Current Affairs Quiz - February 2022

Notes:
One Ocean Summit is being organised by France in cooperation with the United Nations and the World Bank.
India supported the French initiative of a ‘High Ambition Coalition on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the conference and said that India is committed to eliminating single-use plastic.

Notes:
Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest.
Russia and Belarus have started joint military exercises close to the Belarusian border with Ukraine. Russia has already amassed forces along its own border with Ukraine, and in the annexed Crimean peninsula.

Notes:
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the Centre’s Gross domestic product (GDP) deflator projection for 2022-23 is 3 to 3.5 per cent.
GDP deflator is a measure of inflation and is the difference between nominal GDP and real GDP. Union Budget assumes a nominal GDP growth rate of 11.1 per cent for FY23.

Notes:
NASA has announced two new science missions namely Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) and HelioSwarm.
These two missions aim to study the sun’s corona and also measuring the magnetic field of the solar wind. NASA earlier announced the latest observations done by the Parker Solar probe on its way to the sun.

Notes:
The seventh round of India-EU consultations on disarmament and non-proliferation matters was held in a virtual format.
The consultations are part of dialogue mechanisms under the ‘Roadmap to 2025’ for further strengthening the India-EU Strategic Partnership.

Notes:
A team of astronomers has discovered a new planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the Sun.
The planet named ‘Proxima d’, is the third detected in the system. It is among the lightest of the exo-planets discovered so far. The astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to spot this exo-planet.

Notes:
The Ministry of Defence has signed up a design and development contract with NewSpace Research & Technologies, to develop a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS).
The Bengaluru-based company was mentored under the ministry’s Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiative. The HAPS aims to conduct surveillance operations and support communications by staying airborne for months.

Notes:
For the first time, India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a satellite jointly developed by team of international researchers including from Taiwan.
INSPIRESat-1 stands for International Research and Teaching Satellite Project satellite one. It has been developed by scientists from universities of US, Taiwan, India and Singapore. Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C52 mission launched an Earth observation satellite EOS-04 and two others.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc.)  is a public, deemed, research university, located in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
IISc Bengaluru has received its single largest private donation of ₹425 crore, which will be used to set up a postgraduate medical school along with a multi-speciality 800-bed hospital. The project aims to develop “physician-scientists.”

Notes:
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked a never-before-used emergency power to curtail protests demanding end of Covid restrictions.
This decision was taken after anti-government protests in the Canadian capital and blockades at border crossings with the US. The country is witnessing over two weeks of “Freedom Convoy” protests by Canadian truckers and their supporters, demanding an end to all Covid restrictions.