Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2021

Notes:
Petr Fiala  – the leader of the Civic Democratic of Czech Republic, has been appointed as the new Prime Minister of the country. His appointment comes after a 5-party coalition secured a majority of 108 votes in the 200-seat parliament.
Petr Fiala previously served as the country’s Minister of Education, Youth and Sports from 2012 to 2013 and has been leader of the Civic Democratic Party since 2014.

Notes:
Al Raisi – the Inspector General of the United Arab Emirates’ Interior ministry has been elected as the President of Interpol, following three rounds of voting. He received 68.9 percent of votes cast by member countries.
The International Criminal Police Organization, commonly known as the Interpol, facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control. It is headquartered in Lyon, France.

Notes:
The 37-year old Parag Agrawal an IIT-Bombay graduate, has replaced Jack Dorsey as the new Twitter Chief executive officer.
He also became the youngest CEO in top 500 companies. Parag joined Twitter in October 2011 as an engineer and held the title of the company’s ‘Distinguished Software Engineer’. He also held the post of Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer in 2017.

Notes:
Indian actor Dhanush has been awarded with the Best actor (Male) at the BRICS Film Festival for his role in Tamil movie ‘Asuran’, which was directed by Vetrimaaran. He won the National Award for best actor, for the same movie this year. The movie has so far won three National Awards
Lara Boldorini was awarded the Best Actor (Female) at the festival for her performance in the Brazilian film ‘On Wheels’.

Notes:
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment announced the formation of a three-member committee to review the criteria for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) reservations.
The committee will comprise Former Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Member Secretary ICSSR Prof VK Malhotra and Principal Economic Advisor to the Indian government Sanjeev Sanyal. It will examine the approaches followed so far for identifying the economically weaker sections and send its recommendations to the Centre in the next three weeks.

Notes:
Israel has delivered advanced Heron drones to Indian Armed Forces, which are far more advanced than the Herons in the existing inventory with better anti-jamming capability.
The acquisition of these drones has been done under the emergency financial powers granted by Indian government to the defence forces under which they can buy equipment and systems worth ₹500 crores to upgrade their military capabilities.

Notes:
Central American country Honduras is set to elect its first female president, Xiomara Castro, after the ruling party conceded defeat.
Ms Castro is the candidate for the left-wing Libre (Free) Party, and has a preliminary lead of almost 20 percentage points over her rival. The 12-year reign of the right-wing National Party was accused for scandals and corruptive practices.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the report titled “State Finances: A Study of Budgets of 2021-22”.
It is an annual publication that provides assessment of the finances of State governments for 2021-22 against the actual and revised outcomes for 2019-20 and 2020-21, respectively. The theme of this year’s Report is “Coping with the Pandemic: A Third-Tier Dimension”. For 2021-22, States have budgeted their consolidated gross fiscal deficit to GDP Ratio at 3.7 per cent.

Notes:
The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has extended the timeline for the implementation of Smart Cities Mission to June 2023 due to the Covid pandemic and other reasons.
As per the earlier deadline, the cities were expected to complete their projects within five years of selection under the Smart Cities Mission. Hundred smart cities were selected through four rounds of competition from January 2016 to June 2018.

Notes:
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), under the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), is an intelligence and enforcement agency of the Government of India on anti-smuggling matters.
The Union Finance Minister Ms Nirmala Sitharaman was addressing the 64th ‘Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Foundation Day’. DRI released a report on the occasion, which said that gold smuggling shifted from the Middle East to Myanmar during 2020-21.