Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2021

Notes:
National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is set to find new buyers and operators for 21,700 km of operational highway stretches valued at over ₹2 lakh crore over the next three year starting 2022.
NHAI will use the funds to build new highways and cut its debt, which remained at Rs 3.17 lakh crore at the end of 2020-21.

Notes:
The Kazhuveli wetland located near Villupuram in Tamil Nadu has been recently declared the 16th bird sanctuary by the Environment, Climate Change and Forest Department.
The 5,151.60 hectares of land will henceforth be called the ‘Kazhuveli Birds Sanctuary’. The sanctuary lies adjacent to the Bay of Bengal along the eastern coast.

Notes:
The Indian Navy launched ‘Sandhayak’, the first of the four large survey vessels, in Kolkata. The primary role of these survey ships would be to conduct full-scale coastal and deep-water hydrographic survey of ports and harbours.
The ships would be deployed for collecting oceanographic and geophysical data and determination of navigational routes. The contract for building four survey ships was signed between the Defence Ministry and Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) in 2018.

Notes:
A new data has been released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). As per the report, sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies totalled $531 billion in 202, which is an increase of 1.3 per cent compared with the previous year.
The United States hosted the highest number of companies ranked in the Top 100. It is followed by China. Even though the global growth contracted, the arms sales increased across the world.

Notes:
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its new working week of 4.5 days, with Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday forming the new weekend for government employees.
The UAE currently has a Friday-Saturday weekend, which corresponds with other countries in the region.  The new plan will align the working with Western schedules. The UAE is the first nation in the world to introduce a national working week shorter than the global five-day week.

Notes:
National Commission for Women (NCW) launched a pan-India capacity building programme, ‘She is a Changemaker’.
The programme has been launched for women representatives at all levels, gram panchayats to parliament members and political workers. It aims to improve leadership skills,  decision making and communication skills of women political leaders.

Notes:
Bangalore-based Byju’s is an Indian multinational educational technology (ed-tech) company. It is the world’s most valuable ed-tech company with the m-cap of $18 billion.
Byju’s has acquired Austria-headquartered GeoGebra and the value of the transaction is about $100 million. GeoGebra is an interactive mathematics learning tool. This is also the ninth major acquisition of Byju’s.

Notes:
NITI Aayog announced that it is set to establish will be establishing 1,000 Atal Tinkering Laboratories in Jammu and Kashmir.
Out of them, as many as 187 will be established by the end of this financial year.The ATL is an initiative of NITI Aayog to boost the cognitive development in children by creating avenues for experimenting and understanding of scientific ideas.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) mandatory for cross-border transactions for capital or current account transactions of Rs 50 crore and above, from October 1 next year.
LEI is a 20-digit number used to identify parties to financial transactions worldwide to improve the accuracy of financial data systems. Banks should obtain LEI numbers from local companies undertaking capital or current account transactions of Rs 50 crore and above, for each transaction.

Notes:
Telangana is currently witnessing cases of Covidengue, which occurs when a COVID-19 patient is infected with the Dengue virus.
Over 8 cases of Covidengue cases have been recorded in Telangana. The symptoms of this syndemic disease include “distress, shortness of breathing, chills, body pains and joint pains. COVID-19 and Dengue have similar kinds of symptoms.