Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2021

Notes:
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 was launched recently by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO).
The organisations also launched a report titled ‘#GenerationRestoration: Ecosystem restoration for People, Nature and Climate’, to mark the launch of the decade. The report urges the countries to restore at least 1 billion degraded hectares of land in the next decade.

Notes:
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities including cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar.
According to the recent index, food prices in May were 4.8% higher than April. This is registered as the biggest monthly rise since October 2010. The prices was also 39.7% higher than this time last year, May 2020.

Notes:
The Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs has launched a module of 6 short films of Investor Education & Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), named “Hisaab Ki Kitaab”.
These short films have been developed by CSC eGov for IEPFA, as a part of their training module. These films portray the importance of budget, saving, insurance schemes etc.

Notes:
The Indian Army is on its way to create new self-contained fighting units called `integrated battle groups (IBGs)’.
The initial units of IBGs, each with around 5,000 soldiers will have a mix of tanks, artillery, air defence, signals, engineers and other units permanently deployed together. The units are expected to be formed by 2022.

Notes:
The State Horticulture Ministry of Himachal Pradesh announced that the Government will test the use of indigenously developed ‘Anti-hail guns, to help horticulturists facing crop damage due to hailstorms.
An anti-hail gun is a machine which generates shock waves to disrupt the growth of hailstones in clouds. The gun is fired by feeding explosive mixture of acetylene gas and air into its lower chamber, which releases a shock wave.

Notes:
Square Inc, which belongs to the Twitter owner Jack Dorsey, has announced that it would invest 5 million to build an open-source, solar-powered bitcoin mining facility.
In this regard, Square Inc has announced a partnership with Blockchain technology company Blockstream Mining and the proposed facility would be constructed at one of Blockstream’s sites in the USA.

Notes:
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is an intergovernmental organization comprising seven nations of South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
This organization was first established in the year 1997. The 24th BIMSTEC day was celebrated on June 6th 2021

Notes:
Alexander Pushkin is a Russian poet, who is considered the father of modern Russian language. His birthday is selected as the UN Russian Language Day.
It is observed annually on June 6. The event was initially established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010. The UN language days aim to celebrate multilingualism and promotion of equal use of all six of the UN’s official working languages.

Notes:
World Oceans Day is observed on June 8, every year. On the occasion of the day, the United Nations (UN) has called for sustainable efforts and stopping plastic pollution in order to save the oceans.
This is the second year of virtual celebration of the UN World Oceans Day due to the coronavirus pandemic. The theme of this year’s World Oceans Day is ‘The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods’.

Notes:
The World Bank has approved a USD 500 million program to help boost India’s MSME sector. RAMP stands for Raising and Accelerating Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Performance.
The programme targets to improve the performance of five lakh 50 thousand MSMEs, by providing better access to finance and working capital for MSMEs. The World Bank had earlier launched Rs 750 million MSME Emergency Response Program in July last year.