Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2023

Notes:
Lynx-U2 System is an indigenously developed naval gun fire control system. The Union Defence Ministry recently signed a contract with BEL for the procurement of 13 of these systems for the Indian Navy.
The purchase under the Buy Indian – IDMM (Indigenously Designed, Developed, and Manufactured) category will be placed on new-gen offshore patrol vessels to be constructed indigenously at Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers and Goa Shipyard Limited.

Notes:
First Peoples of Australia are people who lived in the Australia’s continental mainland and surrounding islands for tens of thousands of years before the arrival of first Europeans in the early 17th century.
A referendum will be issued this year by the Australian government to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. It will decide whether these people should be formally consulted in the law making process.

Notes:
The ALE, a Japanese company, is currently planning to create an “Artificial Meteor Shower”. The meteor shower will be created using pressure driven system of gas tanks.
ALE is sending satellites into space to create the world’s first human-made meteor shower. It is named ‘Sky Canvas’ and the project was initially scheduled for launch in 2020. It was delayed due to a satellite malfunction.

Notes:
Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism, which was passed recently by the country’s parliament, will force coal mines and oil refineries to minimize emissions by around 4 percent each year.
It is part of the efforts taken by the government to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Notes:
Recently, the World Health Organisation certified Azerbaijan and Tajikistan as Malaria-Free Countries.
They succeeded in eliminating the Anopheles mosquito-borne disease in their territories. In Tajikistan and Azerbaijan, the last cases of regional spread of Plasmodium vivax malaria were discovered in 2012 and 2014.

Notes:
The Indian government unveiled its Foreign Trade Policy 2023 which seeks to boost merchandise and services exports by USD 2 trillion by 2030 from the current level of USD 765 billion.
The Policy also seeks to make the Indian Rupee the global currency in settling international trade payments.

Notes:
Sea Lamprey is a rare species of fish that is known to extract blood of its prey. It was recently spotted on the Dutch island of Texel. It was last sighted on the island in 2017.
The sea lamprey is also known as ‘vampire fish’ due to its nature of sucking blood from its host like a parasite.

Notes:
In the financial year 2022-2023, procurement of goods and services from government portal Government e Marketplace (GeM) has crossed the Rs 2 lakh crore mark.
After the GeM portal was launched in 2017, business worth about Rs 400 crore was done and the business tripled last year to Rs 1 lakh crores, while it reached the 2 lakh crore-mark in 5 years.

Notes:
India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue collection for the month of March 2023 is stood at 1.6 lakh crore rupees.
This is 13 percent higher than the GST revenues in the same month of last year. It is for the fourth time, in the current financial year that the gross GST collection has crossed 1.5 lakh crore rupees, since the implementation of GST.

Notes:
Four new species of jumping spiders were recently discovered from the Meghalaya. One among them is ‘Habrocestum togansangmai’.
It is named after Garo freedom fighter Togan Sangma.