Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2021

Notes:
NGC 4535 is a famous galaxy and is one of the largest of the Virgo constellation. It is also dubbed as the “The Lost Galaxy”.
Virgo Cluster is located about 50 million light-years from Earth. The Scientists at NASA have spotted the spiral galaxy through their Hubble Space Telescope and released its images. It is a vast swirl of stars containing a distinct bar structure at its center.

Notes:
The United States Senate confirmed veteran economist Janet Yellen as first woman Treasury Secretary of the country.
The 74-year-old eminent economist is also the Former chairperson of the Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis. She is the third cabinet member of the Biden Administration to be confirmed by the Senate.

Notes:
World Economic Forum (WEF) launched a global coalition at the ongoing Davos Agenda Summit to end racism at work place.
It has been named as “Partnering for Racial Justice in Business” initiative. Recently, Indian companies Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services joined the alliance, whose founding members include 48 organisations including Google, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank, EY, among others.

Notes:
Alphabet unions across the world have joined hands and created a global alliance called Alpha Global.
It has been created with the aid of UNI Global, a federation of unions representing over 20 million workers. As many as 13 different unions, from 10 different countries are part of Alpha Global alliance. Google labour union was formed recently in the United States.

Notes:
Minister of Electronics and IT and Communications has recently launched virtual intelligence tool Tejas.
The tool can extract critical information for policy decisions thereby improving efficiency in government services. The Minister also launched a virtual portal to access routine office applications called ‘Work from Anywhere’ portal and ‘e-Auction India’.

Notes:
The West Bengal Transport Corporation in association with a heritage book store has launched a Young Readers’ Boat Library.
Under the initiative, children can choose from a selection of 500 titles in English and Bengali on cruising on the waters of Hooghly river on a three-hour-long trip.

Notes:
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for milling copra and ball copra.
As per M S Swaminathan recommendations, the increase in MSP has been approved. The MSP of copra was raised by Rs 375 from the previous year, 2020 to Rs 10,335 per quintal. Farmers of 12 coastal states are likely to impact by the price hike.

Notes:
As per the Science Magazine, Scientists have discovered a rare Martian Mineral named ‘Jarosite’ in the Antarctic ice.
After boring more than a mile deep in the Antarctic region, the yellow-brown mineral which is rarely seen on Earth but found more on Mars was spotted. Mars is believed to be a dusty place and this discovery may be used to explain this theory.

Notes:
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has recently released a report titled – Global Climate Litigation Report: 2020 – Status Review. The report provides an overview of climate change litigation and its trends globally.
As per the report, the number of climate litigation cases around the world has almost doubled in the last three years.

Notes:
The United Kingdom (UK) has launched a New Variant Assessment Platform, which will be used to identify new variants COVID-19 viruses.
It uses genomics expertise possessed by UK and has been dedicated for use by countries which does not have sufficient resources for identifying the new Covid virus strains.