Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2023

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:
Tata Passenger Electric Mobility, a subsidiary of Tata Motors, has announced the introduction of its new brand identity, TATA.ev, for the EV business.
Tata has also revealed a logo for its .ev brand. The .ev brand will be used by Tata Motors’ Passenger Electric Mobility division and it will not cover Tata Motors’ electric commercial vehicles, as of now.

Notes:
The Asia Cup 2023 tournament kicked off across four venues in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The 16th edition of Asia Cup is all set to start on August 30 and will end on September 17.
A total of six teams will be participating. The teams have been divided into two groups and are playing against each other in round-robin style.

Notes:
The National Green Tribunal has directed the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to plant at least 10,000 trees within a month in Uttarakhand.
This direction was s part of compensatory tree plantation to make up for hundreds of trees felled during construction of a road from Simli to Gwaldam. There were petitions about construction of a road in the fragile and sensitive mountains of Chamoli district of Uttarakhand.

Notes:
WR Chess has triumphed as inaugural FIDE World Rapid Team Champions. Altogether, WR Chess secured 22 matchpoints, Freedom finished on 20, and third-placed MGD1 had 18.
WR Chess had one Indian- R Praggnananda, Freedom had two Indian players and MGD1 eight. When it comes to individual medals for board prizes, as many as seven Indians won either a Silver or Bronze medal.

Notes:
NITI Aayog and UNDP India have signed, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to formalise a framework of cooperation on a range of areas, including SDG localisation, data-driven monitoring, Aspirational Districts and Blocks, among others.
The MoU was signed for a period of five years. NITI Aayog is the nodal Institution for coordinating the adoption and monitoring of SDGs at the national and sub-national levels. UNDP plays the integrator role in coordinating efforts to fast-track progress on the SDGs within the UN system.

Notes:
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), announced the launch of Falcon blockchain-based project named ‘Falcon’.
It is an open-source project that aims to simplify the management and use of blockchains based on ‘Hyperledger Fabric’ and supported on Kubernetes clusters. Essentially, Falcon is expected to help developers innovate on blockchain-based payment solutions.

Notes:
Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya M Scindia inaugurated Utkela Airport and a direct flight between Utkela and Bhubaneshwar.
Utkela airport is owned by the Government of Odisha. It has been developed as a regional airport under the UDAN scheme of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India at a cost of Rs. 31.07 Crores.

Notes:
Tharman Shanmugaratnam is the president-elect of Singapore. He was born on February 25, 1957. He is a popular politician who has won several parliamentary elections. In 2023, he resigned from all government positions and the PAP to run for the Singaporean presidential election. He won the election with 70.4% of the votes.
Shanmugaratnam was previously the Senior Minister of Singapore from 2019 to 2023. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister for eight years. He studied at the London School of Economics, Cambridge University, and Harvard University.

Notes:
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has launched a new type of frigate, the Type 054B, China’s Ministry of National Defense.
Type 054B is the larger and more advanced version of Type 054A, which currently forms the backbone of the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy).