Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2022

Notes:
Scotland’s lawmakers passed a legislation which will make it easier for transgender people to legally change their gender.
The bill will gain royal assent which will lower the minimum age for those seeking the gender recognition certificate to 16. It also drops the time required for an applicant to live in their acquired gender from two years to three months.

Notes:
Union Youth Affairs and Sports Minister Anurag Singh Thakur has launched Khelo India’s new Dashboard.
The Dashboard includes all the statistical data related to the Khelo India Scheme and the Khelo India events. It will be updated in real-time and will also include Information about playgrounds with geo-tagging.

Notes:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cautioned that India’s fiscal space is at risk, in its Article IV consultation report.
IMF also called for a more ambitious and well-communicated consolidation to ensure medium-term fiscal sustainability. It called for further structural reforms, including addressing the adverse impact of climate change, to secure strong and sustainable growth.

Notes:
Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs has recently released the draft guidelines for a new ranking system of cities based on their financial performance and beautification.
The ‘City Finance Rankings 2022’ aims to evaluate and reward urban local bodies on the basis of their strength across resource mobilisation, expenditure performance and fiscal governance systems. The ‘City Beauty Competition’ initiative aims to recognise efforts made by the cities and wards towards creating beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.

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:
Former Central Railway General Manager Anil Kumar Lahoti has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Railway Board.
He will be taking over the chairmanship from Vinay Kumar Tripathi on January 1. The Railway board has been transitioning to a new integrated service named Indian Railway Management Service.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has been named as the secretariat for Science 20 (S20), one of the G20’s groupings.
The G20 is being presided over by India and the theme of the S20 in 2023 is ‘Disruptive Science for Innovative and Sustainable Development’.  Discussions will take place throughout the year in various regions of India.

Notes:
The Health Ministry of Uzbekistan said 18 children, with acute respiratory disease, have died from taking excessive doses of a cough syrup, Doc-1 Max.
It has been manufactured by Marion Biotech a Noida-based Indian firm. The children consumed the cough syrup, which contained ethylene glycol, a substance that ought not to be present in cough syrup. Parliamentary panel in The Gambia earlier found unacceptable levels of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol in cough syrups made by Haryana-based Maiden Pharma.

Notes:
As part of India’s G20 presidency, the Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw has launched the ‘G20 Digital Innovation Alliance” (G20-DIA)’.
He also launched the ‘Stay Safe Online’ campaign to increase awareness about the safe practices to be used while being online. MeitY is the Nodal Ministry for the G20 Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG). During India’s G20 presidency, MeitY will focus on three priority areas, namely Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), Cyber Security, and Digital Skill Development.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) is an autonomous Research Institute wholly financed by the department of Science and Technology. It has its headquarters in Bengaluru.
Astronomers and scientists at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), along with their international collaborators, have recently found that hot stars and white dwarfs emitted less ultraviolet radiation than expected.