Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2020

Notes:
This year’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention will be held in a virtual mode, on account of COVID 19 pandemic movement restrictions.
The virtual convention will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is observed on 9th January of every year that commemorates the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa.

Notes:
NASA has named the 18 astronauts group half of them being women, who will train for its Moon-landing Mission by 2024, named ‘Artemis’.
From this set of astronauts, the first woman to set foot on the moon and the next man on the moon will be picked up. The group includes Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, who performed the world’s first all-female spacewalk.

Notes:
Google launched a new health research app called the ‘Google Health Studies’. It enables the research institutions to connect with potential study participants.
Through this app, android users can take part in health studies by answering survey questions and providing relevant data. Its first study will focus on respiratory illnesses like COVID-19.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank has announced that the Real Time Gross Settlement System or the RTGS facility will be available round the clock, from December 14.
Last December, the RBI had made the NEFT service available 24×7. As per the RBI, RTGS can be used for both domestic payments in Indian financial markets and cross-border payments.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved an expenditure of Rs.22,810 crore, for providing a wage subsidy through the employee’s provident fund organization (EPFO).
This is a part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Rojgar Yojana. This move is set to incentivize creation of new job opportunities during the Covid recovery phase of the economy.

Notes:
The Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility (APVAX) has been launched by the Asian Development Bank. This initiative is set to support to its developing member economies to procure and deliver COVID-19 vaccines.
The total cost of this project is USD 9 billion. The aim of the scheme is to help ADB’s member countries to vaccinate their people and tide away from the ongoing COVID crisis.

Notes:
The state government of Maharashtra has launched a new set of rules governing the real estate development.
Called as the ‘Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations (UDCPR)’, the rules will be applicable to the entire state except Mumbai civic body and some authorities with their own rules. This will bring clarity in regulations and uniformity in the width and size of the projects etc.

Notes:
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) has stated that more than 5 million people of Yemen would head towards hunger in the year 2021.
Also, FAO has estimated that more than 50,000 people in the country would be living in famine conditions by next year. Yemen has been in a civil war since 2014 and the normal life of the Arab country has been severely hurt.

Notes:
Eswatini Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini, who was undergoing treatment for coronavirus, has recently passed away. He is the first Prime Minister to die from the Covid pandemic.
Eswatini, which was earlier called as ‘Swaziland’ before official renaming in 2018, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is surrounded by Mozambique and South Africa. Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa.

Notes:
Project Loon is the subsidiary of Technology giant Google. It undertakes the project of delivering internet access to remote parts of the world.
The project uses helium-filled balloons for this purpose. In the month of October, the company has announced that the balloons set a new record for the longest stratospheric flight by staying in air for 312 days.