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National

Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 cleared

• The Parliament passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, a first-ever legislation dedicated for digital privacy.
• The government will appoint a data protection board, an independent body that will examine personal data breaches and impose penalties.

Draft National Deep Tech Startup Policy

• The office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government put out a draft National Deep Tech Startup Policy (NDTSP).
• The policy seeks to “ensure India’s position in the global deep tech value chain,” in areas such as semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and space tech.

Offshore mining and mineral auctions

• The Council of States passed the Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill (OAMDR), 2023.
• The Bill represents a transformative change for the offshore mining sector, which has remained largely inactive since the enactment of the OAMDR Act in 2002.
• The amendment enables the granting of production leases to the private sector solely through competitive bidding auctions.

Aspirational districts programme

• Haryana's Nuh district has achieved the second position in Niti Aayog's 'Delta ranking' under the aspirational districts programme.
• The programme aims at uplifting and developing the most socio-economically challenged districts in India, and this progress in Nuh is certainly a step in the right direction.
• Health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development and basic infrastructure are the thrust areas of the programme.

High rainfall termed as a ‘cloudburst’

• Following heavy rains in Himachal Pradesh on 14 August 2023, landslides have occurred in the state with at least 22 people dead.
• A cloudburst is a localised but intense rainfall activity. While it can also occur in plains, the phenomenon is most common in hilly regions.

International

Malabar naval exercise held

• India, Japan, the United States and Australia hold the Malabar navy exercise off the coast of Sydney on 11 August 2023, the first time the war games previously held in the Indian Ocean have taken place in Australia.

‘Sponge cities’ not stopped the floods

• China has been hit by devastating floods, inundating cities and causing deaths and infrastructural damage, as well as raising questions about the effectiveness of its 2015 “sponge city” initiative aimed at reducing urban flood risks.
• The “sponge city” initiative was designed to make greater use of lower-impact “nature-based solutions” to better distribute water and improve drainage and storage.

Economy

India's first Agricultural Data Exchange (ADeX)

• The government of Telangana, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) launched India's first Agricultural Data Exchange (ADeX) in Hyderabad on 11th August 2023.
• Developed as a digital public infrastructure (DPI) for the agriculture sector, ADeX is an open-source, open-standard, and inter-operable public good.

Science And Technology

India's first 5G wireless Wi-Fi

• Bharti Airtel announced the launch of Airtel Xstream AirFiber, India's first 5G wireless Wi-Fi services designed to provide internet to areas without fibre-based internet connections.
• This new offering will provide fixed wireless access (FWA) to homes lacking fixed line internet.

Russia’s Luna-25 mission

• Russia was launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years on 11 August 2023.
• The Luna-25 mission is scheduled to land on the Moon on 23 August 2023, the same day as Chandrayaan-3’s planned landing.

Isro’s space probe to study the Sun

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on 14 August 2023 released images of the Aditya-L1 mission — the space agency’s first attempt to study the Sun.
• The Aditya-L1 will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
• L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system.
• Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.

New IPCC assessment cycle begins

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 28 July 2023 concluded its elections, marking the beginning of the seventh assessment cycle.
• It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

ISRO rocket debris on Australian shore

• A large object found on the shores of Western Australia has been confirmed to be the debris of an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) rocket.
• ISRO has agreed with the assessment, saying the debris could be from one of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)

CERT-In flagged Akira ransomware

• The central government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued an advisory flagging the emergence of a new ransomware called
• Ransomware is essentially a kind of malware — software used to gain unauthorised access to systems to steal data. This data can then be used by cyber criminals to demand a ransom.

Room temperature superconductivity

• Two South Korean researchers claiming that a lead-based compound they had developed had shown superconducting properties at room temperature, under normal pressure conditions.
• Superconductivity refers to a state in which a material offers zero, or near-zero, resistance to electric current.

Satellite bus technology transfer to private firm

• ISRO on 5 August 2023 said it has transferred the IMS-1 Satellite Bus Technology to Alpha Design Technologies Pvt. Ltd in a step towards enhancing private industry participation in the country's space sector.
• NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the commercial arm of ISRO, facilitated the technology transfer through an agreement signed.

Miscellaneous

Air pollution driving antibiotic resistance

• Tiny, invisible particles, smaller than 30 times the breadth of human hair, wreak damage to more than 7.5 billion people’s health globally called PM2.5, were to drive the next global public health threat — antibiotic resistance, when disease-causing bacteria become uniquely immune to drugs.

WHO report on tobacco control measures

• Bengaluru finds special mention in a World Health Organisation (WHO) report on tobacco control measures.
• Fifteen years ago, WHO had developed the MPOWER measures – monitor tobacco use and prevention policies; protect people from tobacco smoke; offer help to quit tobacco; warn about dangers of tobacco; enforce bans on tobacco advertising; and raise taxes on tobacco products.
• The report assesses the implementation of these measures.

Quit India Movement Day 2023

• The Quit India Movement, also known as the August Movement or Bharat Chodo Andolan, was a significant civil disobedience movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress on 8 August 1942.
• The movement aimed to demand an end to British colonial rule in India and achieve full independence.
• On this day, 8^th August, in 1942, Gandhi gave the famous "Do or Die" speech, urging the Indian people to act decisively and nonviolently against British rule.

Manipur Police have filed an FIR against AR

• Police in Manipur have registered an FIR accusing the Assam Rifles (AR) of preventing police from doing their duty.
• The AR is one of the six central armed police forces (CAPFs) under the administrative control of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
• The other five forces are the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).

Katchatheevu island a political issue

• Katchatheevu is a 285-acre uninhabited speck in the Palk Strait, between India and Sri Lanka.
• It is no more than 1.6 km in length and slightly over 300 m wide at its broadest point.
• It lies northeast of Rameswaram, about 33 km from the Indian coast. It is about 62 km southwest of Jaffna, at the northern tip of Sri Lanka, and 24 km away from the inhabited Delft Island, belonging to Sri Lanka.