Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2023

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:
State Bank of India (SBI) has onboarded Mahendra Singh Dhoni, former Indian cricket team captain, as its brand ambassador.
The country’s largest lender aims to strengthen its connection, especially with the younger population, with the association of the cricket star.

Notes:
Escrowpay, a Digital Escrow payments platform, has received the first digital escrow regulatory fintech authorization from IFSCA, Gift City.
Recently, the startup has signed a definitive agreement to raise an additional USD 4 Million via issuance of warrants, taking its total fund raise till date to USD 6 Million.

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:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for Amrit Vatika and Amrit Mahotsav Memorial and launched the Mera Yuva Bharat (MY Bharat) platform, designed for the country’s youth.
It was launched at an event marking the culmination of the “Meri Maati Mera Desh” campaign’s Amrit Kalash Yatra at Kartavya Path in New Delhi.

Notes:
A record drought hitting the Amazon rainforest has revealed petroglyphs carved by humans up to 2,000 years ago that are now partly submerged in one of the largest rivers in the region.
The pre-Columbian engravings were found at a point in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where the Negro River’s dark waters meet the Amazon River. The images carved into the rocks depict humans, animals and geometric shapes, such as squares and circles.

Notes:
National Unity Day is celebrated in India on October 31, to commemorate the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first home minister of independent India.
Vallabhbhai Patel was born on October 31, 1875. He is credited with merging over 560 princely states into the Union of India after independence.

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:
Forty nations within a US-led alliance intend to commit to never paying ransoms to cybercriminals and to collaborate in eradicating the financial support for hackers, as part of the International Counter Ransomware Initiative.
Ransomware attacks involve hackers encrypting an organization’s systems and demanding ransom payments in return for decrypting them.

Notes:
The India-US 2+2 meeting is scheduled to be held in New Delhi in November 2023. The meeting will be held amid global turbulence and it will address differences over Canada’s allegations against India.
US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd J Austin will be visiting India next week for the India-US 2+2 ministerial dialogue. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will host the two visiting US Cabinet ministers.