Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2021

Notes:

• Amazon India has launched the Kisan (farmer) store a store on its platform, meant exclusively for farmers.
• The Amazon Kisan store was launched by Agriculture Minister, Narendra Singh Tomar.
• Farmers can now buy farming tools, seeds, crop protection and other farming tools on the Amazon platform.
• This aims to make agri-inputs available to buyers at competitive prices with the added convenience of delivery at their doorstep.

Notes:

• The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released the Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes (1970–2019).
• As per the report, every third death (35 per cent) from extreme weather, climate or water stress in half a century was in Africa.
• The African continent accounts for only 17 per cent of global population.
• Four droughts (1973 and 1983 in Ethiopia, 1981 in Mozambique and 1983 in Sudan) were responsible for 89 per cent of the total deaths in Africa from weather, climate and water extremes in the last 50 years.
• Almost 99 per cent of all reported deaths occurred in low-to-lower-middle-income countries in Africa.

Notes:

• World-Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF India) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have joined hands to develop a platform to promote a circular system for plastics.
• The new platform is called, the ‘India Plastic Pact,’.
• India generates 9.46 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, of which 40 per cent is not collected.
• About half of all plastics produced in the country are used in packaging, most of it is single use in nature.
• The pact has time-bound targets for reducing, innovating and re-imagining plastic packaging.

Notes:

• Google celebrated the 138th birthday of Polish inventor, doctor, and immunologist Rudolf Weigl with a doodle.
• He had produced the first-ever effective vaccine against one of the oldest and most infectious diseases, named ‘Epidemic typhus’.
• His work has been honored by two Nobel Prize nominations.
• Weigl adapted Body lice into a laboratory specimen. In 1936, Weigl’s vaccine successfully inoculated its first beneficiary.

Notes:

• Corbevax is the COVID 19 vaccine candidate, produced by Hyderabad based pharma company Biological E.
• Recently, the company has received the nod from Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for conducting two clinical trials of the vaccine.
• The company has also received approval from DGCI to conduct phase 2 and 3 trials on children aged 5 – 18.
• The company has received assistance form Government of India under the Mission COVID Suraksha for development of this vaccine.

Notes:
India’s first satellite and ballistic missile tracking ship named ‘Dhruv’ is set to be commissioned from Visakhapatnam. The ship is built by Hindustan Shipyard in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).

INS Dhruv can also map ocean beds for research and detection of enemy submarines. This nuclear missile tracking ship will be operated by the Indian Navy with the Strategic Forces Command (SFC).

 

Notes:
Karnataka has decided to ban online gambling or betting, and to amend the Karnataka Police Act, 1963. The ban does not include lottery or betting on horse races as mentioned by Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J.C. Madhuswamy. This decision was undertaken after the Karnataka High Court repeatedly asked the State Government to take a stand on online betting.

Notes:
Suhas Lalinakere Yathiraj, current district magistrate of Noida, has become the first IAS officer to win Paralympics medal. He lost gold to top seed Lucas Mazur of France in the men’s singles SL4 class final at the Tokyo Paralympics on September 5. In the Tokyo Paralympics, India has won 19 medals.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) has been adjudged the best higher educational institution in 2021 followed by Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (IISc) and IIT Bombay. The rankings were announced by education minister Dharmendra Pradhan as part of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), an initiative of the government to rank top Indian institutions. Several key parameters, including research output, teaching learning environment, outreach and inclusivity, resource, graduate outcome, and perception, among others, were considered for preparing the exhaustive list.

Notes:
South Indian Bank (SIB), in association with fintech company OneCard, launched its credit card SIB – OneCard. The internationally valid credit card on the Visa Signature platform can be fully controlled through the powerful OneCard app. The card comes with many exciting features like lifetime validity with zero joining and annual fees, 100% digital customer on-boarding process, instant virtual card issuance, instant issuance of reward points and easy redemption within the app, etc.