Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2021

Notes:
The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill 2019 has defended the controversial exemption clause that allows the Government to keep any of its agencies outside the purview of the law.
The committee, headed by P P Chaudhary, has retained the Clause with minor change. The report will now be presented in the Parliament.

Notes:
ENSO – The El Nino-Southern Oscillation Is a climatological phenomenon, which occurs in the Pacific Ocean and is accompanied by periodic variation / reversal in wind direction and ocean surface temperatures between ether sides of the Pacific Ocean (Eastern coast of Australia and western coast of South American nations).
Recently, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has stated that La Nina (a part of ENSO) weather event has commenced and is expected to extend throughout summer.

Notes:
As per a recent air quality report by IQAir, India has the most number of cities in top 100 polluted cities across the globe. India has 46 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities followed by China with 42 cities and Pakistan with 6 cities.
Hotan, in China’s Xinjiang, had the worst air quality in 2020.  Among the top 10 most polluted cities of the world, 9 are located in India

Notes:
The Indian Army launched Operation Snow Leopard after China failed to move back and restore status quo ante in eastern Ladakh.
Col Santosh Babu was awarded Mahavir Chakra posthumously for resisting Chinese Army attack in Galwan valley in Ladakh sector during Operation Snow Leopard. Colonel Babu was the Commanding Officer of 16 Bihar regiment, which was deployed in Galwan Valley for the Operation.

Notes:
The Prawn Nebula is also known as Gum 56, after the Australian astronomer Colin Gum, who published a catalogue of HII regions in 1955.
Nebula is a massive stellar nursery located approximately 6,000 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Jal Shakti headed by Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has launched River Cities Alliance from New Delhi. This is a platform for river cities in India to exchange their views and ideas on river management.
The minister has also launched the National Urban River Management Plan for Kanpur.

Notes:
The Government of India’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has constituted a Group of Food Secretaries from the states along with senior officials from the Centre, to discuss on establishing a framework for the proposed community kitchen scheme.
The group would lay a roadmap for creating simple, transparent and beneficial community kitchens for the people.

Notes:
An internal working group of RBI on the ownership and corporate structure of private sector banks has favoured allowing promoters to maintain any percentage of holding in the first five years and then capping it at 26 per cent after 15 years of operations.
RBI also released guidelines and explained that the cap on promoters’ stake in the long run of 15 years may be raised from the current levels of 15 per cent to 26 per cent of the paid-up voting equity share capital of the bank.

Notes:
The member states of UNESCO adopted the first ‘Global agreement on ethics of AI’ at its General Conference
The first ever global standard on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) was presented by Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Notes:
Billionaire Elon Musk-led SpaceX’s satellite broadband arm Starlink Internet Services had started taking pre-bookings for satellite broadband services.
Recently, the Department of Telecommunication, Government of India announced that Starlink Internet Services is not licensed to offer satellite-based internet services in India, and advised the public not to subscribe to services that are being advertised by the company.