Current Affairs Quiz - January 2022

Notes:
Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah is the Prime Minister of Kuwait. Kuwait has recently formed a new cabinet with a new finance minister and three opposition legislators.
This is the Gulf country’s third cabinet this year after the previous governments resigned in the standoff. The cabinet has only one female minister. It includes three opposition MPs and one pro-government lawmaker.

Notes:
The Sahitya Akademi announced a list of 22 winners of the Yuva Puraskar and the Bal Sahitya Puraskar for 2021.
The Sahitya Akademi award was separately announced for literary works in 20 languages in various categories like poetry, novels, short stories, plays, biography and autobiography, book on criticism.  Tamil feminist writer Ambai, Kannada’s DS Nagabhushan, Telugu’s Goreti Venkanna, and English author Namita Gokhale are among the winners.

Notes:
Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw launched the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM).
ISM is an independent business division within the Digital India Corporation. It aims to build a robust semiconductor and display ecosystem in India. A financial support of up to 50 per cent of the project cost is approved for setting up variants of semiconductor fab in India. A financial support for six years is given from the date of approval.

Notes:
India’s first indigenously developed Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) protein sub-unit vaccine for COVID-19 is CORBEVAXTM.
The vaccine, which has been developed by Biological E Limited, has recently received the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) approval for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and its PSU Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), have supported Biological E’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Notes:
The National Commission for Women (NCW) has received a total of 31,000 complaints of crimes committed against women in the year 2021, which is the highest in number since 2014. There is an increase in complaints by 30% in the year 2021 in comparison to 2020.
Among the total complaints, more than half of them have been received from Uttar Pradesh state which has the highest number of complaints, followed by Delhi.

Notes:
VS Pathania took charge as the Director-General of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG). He replaced K Natarajan, who served as the Chief of the Indian Coast Guard from 2019.
VS Pathania, an alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, and National Defence College, New Delhi, is a qualified helicopter pilot.

Notes:
The Quadrantids, one of the brightest annual meteor showers, are active from December 28 to January 12.
According to NASA, approximately 80 meteors per hour can be seen with the meteor velocity is 41 kilometres per second. Though most meteor showers originate from comets, the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid named 2003 EH1. The meteor shower gets its name from the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (Mural Quadrant).

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a framework to allow offline payments up to Rs 200 per transaction.
This framework is subject to an overall limit of Rs 2,000. An offline digital payment is a transaction that does not require internet or telecom connectivity. These transactions will not require an additional factor of authentication (AFA).

 

Notes:
NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd. (NBBL), the wholly-owned subsidiary of National Payments Corporation of India has introduced ‘Unified Presentment Management System’ (UPMS).
Through UPMS, NBBL will enable the customers to set up standing instructions on their recurring bill payments. The bills will be automatically fetched from the billers and presented to customers for auto-debit.

Notes:
XIV Corps or Fire and Fury Corps is a corps of the Indian Army. It is a part of the Army’s Northern Command based at Udhampur.
Lt Gen PGK Menon handed over the command of the XIV ‘Fire and Fury’ Corps to Lt Gen Anindya Sengupta. He was part of the last round of Corps Commander-level talks with China in October.