Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2021

Notes:

• India’s Sumit Antil won gold in men’s javelin (F64) at the Tokyo Paralympics with a new world record throw of 68.55m.
• Sumit Antil broke the world record thrice during the final in Tokyo.
• Devendra Jhajharia and Sundar Singh Gurjar won the silver and bronze in the men’s javelin (F46) final earlier.
• India’s Yogesh Kathuniya also won silver medal in men’s discus throw F56.
• India has registered its best-ever count at the Paralympic Games, already.

Notes:

• Indian Naval vessel – INS Airavat has recently reached Ho Chi Minh City Port in Vietnam, as a part of Mission SAGAR.
• The vessel has shipped 100 Metric Tons of Liquid Medical Oxygen and 300 Oxygen Concentrators of 10 LPM capacity, to fight against the COVID 19 pandemic.
• SAGAR stands for Security and Growth for All in the Region, under which India has been helping its neighbors at times of stress.

Notes:

• South Korean lawmakers passed the world’s first law to force tech giants such as Google and Apple to offer alternative payment systems on their app stores.
• The country is set to amend the ‘Telecommunications Business Act’, the nation’s primary telecommunications law.
• The legislation would allow developers to bypass the tech giants’ proprietary payment systems and could help shape how the firms collect fees and exert power over developers and users.

Notes:

• A start-up company of IIT Ropar has claimed that it has developed the world’s first ‘Plant based’ smart air-purifier.
• Named the “Ubreathe Life”, the ‘Smart Bio-Filter’ has been developed by Urban Air Laboratory.
• The living-plant-based air purifier amplifies the air purification process in indoor spaces.
• The technology used in this product is ‘Urban Munnar Effect’. The room-air interacts with leaves and goes to the soil-root zone where maximum pollutants are purified.
• Phytoremediation is a process by which plants effectively remove pollutants from the air.

Notes:

• UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published a report titled ‘Uncertain Pathways’ recently.
• As per the report, more girls and boys than ever are migrated, with 35.5 million having lived outside their country of birth in 2020 and an additional 23.3 million displaced internally.
• The report found that over the course of the year, there were almost 15 million new displacements or 41,000 each day, and that boys outnumber girls.
• Afghanistan is on the top of the list of the top 10 countries of origin, with the largest number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Europe.
• In camps, girls are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys.

Notes:

• The C.1.2 variant of the Coronavirus disease was first reported from South Africa.
• The variant has now spread to at least six countries, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
• As per the Indian Government, India has no cases of the new C.1.2 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) variant detected so far.
• The public health body of the United Nations (UN) announced that it was monitoring the new C.1.2 virus strain.

Notes:

• Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) is an annual meet held in Vladivostok, Russia.
• It aims to encourage foreign investments in Russia’s resource-rich but underdeveloped Far East regions.
• In 2019, PM Modi had announced a $1-billion line of credit for the Far East in 2019.
• The proposed Chennai-Vladivostok maritime corridor will promote tbe bilateral relationships together.
• Mazagon Docks Limited will partner with the Russian ship-building facility at Zvezda to build important commercial ships.
• India and Russia are partners in space exploration through the Gaganyaan programme.

Notes:
India and United Kingdom have announced a $1.2 billion package, which aims to improve finance to green growth of Asian countries.

This package includes an $1 billion would be an investment from CDC, the UK’s development finance institution to support businesses working on green technology. The Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI) India partnership has also been launched to raise private capital for green projects in India.

Notes:
The Legislative Assembly of Odisha has passed the University of Health Sciences Bill 2021, recently. This bill seeks to bring all the medical and paramedical institutions of the state under a single University of Health Sciences.

Presently, various medical and paramedical institutions of the state are affiliated to different universities. This bill has been passed amidst strict opposition from various fronts.

 

Notes:
A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have jointly developed a modular device to cultivate microorganisms in space.

The device uses LED and photodiode sensor combination to track micro organism and bacteria growth. This device would be used by astronauts to carry out biological experiments in outer space during mission ‘Gaganyaan’ which is India’s first crewed spacecraft.