked the Managing Directors (MDs) or CEOs of telecom companies to furnish an undertaking or a personal guarantee within four weeks for payment dues.

Image Credit: Business Today

In case of default of payment in installment, the telecom companies will be liable to contempt of court, and they will also have to pay a certain amount of penalty for delayed payment.

:::Allahabad High Court directed the state government to release Dr.Kafeel Khan. The court set aside the detention order that was passed by the district magistrate of Aligarh, and confirmed by the state government. The court also declared the extension of his detention period as illegal. He was booked under the National Security Act (NSA) in February 2020 for allegedly giving a provocative speech against Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

Image Credit: BBC

He was earlier on a recurring firing line after sixty children died in a state-run BRD Hospital due to oxygen shortage, for which he was charged with medical negligence & dereliction of duty and spent nine months behind bars. However, he was absolved after two years.

:::9Unicorns Accelerator Fund (9Unicorns) announced its first close of Rs.100 crore. 9Unicorns will  bank on its track record of identifying the winners early and invest in over 100 early-stage start-ups. Apoorva Ranjan. a former angel investor of Oyo Rooms, has anticipated that the number of unicorns in India will grow by four times in the near future.

Image Credit: 9Unicorns

9Unicorns was founded by the founders of Venture Catalysts (VCats) namely, Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain and Gaurav Jain. VCats were the seed-stage investors in BharatPe, Beardo, PeeSafe and Fynd.

:::Google launched a new Kids Mode on select Android tablets. The mode features various apps, books and videos for children to explore, learn and have fun while staying at home. In the "Watch and Make" tab, kids can view many creative & fun videos from YouTube Kids that are engaging and encourage them for off-screen activities. If parents are looking to customize more, then they can download the content from Google Play.

Image Credit: The Munsif Daily

Google said in an official report that the new kids mode is made for kids to become the explorers of things that they love.

:::MediaTek launched MediaTek Helio G95 for premium 4G smartphones that are scheduled to hit the market in September 2020. MediaTek Helio G95 is a gaming focused chipset that offers faster performance and high-end features like advanced multi-camera photography with up to four cameras, with an inbuilt AI Processing Unit (APU). It enables depth engines for a real-time portrait bokeh, fast & precise AI face detection and 4k video encoding & decoding at 30fps.

Image Credit: MediaTek

Yenchi Lee, Deputy General Manager of Wireless Communications Business Unit at MediaTek, said in an official statement that MediaTek Helio G95 is their most powerful gaming chip to date, while they continue to enhance their G-Series gaming chips to deliver a robust performance.

September 02, 2020 (Wednesday)
:::The figures for Corona Cases as shown in Aarogya Setu App were as follows:
Confirmed - 37,69,523
Recovered - 29,01,908
Deceased - 66,333

:::Inspector General (IG) Charu Sinha became the first woman to head Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Srinagar sector by replacing IG Rajesh Kumar. She is currently posted as the CRPF IG in Jammu sector and she will assume the command from next week. She was previously the CRPF IG heading Bihar sector. She was also posted as the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Intelligence Security Wings and as the SP of Nizamabad district in Telangana. She has experience of handling the post of the director of anti-corruption bureau in India and of working as Deputy Inspector General (DIG) for Anantapur, Chittoor and Tirupati districts in Andhra Pradesh. Charu Sinha is an IPS officer of the 1996 batch from Telangana cadre. She graduated from St. Francis College for Women in Hyderabad in English Literature, History and Political Science. She further did her post-graduation from Hyderabad Central University in Political Science.

Image Credit: Zee News

She was also the first woman CRPF IG to command sectors for anti-naxal operations in Bihar and anti-terrorist operations in Jammu.

:::TATA launched Nexon XM(S), at a price that starts from Rs.8.36 lakh (ex-showroom). It offers two transmission options: manual & automatic, and it is available in both the versions: petrol & diesel. The car is loaded with features like electric sunroof, automatic headlamps, rain sensing wipers, steering mounted controls, electronic stability program, LED Daytime Running Lamps with projector headlamps, driver & co-driver airbags, hill hold control, ConnectNext infotainment system by Harman and multi-drive modes like Eco, City & Sport.

Image Credit: Autocar India

Vivek Srivatsa, Head of Marketing of Passenger Vehicle Business Unit (PUBU) at TATA Motors, said that they are committed to provide their customers with a premium driving pleasure and state-of-the-art features at attractive prices, making their products accessible to all.

:::TATA-SIA carrier Vistara partnered with Japan Airlines (JAL) to give the members of their frequent flyer programs the opportunity to earn miles/points on each other on an extensive global network that includes nearly eighty destinations across twenty countries and regions. Vinod Kannan, Chief Commercial Officer of Vistara, said in an official press release that the partnership is in line with their broader strategy of forging more partnerships with like-minded airlines as well as non-airline brands to provide a wider choice to earn and burn options to their customers. The airline has already partnered with Singapore Airlines, Silk Air and United Airlines.

Image Credit: Business Traveller

Vistara recently started its services to London Heathrow as a part of the bilateral 'transparent bubble' between India and the U.K, and it is also considering similar flights to Paris and Frankfurt.

:::Manushi Chillar, former Miss World, started a social media campaign aimed at raising awareness about eating right. The campaign was a part of National Nutrition Week that kicked off on September 01, 2020. She held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) via her Instagram stories to answer the health and fitness related questions of her followers.

Image Credit: Times of India

She also shared her journey with health and nutrition.

:::IRCTC launched SBI card on RuPay platform. The card is aimed to reward its frequent travelers. The cardholders can receive up to 10% cash-back on AC1, AC2, AC3 and AC-CC bookings made at the IRCTC website. It offers 350 bonus reward points upon card activation and a waiver of 1% transaction fee. The accumulated points can be redeemed against free tickets on IRCTC website. IRCTC's SBI Card also offers superior benefits on retail, dining and entertainment.

Image Credit: IndiaInfoline

The card holders can avail attractive discounts while shopping at BigBasket, foodtravel.in, Ajio, etc., to name a few. The card is equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC). With NFC, the holder only has to tap at a secure reader for a convenient, secure and faster transaction.

:::Australia fell into its first recession in nearly thirty years after more than one million people lost their jobs since March 2020 due to the Corona Virus pandemic. As per the data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the economy of $1.47 trillion shrank by 7% in April-June quarter as compared to the previous three months. After the biggest decline since 1959, Australia has joined the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany in technical recession.

Image Credit: https://smallcaps.com.au

On its part, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has slashed interest rates to a record of 0.25%, and it has expanded its cheap funding facility for the country's lenders to keep low-cost credit flowing in the economy. RBA has said that it will provide additional support if needed.

:::LG confirmed its T-Shaped Smartphone with dual screens and with a swiveling design. The phone will be called 'Wing' and it will go official on September 14, 2020. The phone is said to come with a 6.8 inch main display, while the smaller display would be a 4 inch screen. It will reportedly be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 700-series chipset with support for 5G. Wing is rumored to come with a triple camera set-up of 64-megapixel primary sensor.

Image Credit: HT Tech

LG also announced its partnerships with Rave, Ficto, Tubi and NAVER to develop features for the Explorer Project devices. The Explorer Project has been created to address the diverse usage of modern smartphones and it is aimed to explore & overhaul the current user experience.

September 03, 2020 (Thursday)
:::The number of Corona Cases as reported on Aarogya Setu app were:
Confirmed - 38,53,406
Recovered - 29,70,492
Deceased - 67,376

:::SAS and CSM Technologies enabled COVID-19 Dashboard for the Government of Odisha. The Dashboard offers the most recent statistics on the state's COVID-19 performance through interactive charts, graphs, diagrams, etc. It supports advanced analytical & modelling tools and includes estimating the infection risk profile & susceptible population of geographic regions. These insights have been enabling the state government to plan for the future and strategically allocate funds & resources to the districts as per their requirements like increasing bed capacities & providing additional medical personnel.

Image Credit: Times of India

Noshin Kagalwalla, Vice President and Managing Director of SAS, issued a statement saying that by offering SAS COVID-19 Outbreak Management Solution to the Government of Odisha, they reiterate their commitment to help the governments and organizations globally to help save lives and contain the pandemic by leveraging the power of analytics.

:::Uttarakhand Government released an order to fix the rates of private hospitals for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The rates have been fixed based on the recommendations by a Central Government panel that was formed for this purpose in June 2020 under the leadership of Dr.Vinod Pal. The maximum hospital charge for admission has been set at Rs.18,000/- per day for patients with severe sickness mandating ICU facility with ventilator care for hospitals accredited from National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH), while the charge for non-NABH accredited hospitals has been set at Rs.15,000/- per day. The minimum charge for NABH accredited hospitals has been set at Rs.10,000/- per day and the minimum charge for non-NABH hospitals has been set at Rs.8,000/- per day. In case the patient requires ICU facility without a ventilator, then the charge for NABH is Rs.15,000/- per day and Rs.13,000/- per day for non-NABH accredited hospital. The charges cover the cost of Rs.2,000/- for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); however, they do not cover the cost of testing in a private hospital that has been set at Rs.2,400/-.

Image Credit: New Indian Express

All the private hospitals have been asked to reserve 25% of the beds for Government Officials/Employees and for those who are eligible for Ayushman Bharat or Atal Ayushman Yojana.

:::India moved up to 48th rank in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020 and became the third most innovative lower-middle-income economy in the world. Innovation ranking is led by Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, with Singapore at 8th position. South Korea has joined the top ten countries for the first time.

Image Credit: Zee News

GII, which is compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Cornell University and INSEAD Business School, assessed 131 economies out of which India retained the highest rank in the Central and Southern Asian region, followed by Iran.

:::The shares of Tencent fell by 2% and the company lost $14 billion in the market value after India banned PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned the apps after it received several complaints about the apps stealing and surreptitiously transmitting the data of the users in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India. As per the data published by SensorTower, an apps analytics firm, India was the biggest market with roughly 175 million installs - 24% of its total installs.

Image Credit: https://entrackr.com/

Some other apps banned by the Government of India are Baidu, Baidu Express Edition, Tencent Watchlist, FaceU, WeChat Reading and Tencent Weiyun. The Government has banned these apps under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, citing hostility to national security and defense of India as reasons.

:::KK Shailaja, Health Minister of Kerala, topped Prospect's list of the world's top fifty thinkers for COVID-19 age. She is followed by Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister of New Zealand) and Marina Tabassum (Bangladeshi Architect). The magazine called Shailaja the right woman in the right place, who foresaw the inevitable arrival of COVID-19 in Kerala and fully grasped the implications. Prospect is U.K magazine that selected her from a list of fifty personalities.

Image Credit: The Week

She is sixty-three years young and she is popularly known as Shailaja Teacher. She has also been appreciated by BBC, The New York Times and The Guardians, to name a few.

September 04, 2020 (Friday)
:::The number of Corona Cases reported were:
Confirmed - 39,36,747
Recovered - 30,37,151
Deceased - 68,472

:::The Uttar Pradesh Government received more than twenty proposals to set up hotels in Ayodhya. The projects are worth Rs.295 crore approximately and include eleven budget hotels, four starred hotels, three heritage, one resort & one theme park. This comes after Jitendra Kumar, the Principal Secretary, said that the footfall is expected to cross one lakh in five years from now and many tourists would want to spend the night.

Image Credit: New Indian Express

According to the statistics published by the Union Tourism Ministry, the footfall in Ayodhya has risen steadily over the past decade, from about 1.2 crore in 2011 to around 2 crore in 2019.

:::According to 'Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India' report released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2019, Gujarat topped in suicide due to divorce with a figure of eighty-four, out of which fifty-three are men and thirty-one are women. Gujarat is followed by Maharashtra with sixty-seven suicides and Tamil Nadu with fifty-nine suicides. Gujarat also recorded the highest number of suicides due to love affairs with a figure of 495, which is an increase of 58% as compared to the year 2015. Dr.Yogesh Patel, a Vadodara based Psychiatrist, said that people in several instances stop socializing & that leads to depression, and even to alcoholism, which often results in people ending their lives.

Image Credit: DNA India

As per the report, Gujarat recorded twenty-two and twenty-eight suicide cases due to extramarital affairs and dowry demand respectively.

:::The Delhi Police caught Dr.Kush Parashar and his aide Amit Singh for issuing fake COVID-19 certificates to patients seeking the viral infection tests for employment or travel reasons. The duo would collect the swab samples, dump the samples in dustbin and issue fake test results in the names of at least three diagnostic laboratories. Their cover was blown when one of the recipients of the test result found a mismatch in his name and contacted the diagnostic centre to learn that the latter did not issue any such result. Atul Kumar Thakur, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in South Delhi, said in an official statement that the duo has issued at least seventy-five such fake test results and charged Rs.2,400/- from each of the recipients.

Image Credit: https://www.indiatimes.com/

Dr.Kush Parashar is thirty-four years young general physician and he holds a PG degree in medicine from Russia.

:::In a bid to slow the spread of viral misinformation and harmful content, Facebook has introduced forwarding limit on Messenger. The limit kicks in once a message has been forwarded to five people or groups at a time. Facebook said that this is a part of their ongoing efforts to provide people with a safer and more private messaging experience.

Image Credit: https://martechtoday.com/

Facebook earlier introduced safety notification, two-factor authentication and easier ways to block & report the unwanted messages to make the experience of its users safe.

:::Akshay Kumar announced an action game titled FAU-G, that stands for Fearless And United Guards. The game will be developed by nCore Games under the guidance of Akshay Kumar and 20% of the net revenue generated will be donated to Bharat ke Veer Trust. Vishal Gondal, Chief Executive Officer of GOQii, said via an official tweet that the game is being developed under the AtmaNirbhar movement of the Prime Minister, and that the game will teach its players about the sacrifices of an Indian soldier.

Image Credit: India.com

Vishal Gondal is forty-four years young who previously founded the game development and publishing company, Indiagames, which he sold to DisneyUTV Digital in 2011 for $100 million.

It is now time for the special section. In this week's special I will talk about AN-32 aircraft and why it should be replaced. I came to know about this issue when Khanjan, one of my readers, commented on my previous blog and shared a few details about it.

Image Credit: The Indian Express

The Indian Air Force has over 100 AN-32s that play a crucial role in equipping India's frontline forces; however, there have been several incidents where the aircraft has either crashed or went missing while in the air. AN-32 was launched in 1977 and India was the first country to buy it from the former Soviet Union. The aircraft is poorly equipped with the engine of its predecessor AN-26, which came into function in 1966. Some of the tragic incidents are:

1) March 22,1986: A brand new AN-32 crashed in Jammu & Kashmir;
2) March 25, 1986: One AN-32 went missing over the Arabian Sea, when it was on its way to be delivered;
3) 1989: AN-32 took-off from Delhi to fly till Charbatia but it went missing in Odisha;
4) 1991-1992: It crashed in Thiruvananthapuram (previously known as Trivandrum);
5) March 26, 1992: It went missing in the hills of Jorhat, Assam;
6) April 01, 1992: Two AN-32s collided in mid air while flying to Khanna, Punjab;
7) March 07, 1999: AN-32 crashed near Indira Gandhi International Airport;
8) June 09, 2009: AN-32 crashed in Arunachal Pradesh;
9) January 2012: It crash landed in Jorhat, Assam;
10) September 20, 2014: AN-32 caught fire and crash landed in Chandigarh airport;
11) 2016: The aircraft took off from Chennai for Port Blair and it went missing; and,
12) June 03, 2019: AN-32 was found in Arunachal Pradesh after it it took off from Jorhat and went missing.

Following the crash in 2009, India signed a deal with Ukraine of around $400 million to upgrade and refurbish the aircraft in order to extend the life of the aircraft by 40 years with improved avionics, modernised cockpit and an increase in payload from 6.7 to 7.5 tonnes. However, the situation got worse when the planned upgrade was halted after the works in Ukraine walked out of the job and supplies of spare parts stopped.

You can read more about it by clicking here.

There is an online petition that seeks the retirement of AN-32 and that requires your signature. You may click here to sign it.

You can also follow Seek Justice on Twitter for more updates.

I have tried my best to cover this sensitive topic in the special section of my blog. Do comment and let me know what you think about it.

That is all for this week. I hope that the blog was useful and it helped you in catching up with what happened. If you have anything to contribute, then please feel free to comment. Do share this blog with everyone you know and help them too.

*Disclaimer: The information has been presented in this blog after reviewing various news articles. In case you find any article, or if you have any article, that states some facts differently, then share them in the comment section. Please keep the publishing date of the article in mind as it may be an update on the article which was published previously, or it may contain outdated information if it was published before the date mentioned in this blog.