Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2023

Notes:
Union Cabinet approved a special development mission for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG) with a total outlay of over ₹24,104 crore over a three-year period.
The scheme will focus on 11 critical interventions through 9 Ministries including Ministry of Tribal Affairs.An amount of Rs.15,000 crore will be made available to implement the Mission in the next three years under the Development Action Plan for the Scheduled Tribes (DAPST).

Notes:
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the Terms of Reference for the Sixteenth Finance Commission.
The 16th Finance Commission’s recommendations, upon the acceptance by the government, would cover the period of five years commencing April 1, 2026. Article 280(1) of the Constitutions lays down that the modalities for setting up of a Finance Commission. The Fifteenth Finance Commission was constituted in 2017, whose recommendations are valid up to the financial year 2025-26.

Notes:
Sri Lanka has reached an agreement in principle with India and the Paris Club group of creditors including Japan, on a debt treatment plan.
It will help the crisis-hit island nation tap the next tranche of the International Monetary Fund’s nearly-$3 billion recovery package.

Notes:
Indian activist Safeena Hussain has been awarded the prestigious $500,000 WISE Prize for her work promoting girls’ education across rural India. Her NGO Educate Girls has helped over 1.4 million girls re-enroll in schools in remote villages, drawing global recognition to grassroots education reform. Her interventions that focus on community participation have also boosted learning outcomes. The WISE prize validates the impact of her innovative model that is empowering India’s most marginalized girls to access their right to education.

Notes:
India expects its indigenous rail safety system Kavach to be ready for international export within five years, as trials prove its effectiveness in preventing signal jumping and high-speed derailments. Kavach is being deployed across India’s vast 66,000km railway network to curb accidents blamed on human error by controllers or drivers. The system is designed to bring any train violating signals or speed limits to a halt automatically using sensors and cameras that relay data to a central control room. With the project timed to completion by 2025, Kavach may start securing overseas rails by 2028.

Notes:
The recently announced roadmap by the National Biofuels Coordination Committee (NBCC) lays out a phased plan for mandating blending of compressed biogas (CBG) into city gas distribution (CGD) networks across India. As per this roadmap, CGD entities will have to start blending CBG with compressed natural gas (CNG) for transportation and piped natural gas (PNG) for households from the financial year 2025-26.
The blending percentage will be 1% of total CNG and PNG consumption in FY26, progressively increasing to 3% in FY27 and 4% in FY28. From financial year 2028-29 onwards, the obligatory CBG blending percentage has been set at 5% of overall CNG and domestic PNG demand.

Notes:
As per a report by the Environment ministry and UNDP, India has successfully phased out ozone depleting and climate warming chemical HCFC 141b (1,1-Dichloro-1-fluoroethane) and is ahead of schedule in eliminating another such gas in new equipment manufacturing.
As against the 35 per cent phase-out target for HCFCs, India has achieved an impressive 44 per cent reduction.

Notes:
The Indian Government cleared for submission the country’s Third National Communication (TNC) and Initial Adaptation Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The submission will fulfil India’s obligation to furnish information under the Convention and the Paris Agreement. In a press brief, key points were highlighted from the TNC, emphasising India’s commitment to addressing climate change, reducing emissions, and enhancing adaptive capacities. India currently has a 41 per cent share of clean power in terms of capacity, while India generated 73 per cent of its power from coal in 2022-23.

Notes:
To assess and measure the progress made by Grassroots level Institutions in achieving Localized SDGs and thereby attaining SDG 2030, Ministry has released a report on Panchayat Development Index (PDI).
Panchayat Development Index would play a significant role for performance evaluation and progress assessment in achieving the LSDGs in rural area. Under the revamped RGSA, Ministry has been incentivizing best performing Panchayats through National Panchayats Award (NPA) by assessing their performance in the attainment of SDGs to generate positive competition among Panchayats.

Notes:
Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed annually by malaria and other diseases spread through the bite of mosquitoes, insects that date back to the age of dinosaurs. All of these bites are inflicted by females, which possess specialized mouth anatomy that their male counterparts lack.
Researchers said they have discovered the oldest-known fossils of mosquitoes – two males entombed in pieces of amber dating to 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period and found near the town of Hammana in Lebanon. The male mosquitoes possessed elongated piercing-sucking mouthparts seen now only in females. They are identified as hematophagous meaning blood-eaters.