Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2020

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:
Recently, researchers have found the presence of animal products, such as the meat of pigs, cattle, buffalo, sheep and goat in the remains of Indus Valley Civilization.
This has been conformed from the Lipid residue analysis of ceramic vessels found in the urban and rural settlements of the civilization in North and western part of India.

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:
Agharkar Research Institute (ARI), Pune, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, has recently spotted a new species of Murainagrass.
Ischaemum is a genus of grass, widespread in tropical and semitropical regions. It is commonly called as Murainagrass. A new and tolerant species has been spotted in Goa in the Western Ghats. It was named Ischaemum janarthanamiiin honour of Goa University’s Botany Professor M. K. Janarthanam.

Notes:
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi has laid the stone for the new Parliamentary Building, thus kick starting its construction. Tata Group has won the bid for constructing the triangular shaped Parliamentary Building.
The building is being constructed as a part of Central Vista redevelopment project, and is expected to be completed by 2022 at an estimated cost of Rs.971 crore.

Notes:
The Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) transaction was introduced in India in the year 2004. Presently, RTGS handles a transaction volume of Rs 4.17 lakh crore per day and it is used by 237 participant banks.
Recently, Reserve Bank of India has permitted for round the clock RTGS facility in India, which makes India one among the very few countries offering this service.

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:
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a referendum to add the efforts against climate change and the need to protect the environment in the French Constitution.
The President proposed a change in the constitution that requires a parliamentary vote, and then a referendum. Earlier, the EU leaders including Macron agreed to achieve at least 55 per cent compared with 1990 levels, by 2030.

Notes:
The United States Agriculture Department has recently confirmed the first known case of the coronavirus in a wild animal, a mink.
Earlier, Denmark decided to cull several farmed minks after they were infected by the virus. The virus was also found in zoo tigers and household cats and dogs. But this is the first free-ranging and native wild animal being confirmed with the infection.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister has recently approved the next round of auctioning of the telecommunication spectrum. A total of 2251.25 MHz is being offered for auction valued at Rs.3,92,332.70 crore.
The most recent Spectrum auction in India was held in the year 2016, with the government raising Rs 65,789.12 crore in revenue.