Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2021

Notes:
Belarus was in news recently as its authorities flagged a false bomb alert to force a Ryanair plane to land before they detained an opposition-minded journalist Roman Protasevich who had been on board.
A MiG-29 fighter jet escorted the Ryanair-operated passenger plane going to Lithuania. The plane was suddenly diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where authorities detained the journalist.

Notes:
Scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal have found the variant of the African violets in Mizoram.
Named as Didymocarpus vickifunkiae, the endangered species has been recorded scientifically for the first time in India. African violets, native to Tanzania and Kenya, are epiphytes, that grows on trees and produces light pink flowers during the monsoons.

Notes:
The E-Committee of the Supreme Court of India has released a manual for the “e-Courts Services Mobile app” in 14 languages which includes English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Khasi, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu
This app aims to benefit litigants, citizens, lawyers, police and other governmental agencies.

Notes:
As a part of its efforts to curb frauds, Market regulator SEBI is set to appoint auditors for conducting forensic audits of financial statements of listed companies.
SEBI has invited applications from eligible Chartered Accountant firms with at least 10 years of experience in the field of audit or forensic audit, among other criteria. In October 2020, SEBI asked listed companies to make disclosures about their initiation of forensic audit to stock exchanges.

Notes:
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is the DNA collected from a variety of environmental samples such as soil, seawater or air, through their interactions with the environment.
Researchers have successfully detected the environmental DNA (eDNA) of the Argentine ant in surface soil samples from two sites in Japan. This method can be used to understand the habitat which will be used in pest control.

Notes:
Subodh Kumar Jaiswal, a 1985-batch IPS officer of the Maharashtra cadre, has been appointed as the chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation for a two-year period.
He is also serving as the chief of Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF). He had also a been part of the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Notes:
The Union Agriculture Ministry has released the third advance estimates for the 2020-21 crop year. The food-grain production is projected at a record 305.43 million tonnes.
India’s food-grain production is estimated to rise 2.66% more than the last year’s output of 297.5 million tonnes. As per the data, rice production is estimated at a record 121.46 million tonne in the 2020-21 crop year.

Notes:
The United Nations has warned that urgent measures are needed to avoid famine in Tigray, an embattled region of Ethiopia.
The conflict in Tigray has reached over seven months and is estimated to have killed thousands of people and left around five million in need of aid. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military operation in Tigray in 2020.

Notes:
The artist and author who created the very famous children book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” -Eric Carle, died recently owing to kidney failure. He was 91 years old.
The book has been one of the best sellers in the world. First published in the year 1969, till date it has been translated into more than 70 languages.

Notes:
Under the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme, both the Centre and State government share the cooking cost for daily meals in the ratio of 60:40 for non-North eastern states and UTs with legislatures except J&K and in the ratio of 90:10 for all others.
Recently, the Centre has decided to transfer its share of the cooking cost component in the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme for students of classes 1 to 8, into their bank accounts as a one-time Covid relief.