Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2022

Notes:
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has approved Bharat Biotech’s intranasal Covid vaccine as a booster dose for those above 18 years of age.
India’s first intranasal Covid vaccine iNCOVACC will be added to the CoWin app, which is a web platform for vaccination registration in the country. At present, only Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Serum Institute’s Covishield and Covovax, Russian Sputink V and Biological E Ltd’s Corbevax are listed in the CoWin portal.

Notes:
Tech giant Google has approached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the Competition Commission of India (CCI) order on unfair business practices in Android mobile device.
The CCI in October slapped a penalty of ₹1,337.76 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in relation to Android mobile devices. It ordered the internet major to cease and desist from various unfair business practices.

Notes:
Under Atal Innovation Mission, grant-in-aid of up to Rs. 10 crores for a maximum period of 5 years is provided to establish the Atal Incubation Centre (AIC)
Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) recently signed agreements with MSMEs for incubation of newer technologies into commercial products.

Notes:
As many as 38 people recently died in incidents related to powerful Arctic winter storm. The vast storm extends more than 3,200km from Texas to Quebec.
Over 200 million people across the country were left without power and thousands of flights were cancelled. More than eight million people remained under blizzard warnings. As per the US National Weather Service, its recent depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather advisories ever.

Notes:
Indian badminton star PV Sindhu is the only Indian player in the top 25 in Forbes’ annual list of the highest-paid female athletes in the world.
The 27-year-old made 7 million US Dollars of her earnings, after having won a singles gold and doubles silver at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year in Birmingham. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka tops the list, for the third straight year.

Notes:
Pharmaceutical company Hetero received World Health Organization Prequalification of Medicines Programme (WHO PQ) approval for its generic version of Covid-19 oral antiviral treatment candidate Nirmatrelvir.
Nirmatrelvir, which originated in Pfizer laboratories, is co-packaged with ritonavir tablets as Pfizer’s Covid-19 oral antiviral drug Paxlovid.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), ARTPARK (AI and Robotics Technology Park) and Google have partnered together for ‘Project Vaani’ Initiative.
The digital project aims to map the language diversity of India by collecting speech sets of about a million people across 773 districts. The project aims to record over 150,000 hours of speech, part of which will be transcribed in local scripts. The goal is to boost development of automatic speech recognition, speech to speech translation and natural language understanding.

Notes:
The Indian Army has offered the first 3D printed houses for soldiers at Ahmedabad Cantt. They are constructed by the Military Engineering Services (MES) in collaboration with MiCoB Pvt Ltd.
The dwelling unit, with a ground floor plus one configuration are not only cheap but can be constructed in less time. Construction work of the dwelling unit with garage space and first floor was completed in 12 weeks.

Notes:
British Indian Army Memorial is set to be built in the Scottish city of Glasgow, to commemorate the sacrifice of millions of Indian soldiers who fought for the British during the two World Wars.
The memorial is visualised as Scotland’s first permanent memorial wall to recognise the service and sacrifice of the British Indian Army. Approximately 1.3 million Indian soldiers served in World War One, and over 74,000 of them lost their lives.

Notes:
Uttar Pradesh has set up a five-member commission, which will conduct a survey to ensure that the OBCs are provided reservation on the basis of the triple test, as mandated by the Supreme Court. Earlier, the Allahabad High Court ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to hold urban local body elections without reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) because the ‘triple test’ requirement had not been fulfilled.