Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2023

Notes:
The Vigilance Awareness Week, 2023 is being observed by the Central Vigilance Commission and all institutions across the country from 30th October till 5th November. This year the theme is – Say no to corruption, commit to the Nation.
Every year Vigilance Awareness Week is observed as an outreach measure to create greater awareness about the importance of integrity and ethics in public life.

Notes:
India surpassed New Zealand with its 59th win to become the second-most successful team in the ODI World Cups, only behind Australia.
Australia holds the record with 73 wins. England equalled Australia (from 1992) for the most defeats by a defending champion in a World Cup edition with its fourth loss in six games, this World Cup.

Notes:
The Indian junior men’s hockey team defeated New Zealand 6-2 to enter the semifinals of the Sultan of Johor Cup. Indian player Amandeep Lakra hit a hat-trick.
The Sultan of Johor Cup is an annual, international under-21 men’s field hockey tournament held in Malaysia.

Notes:
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has awarded two toll, operate, and transfer (TOT) bundles, namely 11 and 12, covering a total length of 400 km, for a total of Rs 6,584 crore.
The TOT model is designed to promote private sector involvement in the highway sector, with NHAI periodically awarding contracts for toll collection, operation, and maintenance of different National Highway segments under this arrangement.

Notes:
India’s first-ever Lavender Farm is coming up at Challa village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district. It is spread over two hectares of land owned by the Department of Agriculture Production and Farmers Welfare.
A native of Europe, lavender was introduced by the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) in the temperate regions of the Jammu division under the CSIR-Aroma Mission in 2018, and Doda became the birthplace of India’s purple revolution.

Notes:
Three Chinese astronauts, who were in orbit for five months, returned to the Earth. The astronauts were part of the Shenzhou-16 crewed flight mission. They spent their time conducting scientific experiments and carrying out a nearly eight-hour spacewalk.
The mission was the last of 11 missions required to assemble the station. The station is expected to operate for around a decade and run experiments in near-zero gravity. The astronauts have successfully grown lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and green onions in the Tiangong space station.

Notes:
NASA conducted a sounding rocket mission known as the Integral Field Ultraviolet Spectroscope Experiment (INFUSE).
This mission was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico with the aim of studying a stellar event within the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant that occurred approximately 20,000 years ago.

Notes:
Astronomers used NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope data to find an intriguing seven-planet system, Kepler-385, where all planets are bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.
Such planets are uncommon in the universe, and Kepler-385 is one of the few systems known to have more than six confirmed planets or planet candidates.

Notes:
A new species of gecko has been discovered in the Western Ghats near Rajapalayam in Viridhunagar district of Tamil Nadu.
Senior scientist Amit Sayyed of Wildlife Protection and Research Society, Maharashtra, who led a team of researchers from different parts of the country, has named the previously undocumented species as Cnemaspis rashidi after his father, Prof. Rashid Sayyed.

Notes:
The Finance Ministry released ₹10,000 crore in urgent assistance for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
The funds were released to meet unexpected increased expenditure under the rural job guarantee scheme. The funds will be available until the first batch of supplementary demands for grants is approved by parliament at its next session. The unusual move came after 95% of the FY24 budgetary outlay of ₹60,000 crore for the MGNREGS was exhausted well before the commencement of the winter session of parliament.