Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2021

Notes:

• Shanti Lal Jain has been appointed as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Indian Bank.
• He was earlier serving as the Executive Director of the Bank of Baroda.
• Jain will replace Padmaja Chunduru, whose term ends on August 31, 2021.
• His tenure of three years would start from September 1, and will be extendable for another two years or until attaining the age of superannuation, whichever is earlier.

Notes:

• Recently, the naval forces of India and Algeria has conducted a maiden naval exercise
• The exercises were conducted at the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Algeria.
• India was represented by Navy’s stealth frigate INS Tabar and naval ship ANS Ezzadjer was its counterpart.
• This exercise was aimed to enhance interaction and collaboration between the two nations.

Notes:

• Fintech services provider PayU is set to acquire Indian digital payments provider- BillDesk for $4.7 billion.
• This is set to be one of the largest deals in the Indian fintech sector.
• After this, PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus which operates in more than 20 high-growth markets, will become one of the leading online payment providers globally

Notes:

• Navies of India and Germany carried out a joint exercise, in Gulf of Aden near Yemen.
• The exercise included helicopter landings and search and seizure operations.
• The Indian Navy’s frigate ‘INS Trikand’ exercised with German frigate ‘Bayern’ in the Gulf of Aden.
• INS Trikand is currently deployed in the Gulf of Aden region for anti-piracy patrol.

Notes:

• The Reserve Bank releases a quarterly house price index (HPI) based on transaction-level data received from housing registration authorities in ten major cities.
• The cities are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, and Mumbai.
• According to RBI data, the growth in all-India House Price Index (HPI) slowed to 2 per cent in the first quarter this fiscal against 2.8 per cent in the last year.
• The HPI growth ranged from an expansion of 8.8 per cent (Ahmedabad) to a contraction of (-) 5.1 per cent (Chennai).

Notes:

• The Covid-19 technical advisory committee (TAC) constituted by the Karnataka government has proposed the ‘school bubble’ concept.
• It aims to mitigate the spread of the disease among children attending offline classes at schools and colleges across the state.
• School bubbles are physical classifications made between groups comprising a small number of students.
• As per the concept, each such bubble will include students who will be made as a group during school hours throughout the term or an academic year.

Notes:

• The United States used a special missile in its drone strikes in Afghanistan that does not explode but releases knife-like blades.
• The US drone strikes were carried out using the Hellfire missile. There are various variants of the Hellfire missile. The R9-X is also called the ‘Ninja’ bomb.
• It weighs about 45 kg and the missile can also be launched from helicopters, aircraft and Humvees. The range of these missiles varies from 500 metres to 11 km.
• The US forces have carried out two back-to-back drone strikes. The US has said they targeted the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) — ISIS-Khorasan.

Notes:

• China has developed a prototype miniature helicopter for surveillance work on future Mars missions, according to its space science agency.
• A few months ago, China achieved the historic landing of a robotic rover on the red planet.
• The prototype is similar in appearance to the robotic helicopter Ingenuity, developed by NASA for its Perseverance mission.
• As per the space agency, the helicopter could be a tool for China’s follow-up exploration on Mars.

Notes:

• The Government set up a 12-member committee to review the existing guidelines of the Journalist Welfare Scheme (JWS).
• The committee is headed by Prasar Bharti Board member Ashok Tandon.
• The committee will examine the need for revision of the amount of ex-gratia payment in death as well as other cases under the JWS.

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.