Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2021

Notes:
The Principal Scientific Advisor K Vijay Raghavan has launched the MANAS app. MANAS stands for Mental Health and Normalcy Augmentation System.
The app is a comprehensive, scalable, and national digital wellbeing platform aimed to promote mental wellbeing across age groups. This app has been initiated by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor and jointly developed by NIMHANS Bengaluru, Armed Forces Medical College – Pune and C-DAC – Bengaluru.

Notes:
Dr. Kakarla Subba Rao who was a renowned radiologist passed away recently at Secunderabad. He also served as the Director of Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad.
For his relentless service in the field of medicine, he was honoured with the Padma Shri award in 2000 by the Government of India.

Notes:
Italy has recently launched its first ever mega food park project in India involving food processing facilities.
The pilot project “The Mega Food Park” was launched in virtual mode. A Letter of Intent was signed between the ICE Office in Mumbai and Fanidhar Mega Food Park, Gujarat. PM Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit the country in the coming days.

Notes:
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India and GIZ GmbH India on behalf of the German Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety signed an agreement on Technical Cooperation titled ‘Cities Combating Plastic Entering the Marine Environment’.
The project’s outcomes are completely in line with the objectives of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban focusing on sustainable solid waste management and the target to phase out single use plastic by 2022”.

Notes:
IAS officer Siddharth Singh Longjam is to take over as the National Anti-Doping Agency’s Director General.
The officer will succeed Navin Agarwal, who introduced Athletes Biological Passport (ABP) for around 60 elite Indian sportspersons during his tenure. Longjam is currently serving as joint secretary in the Sports Ministry.

Notes:
A report was recently released by China’s central bank, People’s Bank of China (PBOC). It stated that India’s demographic advantage to overtake China’s by 2035.
It also proposed that China should immediately liberalise its birth policies to tackle the problems of an ageing population. This would enable the country to compete economically with demographically young India and immigration-friendly US.

Notes:
The communist Party of Cuba, has chosen Mr. Díaz-Canel as the party’s new leader. He has been the President of Cuba since the year 2018.
In both the positions as Communist Party leader and as President, he has replaced Raul Castro, which has brought a political dynasty to an end, which was in power since the 1959 revolution.

Notes:
‘Nimbus’ is a flagship cloud service project of Israel, which aims to provide a solution for cloud services to the government, the defence system, and other sectors.
Recently, Israel’s government chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google for the USD 1-billion project to provide cloud services for the country’s public sector and military. Amazon and Google beat Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM in the tender for the four-phase “Nimbus” project.

Notes:
The NASA has recently released the image of interacting galaxies Arp 273, in the shape of a ‘Cosmic Rose’.
The image has been shared on the official Instagram handle of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In the image, a group of spiral galaxies create a shape resembling a rose. This structure made of galaxies lies in the Andromeda constellation, at about 300 million light-years away.

Notes:
India has been ranked at the 87th position among 115 countries in Energy Transition Index (ETI), which is released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The top spot is occupied by Sweden followed by Norway and Denmark. The top 10 positions have been occupied by Western and Northern European countries.