Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2021

Notes:
India has announced 200,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines as a gift to the UN peacekeepers. It will be sent on March 27 and will be distributed to the peacekeeping missions.
With this, it will be possible to administer the double doses of COVID-19 vaccines to all 85,782 UN peacekeepers serving in 12 peacekeeping operations across the world.

Notes:
Saurabh Garg – a senior bureaucrat and 1991 batch IAS officer of Odisha cadre, has been appointed as the Chief Officer (CEO) of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). This has been announced by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC).
The committee has appointed him in the rank of Additional Secretary.

Notes:
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has proposed retaliatory trade actions against India and some other countries for imposing Equalisation levy on e-commerce companies.
In June 2020, the US initiated an investigation under Section 301 of the US Trade Act, 1974 against the taxation on the digital services or the Equalisation levy by India, Italy, Turkey, UK, Spain and Austria.

Notes:
The Union health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has recently launched the “Tribal TB Initiative”. This is a part of the TB Mukt Bharat. He inaugurated the initiative via videoconference from his office.
This is a part of the Union Government to eliminate Tuberculosis from India by the year 2025, much ahead of the global target of eliminating TB by 2030.

Notes:
Jal Jeevan Mission was announced on 15th August, 2019, with the aim to provide tap water supply to every rural home by 2024.
The scheme has recently reached a new milestone of providing over 4 Crore rural households with tap water supply. Goa has become the first State in the country to provide 100 per cent tap water supply.

Notes:
Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog has launched AIM-PRIME (Program for Researchers on Innovations, Market-Readiness & Entrepreneurship).
It aims to promote and support science-based start-ups & ventures across India. AIM has partnered with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to launch this program. It will be implemented by Venture Center – a non-profit technology business incubator.

Notes:
The Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ has recently launched a portal named “MyNEP2020” of National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) web portal.
This portal would be functional from 1st April to 15th May 2021. This portal seeks suggestions from various stake holders for the draft “National Professional Standards for Teachers” (NPST) and “National Mission for Mentoring Program membership” (NMM).

Notes:
The Government of India has announced scholarships to 2000 descendants of the Liberation War fighters of Bangladesh under its new Muktijoddha Scholarship scheme, which was announced it 2017.
The scheme aims to benefit 10,000 students from Bangladesh over a period of five years. This year, 1000 students each from the Higher Secondary and Undergraduate categories have been given as scholarship directly in their account.

Notes:
As per the recent report from the University of Maryland and available on Global Forest Watch, the tropical region has lost 12.2 million hectares of tree cover in 2020.
Out of the total cover, deforestation of around 4.2 million hectares occurred within humid tropical primary forest. The resulting carbon emissions from this primary forest loss is about 2.64 Gt CO2. The Primary forest loss was also 12% higher in 2020 than the year before.

Notes:
The Union Road Transport Ministry has introduced the ‘National Register’ for driving licenses (DLs) and National Register for Registration Certificates.
These registers have come into effect from March 31, 2021 and are intended to make all changes in Driving Licenses done electronically. This would prevent duplication or misuse of DLs.