Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2023

Notes:
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen clinched the Dutch Grand Prix title for the third year in a row. He was followed by Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
Verstappen secured his ninth consecutive victory in Formula One, matching Sebastian Vettel’s 2013 record.

Notes:
Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently chaired 26th meeting of Western Zonal Council at Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
He also inaugurated an e-Resource web portal of Inter State Council Secretariat, Ministry of Home Affairs. This portal will facilitate functioning of Zonal Councils. The meeting was attended by Chief Ministers of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa and Administrator of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu.

Notes:
Odisha’s javelin star Kishore Jena became the first from the state to represent India at the finals of the World Athletics Championship.
At the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, he finished fifth with a personal best of 84.77 metres.

Notes:
Former US Open champion Stan Wawrinka became the oldest man to win a singles contest at the tournament since 40-year-old Jimmy Connors in 1992.
The 38-year-old Swiss veteran, who claimed the last of his three Grand Slam titles in New York in 2016, outclassed Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka.

Notes:
A total of 48 African countries have agreed to adopt the Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change (KDMECC) to address the nexus of human mobility and climate change in the continent.
It was co-hosted by the Governments of Kenya and Uganda with support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Notes:
Australia is set to hold a landmark national referendum in October to recognize the country’s Indigenous people in its constitution.
More than 17 million registered voters across the country will vote on October 14, to decide whether to amend the Constitution, in order to establish a new advisory body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The historic referendum called “Voice to Parliament”, if approved, would recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the country’s constitution.

Notes:
The Government of India and the Government of New Zealand have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to boost cooperation in civil aviation.
This will cover the scheduling of new routes, code share services, traffic rights and capacity entitlement. An Air Services Agreement was signed between New Zealand and India in 2016. The New Zealand and India have reviewed the existing arrangements relating to air service between the two countries.

Notes:
The Advance Pricing Agreement (APA) programme is an initiative for promoting an investor-friendly and non-adversarial tax regime in India.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has recently released the fourth and fifth annual APA reports. The reports present key data and statistics pertaining to the APA programme.

Notes:
Mastercard, technology company in the payments industry, has launched ALT ID solution for guest checkout transactions.
ALT ID is a custom-made capability to create an alternate identifier for the real card numbers provided by cardholders during guest checkout transactions on e-commerce platforms.

Notes:
In the Satkosia Tiger Reserve, two highly decomposed elephant carcasses were recently discovered. This reserve is situated in the Odisha, spanning across four districts: Angul, Cuttack, Boudh, and Nayagarh. The reserve covers a vast area of 1136.70 sq km, with 523.61 sq km designated as the core area. It’s also part of the Mahanadi Elephant Reserve and serves as the confluence of two significant bio-geographic regions in India: the Deccan Peninsula and the Eastern Ghats. Satkosia’s terrain is characterized by hills, moderate to steep slopes, and narrow valleys. The forest primarily consists of North Indian tropical moist deciduous forests and Moist peninsular low-level sal. Sal trees dominate the landscape, often growing in dense clusters, alongside species like Asan, Dhaura, Bamboo, and Simal. The reserve is home to a variety of wildlife, including tigers, leopards, elephants, spotted deer, sambar, chowsingha, barking deer, bison, wild dogs, sloth bears, jackals, giant squirrels, and porcupines. It also provides a natural habitat for two endangered species: the freshwater crocodile and the gharial.