CURRENT AFFAIRS 17TH FEBRUARY

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, has sanctioned Rs. 2.26 Crores for Medaram Jatara 2022 Festival in Telangana. In 2022, the festival is being held from February 16 to 19, 2022.
Medaram Jatara is the second-largest fair in India, after the Kumbh Mela.
The four day tribal festival is celebrated once in two years in the month of “Magha” (February) on the full moon day, in Medaram Village of Mulugu district in Telangana.
The festival is organised by the second-largest Tribal Community of Telangana, the Koya tribe, in collaboration with the Tribal Welfare Department, Government of Telangana.

The Indian Army had conducted a first-of-its-kind Hackathon named “SainyaRanakshetram” from Oct 01, 2021 to Dec 31, 2021, to showcase the technological side of the Army and promote proficiency and expertise in the use of emerging technologies.
The event was organised online by the Military College of Telecommunication Engineering (MCTE), Mhow, in Madhya Pradesh, in collaboration with the Rashtriya Raksha University, Gandhinagar, under the overall guidance of the Shimla based Army Training Command (ARTRAC).
The event comprised of a number of challenges based on three themes namely Secure Coding, Software Defined Radio exploitation and Cyber Offensive skills.
It had prizes upto Rs 15 lakhs.

Sandeep Bakhshi has been named the Business Standard Banker of the Year 2020-21. He is the managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of ICICI Bank.
The winner was chosen by a jury of 5 members chaired by former Reserve Bank of India deputy governor S S Mundra.
For 2020-21, ICICI Bank reported a net profit of Rs 16,193 crore against Rs 7,931 crore during the previous financial year.

com has partnered with RBL Bank to launch ‘Paisa on Demand’ (PoD) credit card, under its neo-lending strategy.
The PoD credit card will be exclusively available on the Paisabazaar platform
Along with the features of a credit card, PoD will provide the option of availing of personal loans from RBL Bank.

Dabur India has become the first Indian consumer goods company to become completely plastic waste neutral. It has done this by collecting, processing and recycling around 27,000 metric tonnes of post-consumer plastic waste during FY21-22.
Dabur has achieved the landmark of surpassing its plastic packaging usage with recycling
Dabur has also announced the launch of a new ‘Save the Environment’ campaign in Himachal Pradesh to create awareness within communities on managing plastic waste within their households.

The Indian mining major Vedanta has inked an MoU with Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company, Hon Hai Technology Group (better known as Foxconn) to form a joint venture (JV) for manufacturing semiconductors in India.
This is the first JV in the electronics manufacturing sector after the government announced Rs 76,000 crore production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for semiconductor and display manufacturing, to create an ecosystem of local production of semiconductor in India.
Vedanta will be majority shareholder in the JV while Foxconn will hold minority share.
Anil Agarwal, the non-executive Chairman of Vedanta, will be the Chairman of the JV company.

IAS Vineet Joshi has been appointed as the new Chairman of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) with effect from February 14, 2022.
Mr Joshi, a 1992-batch IAS officer of the Manipur cadre, is an Additional Secretary, Department of Higher Education, under Ministry of Education.
He replaces IAS Manoj Ahuja, who has been appointed as the Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.
Vineet Joshi is also the Director-General of the National Testing Agency (NTA). In 2010 as well he got the responsibility of CBSE chairman.

Israel has become the first country in the world to allow unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs/Drones) to operate in civilian airspace.
This means that the drones in Israel will be allowed to fly in civilian airspace, just like any other civilian airliner, rather than being restricted to unsegregated airspace.
The Israeli Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has issued certification to ‘Hermes Starliner’ unmanned system, developed and manufactured by Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense electronics company.
Hermes Starliner drone will fly in civilian airspace for the benefit of agriculture, environment, fight against crime, the people and the economy.

The Ministry of Textiles has further extended the timeline for submission of applications under the PLI Scheme for Textiles till February 28, 2022.
Earlier this deadline was 31st January 2022, and was extended till 14th February 2022.

India has been ranked third in the world in the US Green Building Council’s annual list of top 10 nations and areas outside of the United States for LEED-certified green buildings in 2021.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is the most widely used green building rating system in the world, and provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings.
In 2021, India had 146 LEED-certified buildings and spaces. This is nearly 2.8 million gross area square meters (GSM) of space, marking an increase of around 10% in LEED-certified space from 2020.
China has topped the list with LEED-certified space of more than 14 million GSM. Canada is at second position having more than 3.2 million GSM.
Though the United States is not included in the list but remains the world’s largest market for LEED with more than 26 million GSM certified during the year.