Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2021

Notes:
Government think tank NITI Aayog launched the ‘Geospatial energy map’ of the country. It captures data on all sources of energy, in a comprehensive way.
As per the NITI Aayog, the energy maps available in the country were fragmented and scattered across multiple departments or ministries. It can be used by policymakers, investors, environmentalists, financial institutions and disaster management authorities.

Notes:
Valneva SE, a French vaccine company, announced the results from its Phase 3 trial of its inactivated Covid-19 vaccine candidate, VLA2001.
As per the company, the vaccine was as effective as the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. VLA2001 is an inactivated, adjuvanted vaccine. The Sars-CoV-2 virus is killed using chemicals, heat, or radiation and delivered in an inactivated form. India’s Covaxin vaccine is also an inactivated vaccine.

Notes:
Russia’s Energy Ministry signed an agreement with India’s Steel Ministry to increase coking coal supply to India up to 40 million tonnes per year.
The deal was signed at the Russian Energy Week Forum, held in Moscow. Russia currently supplies around 80 lakh tonnes of coal to India. The pact also aims for development of coal deposits, development of coal logistics and promotion of R&D in production.

Notes:
Tech Major Microsoft has launched a start-up program called AI Innovate along with an AI Playbook that will help start-ups in the country adopt the technology.
Microsoft has also been involved in two similar programs for agri-tech and health-tech startups. As per a 2020 report by Nasscom, data and AI have the potential to add $500 billion to the economy by 2025 and can account for 10% of the country’s GDP.

Notes:
The Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) is an autonomous institution under the Union Ministry of Earth Science, and is located at Pune.
The institution has developed and launched a new ‘Decision Support System’ (DSS) aimed to enhance the existing ‘Air Quality Early Warning System’, for air quality measurement and management in Delhi – NCR.

Notes:
The UN En­v­­i­ron­ment Programme (UNEP), along with the leading rese­a­r­ch institutes released the 2021 Production Gap Report.
The report measures the gap between governments’ plan­ned production of coal, oil, and gas and the global production levels consistent with meeting Paris Agreement limits. As per the new report, governments plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than the consistent level to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Notes:
In the World Bank’s ease of doing business report, under the construction permits category, India’s rank jumped to 27th out of 190 nations from 181st rank last year.
Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has recently announced that ‘Online building permission system’, which has been implemented in about 2,500 cities so far, will be made operational across all cities by March next year. This will help improve the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ in the country.

Notes:
A micro-snail species named Georissa mawsmaiensis has been discovered in Mawsmai, a limestone cave in Meghalaya.
Before 170 years, Georissa saritta, a member of the same genus, was collected and described from the Musmai valley near Cherrapunjee. The researchers involved in the discovery are from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru.

Notes:
The ‘Police Commemoration Day’ is observed every year in India on October 21. The day is observed memory of 10 police personnel who died at Hot Springs in Ladakh while fighting Chinese troops in 1959.
The Police Forces across the country paid tributes to 377 martyrs from the police and Central Armed Police Forces from last year. They also paid tributes to the warriors, who lost their lives during the times of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Notes:
Former US President Donald Trump has recently announced plans to launch a new social media network, called TRUTH Social.
Though he was active in social media, Mr Trump was banned from Twitter and suspended from Facebook after his supporters stormed the US Capitol. Last year, Twitter and Facebook even started deleting some of his posts or labelled them as ‘misleading’.