Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2021

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:
Forbes, an American business magazine releases the rankings of 100 most powerful women of the world ever year.
This year, Jeff Bezos’ former wife Mackenzie Scott earned the topmost spot in this year’s list. US Vice-President Kamla Harris is ranked second, and European Central Bank Head Christine Lagarde is at the third position. India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is ranked at 37th position.

Notes:
Asian Development Bank has approved a Rs 2,644.85 crore (USD 350 million) loan for India to help improve its urban services.
The loan supports the policies set up by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to provide universal coverage of piped water supply and improved sanitation. This is part of the recently launched Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0

Notes:
A US-based rights group ChinaAid has awarded journalist Zhang Zhan with the Lin Zhao Freedom Award. She was jailed by Chinese authorities for reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The journalist was conferred with the award for her work in promoting the Chinese civil society and advancing the rule of law. Lawyer-turned-journalist Zhang travelled to Wuhan and  investigated the area.

Notes:
Kerala recently reported bird flu cases in the Alappuzha district and a total of 12,000 ducks were culled in Thakazhi gram panchayat, which has been declared as a containment zone.
More samples from different areas have also been sent to ICAR-National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases, Bhopal for testing and the identification of bird flu cases.

Notes:
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Department of Space, and the government of India signed an MoU with smartphone maker OPPO to strengthen research and development of NavIC messaging service.
NavIC messaging service is the domestic satellite navigation system of India. They will develop indigenous solutions by incorporating the NavIC short messaging feature in the smartphones released by OPPO.

Notes:
Indian Government passed an amendment to the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act to ensure that account holders can access their insured deposit amount within 90 days.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended a bank deposit insurance programme and said that Rs 1,300 crore had been paid to over 1 lakh depositors whose banks faced financial crises. 3 lakh such depositors were set to receive funds stuck in such accounts.

Notes:
The Log4j vulnerability is a software flaw as reported by cyber-security researchers that could allow attackers to have uncontrolled access to computer systems.
Dubbed CVE-2021-44228, it could impact several products from those of Apple to Microsoft. US government’s cyber-security agency has also issued a warning on the same. The issue was discovered in Microsoft-owned Minecraft.

Notes:
All 5 central Asian countries- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have been invited by India as the Republic day guest.
This is the first time that all central Asian countries will be present as the guest. In 2018, countries of ASEAN bloc were invited. Prime Minister Modi had visited all Central Asian countries in 2015, a first by any Indian Prime Minister.

Notes:
Chief Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose inaugurated the digital platform named LokpalOnline, which enables people to file corruption complaints with the Lokpal.
At present, complaints are being sent by post, e-mail or hand-delivered. The new portal can be accessed by the citizens of the country and complaints can be filed from anywhere, anytime at lokpalonline.gov.in. In 2019, Justice Ghose was appointed as the country’s first Lokpal.