Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2021

Notes:
Meghalaya has recently launched the Meghalaya State Capability Forum. It is initiated under the ongoing State Capability Enhancement Project (SCEP).
Meghalaya State Capability Forum will include bi-monthly events, attended by public officials, academia and civil society members. Each event will focus on a theme of importance for Meghalaya’s development.

Notes:
Global ratings agency Moody’s recently changed India’s sovereign rating outlook from ‘negative’ to ‘stable’.
It highlighted that India’s downside risks from negative feedback between real economy and financial system are disappearing. The agency also affirmed the country’s foreign-currency and local-currency long-term issuer ratings at Baa3.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen held bilateral talks at Hyderabad House.
Frederiksen, who arrived on a three-day visit, will hold talks with President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Earlier, Frederiksen met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Over 200 Danish companies are present in India and around 60 Indian companies are present in Denmark.

Notes:
India and the United Kingdom have agreed upon a ‘Forward Action Plan’ on power, clean transportation, renewables, green finance, and research as part of the 2030 roadmap.
3rd India-UK Energy for Growth Partnership – Ministerial Energy Dialogue was co-chaired by Union Minister for Power and New &Renewable Energy, Shri R.K. Singh and his UK counterpart. The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-26) will start from 31 October in Glasgow.

Notes:
The UN Human Rights Council has passed a resolution recognised “access to a clean and healthy environment” as a fundamental right. This is seen as a milestone step to fight climate change.
The resolution in this regard was introduced by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia and Switzerland. It was passed with 43 votes in favour and 4 abstentions from Russia, India, China and Japan.

Notes:
The Indian Railway has launched two long haul freight trains named “Trishul” and “Garuda”, which are multiple times longer than the normal trains.
The Train named “Trishul” is run by the South-Central Railway (SCR) and comprises of 177 wagons. It ran between the Kondapalli station to Khurda division of East Coast Railway.

Notes:
The Centre for Development of Telematics is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre.  It is headquartered at New Delhi.
C-DOT has been asked to start working on 6G technologies which is said to be 50 times faster than 5G and other futuristic technologies. Union Telecom Secretary recently inaugurated C-DOT’s Quantum Communication Lab and launched the indigenously developed Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) solution.

Notes:
As per the Finance Ministry’s Monthly Economic Review, India is well-placed on the path to swift recovery with growth impulses visibly transmitted to all sectors of the economy. The FInance Minister also said that economic activity is gaining further momentum in September.
India’s merchandise exports crossed the $30-billion mark for the sixth consecutive month in fiscal year 2021-22. The rate of growth of bank credit stood at 6.7 per cent year-on-year in the fortnight ending September 10, 2021, compared to 5.3 per cent in the corresponding period of the previous year, it added.

Notes:
Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, known as ASKAP, is a radio telescope situated at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Australia. It is run by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australian Government agency.
Recently, using this telescope, Astronomers have discovered unusual signals coming from the direction of the Milky Way’s center. This new signal had very high polarisation and varying brightness. It was named as ‘ASKAP J173608.2-321635’.

Notes:
The Government of Mizoram has launched a 10-day campaign named “All Mask” to re-sensitise citizens on the importance of wearing masks to combat the virus. This is being observed throughout the state.
This comes at the backdrop of 1000 new Covid-19 cases being reported in the state daily, for more than a month continuously.