The UAE announced plans to launch a probe to explore an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to collect data on the origins of the universe. If successful, it will join an elite group of nations that have landed probes on asteroids or comets. The Indian Air Force will procure 114 fighter aircraft under the Make in India initiative through a multi-billion dollar deal. Gurjit Kaur won the FIH Women's Hockey Player of the Year award at the FIH Hockey Stars Awards 2020-21, where several Indian hockey players won awards. Voting began for the first phase of local body elections in 9 districts of Tamil Nadu, with a close fight expected between the AIADMK and DMK parties.

1. CURRENT AFFAIRS
6 OCTOBER 2021
Dr . A. PRABAHARAN
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2. UAE to launch mission to explore asteroid
between Mars and Jupiter
 The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on October 5, 2021
announced plans to launch a probe to explore an
asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to collect data on
the origins of the universe.
 If the nation manages to successfully land its
spacecraft on the asteroid, it will join an elite club of
nations- the US, Japan and the European Union that
have successfully landed probes on either an asteroid
or a comet.
 This latest announcement comes after a UAE probe
reached the red planet earlier this year.
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3. Indian Air Force to procure 114 fighter aircrafts under
Make in India: IAF Chief VR Chaudhari
 Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari informed on October 5, 2021, that the Indian
Air Force will be taking forward the proposed procurement of 114 Multi-Role
Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) and that it will be carried out under the ‘Make in India’
initiative.
 The Indian Air Force, in April 2019, had issued an RFI (Request for Information),
or the initial tender, to acquire 114 jets at a cost of around USD 118 billion. The
tender was billed as one of the world’s biggest military procurement
programmes in recent years.
 The Indian Air Force Chief said that the response to the Request for
Information (RFI) has been received from several aerospace firms and that the
acquisition process has been taken forward to the next phase.
 The top contenders for the deal included Boeing’s F/A-18, Lockheed Martin’s
F-21, Dassault Aviation’s Rafale, Russian aircraft MiG 35, the Eurofighter
Typhoon, and Saab’s Gripen.

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4. FIH Hockey Star Awards 2021: Gurjit Kaur
wins FIH Hockey Player of the Year
 Gurjit Kaur won the FIH Women’s Hockey
Player of the Year at the International
Hockey Federation's (FIH) Hockey Stars
Awards 2020-21.
 The results of the FIH Hockey Stars Awards
2020-21 were announced on October 6,
2021.
 A total of 5 Indian Hockey players and two
head coaches of both the Indian men’s and
women’s Hockey teams each claimed the
hockey awards across different categories.
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5. Vehicle Scrapping Policy: Check List of
incentives & disincentives
 The Union Transport Ministry on October 5, 2021 issued a list of
incentives and disincentives of the Vehicle Scrapping Policy.
 The list has been issued to encourage the vehicle owners to
discard their old polluting vehicles that are high maintenance
and have a higher fuel consumption cost.
 Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had first announced
the Vehicle Scrapping Policy during her budget speech in
February 2021.
 The policy was introduced to bring transformational changes in
the automobile sector by phasing out old, unfit and polluting
vehicles.
 Under the vehicle scrapping policy, all personal vehicles will have
to undergo fitness tests in automated centres after 20 years and
commercial vehicles will undergo the test after 15 years.
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6. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 jointly awarded to
Benjamin List and David W.C. Macmillan
 The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been jointly awarded to Benjamin List
and David W.C. MacMillan. Benjamin List from Germany and Scottish-born
David MacMillan have been honoured for developing new tools for building
molecules that have helped in making new drugs and are more
environmentally friendly.
 List and MacMillan share the 10-million Swedish crown ($1.14 million) prize for
their separate work on asymmetric organocatalysis.
 According to the award-giving body, it was a new and indigenous tool for
molecule building.
 Benjamin List, of the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kohlenforschung, and David
MacMillan, of Princeton University, United States, will share the prize in equal
parts for the breakthroughs that were achieved independently of one another.
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7. What is NASA’s Psyche mission, which can
unveil secrets of early Solar System?
 NASA’s Psyche mission will be the first to be
launched in August 2022 that will explore a giant
metal asteroid known as (16) Psyche in the main
asteroid belt.
 The asteroid Psyche is orbiting the Sun between
Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche mission is one of
the two missions of NASA to explore the early
Solar System.
 The Lucy mission is another mission that will set
out in September 2021 to explore Jupiter’s Trojan
asteroids to study the early Solar System.
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8. NAV-eCash card: SBI, Indian Navy launch new card to remove
cash dependency when ship is at high seas
 NAV-eCash card: The Indian Navy and State Bank of India (SBI) together
on October 4, 2021 launched SBI's NAV-eCash card aboard country's
largest naval aircraft carrier-INS Vikramaditya.
 The NAV-eCash card, which has a dual-chip technology, will enable
online as well as offline transactions. This would remove all difficulties
faced by personnel onboard in handling physical cash during deployment
of the ship at high seas.
 The same concept will then be replicated at other naval ships and various
defence establishments as well to create a secured, convenient and
sustainable payment ecosystem.
 The current infrastructure at naval ships inhibits traditional payment
solutions, especially when the ship is at high seas as there is no
connectivity at that time.
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9. Government proposes amendments to
Forest Conservation Act
 The Ministry of Environment has proposed to amend the Forest
Conservation Act in order to do away with the requirement of prior
government approval for the development of border infrastructure
on forest land.
 The Ministry has claimed that it causes delays in the implementation
of critical projects.
 The Environment Ministry has also invited suggestions from States
and UTs and all the people concerned on the proposed
amendments to the Forest Conservation Act, within the next 15 days.
 The ministry, in addition, has proposed to allow the states to permit
non-forest use of forest land for the implementation of strategic and
security projects that are required to be completed in a given time
frame.
 It has also proposed removing safaris, zoos, forest training
infrastructure from the definition of non-forestry activities.
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10. Hockey India withdraws from 2022
Commonwealth Games in England
 India on October 5, 2021, pulled out of the 2022
Birmingham Commonwealth Games’ hockey
competition stating the risk of contracting COVID-19 and
the discriminatory quarantine rules by the United
Kingdom (UK) for travellers coming from India.
 The UK has refused to consider India’s COVID-19
vaccination certificates and imposed a 10-day
quarantine on travellers coming from India even if fully
vaccinated.
 India has also imposed reciprocal rules on all UK
nationals arriving in the country following UK’s
discriminatory quarantine rules.
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11. Himachal Pradesh becomes first Indian state to
begin organised cultivation of Cinnamon
 Cinnamon cultivation in Himachal Pradesh has been introduced by
CSIR’s Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT) on a
pilot basis.
 Organised Cinnamon cultivation in Himachal Pradesh was launched
on 29 September 2021, with State Agriculture Minister Virendra
Kanwar planting the first sapling in the Una district.
 India imports 45,318 tonnes of Cinnamon annually from Sri Lanka,
China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Nepal. Of the 45,318 tonnes of
imports, 37, 166 tonnes of Cinnamomum cassia (species banned in
various countries) are imported by India from China, Vietnam, and
Indonesia.
 On the occasion, the director of CSIR-IHBT informed that as much
as 2000 hectares of the area was under Cinnamomum Verum
cultivation in Kerala but was in an unorganized sector.
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12. Annual Durga puja carnival cancelled in West
Bengal
 The West Bengal state government has decided to cancel
the annual Durga Puja carnival for the second year in a
row. The government urged the people to strictly follow
COVID-19 protocols.
 The Annual Durga puja carnival involves the display of top
pandal themes before idol immersion. The puja was
cancelled for the second year due to the COVID-19
pandemic.
 The state in a recent order made the wearing of masks
and carrying of hand sanitizers mandatory for all people
attending the puja. The state has also banned cultural
programmes near the pandal.
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13. Tamil Nadu local body elections today: Voting for first
phase begins, AIADMK, DMK in close fight
 The polling for Tamil Nadu local body elections has started and will
be held on October 6 and October 9, 2021. The voting for the local
body polls in Tamil Nadu is being conducted in 9 districts of the state
that are Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram, Tenkasi, Vellore, Tiruppatur,
Ranipet, Tirunelveli, Kallakuruchi, and Villupuram.
 The polling in Tamil Nadu will take place from 7 am to 6 pm.
 Reportedly over 1 lakh officials have been deployed across Tamil
Nadu to ensure smooth polling in the mentioned nine districts.
 Before the upcoming local body elections in Tamil Nadu, on
September 15, 2021, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) had announced that
it will contest the elections independently in the upcoming local body
polls in nine districts of Tamil Nadu.
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