Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2021

Notes:
Deocha Pachami Harinsingha Dewanganj, the world’s second-largest coal block was allocated to West Bengal by the Central Government.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently announced a compensation package of ₹10,000 crore for the people who would get displaced or affected due to the Deocha-Pachami coal mine project in Birbhum district.

Notes:
India and the Netherlands are leading the development of the Integrated Bio-refineries Mission, which focuses on renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials.
As Heavy industries like steel, cement, and chemicals use massive amounts of energy, these sectors are responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. The mission aims to make bio-based alternatives cost-competitive.

Notes:
Ten global organisations including United Nations office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), University of Oxford among others have launched a Global Resilience Index Initiative (GRII) at COP26.
It has been launched with partial funding and contributions from the insurance sector and partner institutions. The index will provide a globally consistent model for the assessment of resilience across all sectors and geographies.

Notes:
PC Mody, the former chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer has been appointed as the Rajya Sabha’s secretary general.
This is one of the rare appointments, since an IRS officer is being appointed as the Secretary General, a position which has been traditionally occupied by IAS officers.

Notes:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s satellite Internet service Starlink has launched a new smaller and rectangular dish to connect with satellite constellation in low Earth orbit.
It is a thinner and lighter-weight option than the circular dish that Starlink beta users have been testing over the last year. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet project, aims to launch about 12,000 satellites into low Earth orbit where they can provide broadband internet coverage to people on the ground.

Notes:
“Manuvarna” is a new rice variety released by the Kerala Agricultural University recently in Wayanad district.
It was announced that Rice blast, a fungal disease affecting paddy, is haunting the farmers who had raised the new variety. The crop cultivated on more than 250 acres of land was damaged due to the blast disease.

Notes:
UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland has concluded with a global agreement aimed at capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.
This Glasgow Pact is the first-ever climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce coal, the worst fossil fuel for greenhouse gases.

Notes:
Rahibai Popere, popularly known as Seedmother, is one among this year’s Padma Shri awardees. She is from Ahmednagar, Maharashtra.
Her Padma Shri is a recognition of her work that has helped save hundreds of landraces at the village level.  Landraces refer to naturally occurring variants of commonly grown crops, as opposed to commercially grown crops, which are developed by selective breeding or through genetic engineering.

Notes:
US President Joe Biden has signed the ‘Secure Equipment Act’ that stops companies judged as a security threat from receiving new telecoms equipment licences.
The Act says the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should no longer review applications from companies ruled as a threat. It implies that equipment from Huawei, ZTE and three other Chinese companies cannot be used in US telecoms networks.

Notes:
e-Shram portal is the country’s first centralised database of unorganised workers seeded with Aadhaar. The occupation-wise registration data shows the maximum registrations have been seen in the agriculture sector (53.6 per cent), followed by construction (12.2 per cent) and domestic and household workers (8.71 per cent).
Of the over 7.86 crore registrations on the database, 40.5 per cent belong to Other Backward Classes, 27.4 per cent to the general category, 23.7 per cent to the Scheduled Castes and 8.3 per cent to the Scheduled Tribes.