Current Affairs Quiz-September, 2020

Notes:
As per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the CEO of the leading space company SpaceX, Elon Musk is now the third-richest person in the world.
The 49-year old billionaire has surpassed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk’s net worth raised to USD115.4 billion while that of Zuckerberg is USD 110.8 billion. The first and the second positions were featured by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos respectively.

Notes:
The first commercial direct flight between Israel and the UAE was recently operated. It took off from Israel and landed in Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia granted permission for using its air space.
On August 13, Israel and the UAE announced to establish full diplomatic relations after the United States initiated. UAE is only the third Arab country to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. The flight carried a top-level Israeli delegation and a US delegation.

Notes:
The Indian-origin politician of Singapore has created history by taking charge as the first Leader of the Opposition in Singapore.
Though there have been de-facto leaders of the Opposition in the past, this is the first time the position is being officially recognised. Pritam belongs to the Workers’ Party that had won 10 parliamentary seats out of the 93 seats.

Notes:
The CSIR’s Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI) has developed the world’s largest ‘solar tree’, It is installed at the CSIR residential complex, Durgapur in West Bengal.
The solar tree is ergonomically designed to ensure maximum solar exposure of each solar photovoltaic panel. The tree has an annual capacity to generate 12,000-14,000 units of Power. There is a total of 35 Solar photovoltaic panels in each tree.

Notes:
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ Meet is to be hosted in the city of Moscow, Russia.
Union Defence Minister of India Rajnath Singh has recently left for Russia to attend the meet. He is also expected to hold talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu. However, no schedule has been made for meeting with the Chinese Defence Minister.

Notes:
The Central Government has added 20 more sports disciplines in the list of sports eligible for direct recruitment in Group C level government posts through sports quota.
Earlier there were 43 disciplines which have now been raised to 63 disciplines. Meritorious sports persons who have represented their state or India in national or international competitions are eligible for government jobs, under the special quota.

Notes:
In a boost to Make in India mission in Defence Sector, the Acquisition Wing of Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signed contracts with Bharat Earth Movers Ltd. (BEML), Tata Power Company Ltd. (TPCL) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T).
The contracts have been signed for supply of 6 Pinaka Regiments to the Artillery unit of the Indian Army. The approximate cost of the project is Rs 2580 Crores

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs has released a set of guidelines for the restarting Metro services under the Unlock 4 measures.
Metro trains will resume services in a phased manner across the country from September 7, except in Maharashtra. The state will decide on when to restart the services. As per the guidelines, the stations coming under containment zones will remain closed.

Notes:
Researchers of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have developed a method to detect corona virus infection using mass spectrometer.
In this method, the virus detection can be done with sensitivity of 90 % and specificity of 100 %. The time taken from sample to result is 30 minutes. IGIB is an institute under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Notes:
The Union Cabinet, headed by the Prime Minister has approved a bill which gives official language status to Kashmiri, Dogri and Hindi in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.
These languages are apart from the existing official languages Urdu and English. Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill, 2020 would be introduced in the Monsoon session of the Parliament to legislate this bill.