Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2023

Notes:
The 2024 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report was recently released by the UNDP. As per the report, the share of the population living in multidimensional poverty fell from 25 to 15 per cent between 2015-16 and 2019-21.
The report also mentions that India has emerged among top countries with high income and wealth inequality. In India, between 2000 and 2022, per capita income soared from $442 to $2,389 while women are only 23 per cent of the labour force.

Notes:
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) launches “Women for Water, Water for Women Campaign” under its flagship scheme Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT).
It was launched in partnership with the Ministry’s National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM). Odisha Urban Academy is the knowledge partner.

Notes:
Indians are the sixth most hardworking out of 163 countries in the world. The ranking is based on taking the average number of hours per week for each employed person in India, which works out to 47.7 hours, according to the latest International Labour Organisation (ILO) data of April 2023.
But Indians work less than smaller countries with small populations such as Bhutan, the Congo, Lesotho, and Gambia.

Notes:
The 54th International Film Festival of India will be held in Goa from November 20 to 28, 2023. British film ‘Catching Dust’ will be opening at the festival while the American film ‘The Featherweight’ will be the closing movie.
Turkish film About Dry Grasses will be the midfest movie. Hollywood star Michael Douglas will be honoured with the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award at IFFI this year. During the 9-day festival, more than 270 films will be showcased. The opening Film in the feature section is a Malayalam film, Aattam, and in the non-feature section is Andro Dreams from Manipur.

Notes:
Indian chess players Vaishali and Vidit Gujrathi win FIDE Grand Swiss women’s and open titles. Vaishali, along with her younger brother Praggnanandhaa, became the first brother-sister duo to qualify for the respective Candidates.
She also became the first Indian to win the Grand Swiss.

Notes:
India’s space agency, ISRO mentioned that the High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) aboard the Aditya-L1 spacecraft has successfully captured the impulsive phase of solar flares during its initial observation period starting from October 29.
HEL1OS was commissioned on October 27, 2023, and is currently in the process of fine-tuning its thresholds and calibration operations. This instrument is designed to monitor the Sun’s high-energy X-ray activity with rapid timing and high-resolution spectra, as stated by ISRO.

Notes:
NASA’s Curiosity rover completed 4,000 Martian days on Mars on November 7, 2023. The rover landed on Mars’ Gale Crater on August 5, 2012.
Its mission is to study whether ancient Mars had the conditions to support microbial life.  The car-sized rover has travelled almost 32 km on Mars and drilled its 39th sample, a rock nicknamed “Sequoia”. The rover is 10 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 7 feet tall.

Notes:
The Hanle and Merak observatories in Ladakh, known for capturing images of the night sky, recently witnessed an unusual occurrence in India, with an intense red aurora.
Auroras are captivating displays of vibrant lights in the night sky, typically occurring when solar particles interact with the Earth’s magnetic field. Traditionally, this phenomenon is observed closer to the Earth’s poles.

Notes:
Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project, which had already faced significant delays, encountered another setback.
Located on the border of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, this project experienced a hillside collapse on the left side of the dam, leading to the deposition of debris into its reservoir. This event resulted in the obstruction of the only operational diversion tunnel and halted the flow of water downstream of the dam into the Subansiri River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra.

Notes:
The recently concluded 2023 National Games had 11,000 athletes from across India participated in 45 different sports.
Maharashtra emerged as the champions, securing the top spot in the medal tally with an impressive haul of 80 gold medals, 69 silver medals, and 79 bronze medals, making it a total of 228 medals. They claimed the prestigious Raja Bhalindra Singh Rolling Trophy for the overall championship, which they hadn’t achieved since 1994. Services Sports Control Board (SSCB) and Haryana finished second and third.