News in Short

• E-commerce major Amazon India launched its largest fulfilment centre in the country with a storage capacity of more than 2.4 million cubic feet in Bengaluru.
• With this launch, Amazon India has increased its overall storage capacity by 60% and now has more than 6.5 million cubic feet of storage space spread across five fulfilment centres in Karnataka.
• The new expansion in infrastructure is expected to support over 42,000 sellers in Karnataka considering the large customer base.
• This expansion will provide sellers with closer access to Amazon’s fulfilment offerings, and customers with faster delivery on a wider selection of products.

• Lieutenant General Gurmit Singh, who retired as the Deputy Chief of Army, was appointed the Governor of Uttarakhand.
• Lt Gen Singh superannuated from the Army in February 2016 after nearly four decades of service, during which he held prestigious appointments of Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Adjutant General and Corps Commander of Strategic XV Corps that overlooks the Line of Control in Kashmir.
• The President also ordered shuffling of governors of some states which includes shifting Banwarilal Purohit from Tamil Nadu to Punjab.
• The Centre’s interlocutor and retired IPS officer RN Ravi has been shifted from Nagaland to Tamil Nadu as its new Governor. Jagdish Mukhi, at present Governor of Assam, has been appointed to discharge the functions of the Governor of Nagaland.

• India’s inflation based on wholesale price index (WPI) rose 11.39% YoY in August 2021 compared with 0.41% in August 2020.
• The high rate of inflation in August 2021 is primarily due to rise in prices of non-food articles, mineral oils; crude petroleum & natural gas; manufactured products like basic metals; food products; textiles; chemicals and chemical products etc.
• The food articles segment witnessed a (-) 1.29 per cent change in August. In the month prior to that, this was zero per cent.
• Vegetable prices contracted (-)13.30 per cent in August, against (-) 8.73 per cent in July.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced a project to link their respective fast payment systems — Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow.
• UPI is India’s mobile based, ‘fast payment’ system that facilitates customers to make round the clock payments instantly using a Virtual Payment Address (VPA) created by the customer.
• PayNow is the fast payment system of Singapore which enables peer-to-peer funds transfer service, available to retail customers through participating banks and Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NFIs) in Singapore.

• Former Australia Test opener Matthew Hayden and ex-South Africa pacer Vernon Philander have been appointed as coaches of the Pakistan team for the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup in the UAE.
• The appointments were announced by the newly-elected Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ramiz Raja.
• The appointments of Hayden and Philander come just a week after head coach Misbah-ul-Haq and bowling coach Waqar Younis resigned from their respective posts after two years in the job.
• The PCB had earlier roped in former Test spinner SaqlainMushtaq and all-rounder Abdul Razzaq as interim coaches for the home series against New Zealand.