28th August 2018 Current Affairs

Contents

Bhopal cleanest Indian city for transport: CSE survey

Bhopal has topped a CSE survey of 14 Indian cities for lowest overall emissions and energy use from the urban commute.
Delhi is worst for overall emissions and energy consumption.
Among the six megacities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad – Kolkata has lowest per-trip emission, Mumbai the second-lowest, both due to the high prevalence of public transport and walking.
Increase in greenhouse gas emissions is the highest in the transport sector in India.
Urban traffic is a source of very high health damaging toxic chemicals.
The study ranks 14 cities on the basis of emissions of carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, as well as energy-guzzling from urban commuting.

The government has announced its first set of regulations for drone flight.
Drones – or Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPASs) – are to operate only within visual line of sight (VLoS).
Additionally, they can only be operated during daytime, and up to a maximum altitude of 400 feet.
Drones are divided into 5 categories by weight – nano, micro, small, medium and large.
The regulations will come into effect from December 1st, 2018.
Operators will require an Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) for Remotely Piloted Aircraft, except for nano RPASs operating below 50 feet and micro RPASs operating below 200 feet.

Neeraj Chopra became the first Indian javelin thrower to win a gold medal at the Asian Games.
The 20-year-old junior world record holder recorded a throw of 88.06m to win gold at the 2018 Asian Games.
Neeraj was also the first Indian to win a gold medal in the javelin throw event at the Commonwealth Games earlier in 2018.

The Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, launched an online portal for booking of Common Carrier Capacity on GAIL’s pipelines.
The aim is to enable easy, efficient and transparent booking of Common Carrier Capacity.
The online portal (www.gailonline.com) is the first of its kind in the natural gas sector.

India’s first biofuel-powered flight was a SpiceJet flight from Dehradun to Delhi.
The biofuel flight was powered by a blend of 75% air turbine fuel (ATF) and 25% biojet fuel.
Biofuel reduces carbon emissions and enhances fuel efficiency.
The biofuel part was made from the Jatropha crop, and it was developed by the CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun.