Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2021

Notes:
Karnataka is the only state to have passed the Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill. The Bill was recently passed in the state assembly.
The Bill seeks strict provisions for forced or induced conversions. The state government led by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, wants to prohibit conversion by “misrepresentation, force, allurement, fraudulent means, or marriage.”

Notes:
Punjab’s Ludhiana Central Jail now has recently inaugurated its own radio channel, “Radio Ujala Punjab,”.
Only jail inmates will be running the radio channel and prisoners who work as ‘Radio Jockeys’ have undergone training. Six other jails of Punjab would also get their own radio channels in the coming days. This programme aims to rehabilitate the prisoners and provide welfare opportunities.

Notes:
The Indian Army has launched a messaging application named ASIGMA, with features such as multi-level security and message prioritisation.
ASIGMA stands for ‘Army Secure IndiGeneous Messaging Application (ASIGMA)’. It is a new generation, state-of-the-art, web-based application. A team of Corps of Signals has developed it in-house.

Notes:
China has recently conducted a nuclear fusion experiment, aimed towards the creation of an artificial sun. This experiment is being conducted by Hefei Institute of Physical Science and is called Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST).
It is known that China has already spent around 6 billion yuan in this large-scale experiment under which extremely high temperatures are used to boil hydrogen isotopes fusing them together and releasing energy.

Notes:
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launched the “Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities- Toolkit 2022”.
On 1st October 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, to create “Garbage Free Cities” (GFC). The aim of the programme is to make every urban local body at least 3-star Garbage Free as per the Star Rating protocol.

Notes:
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh laid the foundation of BrahMos Aerospace cruise missile manufacturing unit in Lucknow.
BrahMos is a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) of India and NPOM, Russia to develop next-generation supersonic missiles for the Indian forces. The name was derived from Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers of India and Russia respectively.

Notes:
Tsongmo or Changu Lake, is located in the state of Sikkim, near India’s boundary with China. It was seen in the news, as many tourists were stuck near the lake in Sikkim due to heavy snowfall.
Over 1024 tourists were given shelter by the Indian Army near Nathula pass. They were then guided to reach Gangtok, which is around 40 km away, on foot.

Notes:
China has deployed a new Earth resources observation satellite named ‘Ziyuan-1 02E’, via its Chang Zheng 4C rocket.
The satellite, along with an amateur radio CubeSat, lifted off recently. Ziyuan (ZY), meaning Resource, is a series of remote-sensing satellites, that aim to acquire high-resolution images. The images can be used for surveying Earth resources, disaster management, and land use monitoring.

Notes:
The Prime Minister inaugurated the Bina-Panki Multi-product Pipeline Project. It is a 356 Km long project with a capacity of around 3.45 million metric tonnes per annum.
The project connects Bina refinery in Madhya Pradesh to Panki region in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The project has been built at a cost of over 1,500 crore rupees. It will enable the region access petroleum products from the Bina refinery.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India released a report on “Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2020-21”. It presents the performance of the banking sector, including co-operative banks, and NBFCs during 2020-21 and 2021-22 so far.
Gross non-performing assets (GNPA) ratio of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) declined from 8.2 per cent at end-March 2020 to 7.3 per cent at end-March 2021 and further to 6.9 per cent at end-September 2021.