Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2021

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs has launched a dedicated portal that would help in formulation of state and national-level programme for migrant workers.
The portal is named ‘ShramShakti’ and was launched by the Union Tribal Affairs Minister at Goa. He also launched a training manual for the migrant workers named ShramSaathi.

Notes:
32 children across the county have been recently awarded the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, 2021.
Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India has been giving away this award to children with outstanding abilities and accomplishments in the fields of innovation, scholastics, sports, arts & culture, social service and bravery.

Notes:
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has recently launched the ‘Union Budget Mobile ahead of the Union Budget 2021.
As this year’s budget will be completely paperless, the mobile application will enable members of the parliament and general public, to access budget documents. It has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the guidance of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Finance Ministry.

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:
India announced a pledge of USD 150,000 to the programmes and activities of the UN peacebuilding fund this year.
TS Tirumurti, permanent representative of India to the United Nations announced this in a virtual address to the High-Level Replenishment Conference for the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund.

Notes:
The International Customs Day is celebrated every year on January 26 across the world, led by the World Customs Organization (WCO). It is headquartered at Brussels, Belgium.
It was earlier called as the Customs Cooperation Council (CCC). The Day has been celebrated since 1983. This year the theme is ‘Customs bolstering Recovery, Renewal and Resilience for a sustainable supply chain’

Notes:
Union Bank of India announced that it has raised Rs 1,000 crore by issuing Basel III-compliant bonds on a private placement basis.
The bank issued perpetual bonds in the nature of debentures, which qualify as the Additional Tier 1 Capital of the bank. The public sector bank also announced that it will raise Rs 205 crore by issuing Basel III compliant bonds later this week.

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:
A recent research by University of Sao Paulo has revealed that Melatonin hormone secreted in the lungs of human beings act as an effective barrier against Covid-19 infection.
It has been identified that the hormone secretion inhibits the expression of genes that are entry points for the virus.

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.