Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2023

Notes:
Over 5,000 minors rescued by Mumbai Police so far this year under ‘Operation Muskaan’, a Ministry of Home Affairs project.
It aims to find missing children, and rescue and rehabilitate them. More children were rescued by the Mumbai Police till August of this year than those rescued in the past five years combined.

Notes:
Archaeologists have recently unearthed 3,000-year-old priestly tomb, which had lain undisturbed, in northern Peru.
The occupant of the grave was dubbed as the Priest of Pacopampa by archaeologists after the highland area where it was found.

Notes:
Goa Shipyard Ltd and Kenya Shipyard Ltd signed an MoU for capacity building and collaboration in ship design and construction.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Defence Aden Bare Duale held bilateral talks in New Delhi to promote military industry cooperation and deepen maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region.

Notes:
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has approved an increase in minimum wages for labourers by Rs 26 per day. This increase would be effective from January 1, 2023.
He also announced that registered insured employees and their dependent families under the Employees State Insurance (ESI) Scheme of Rajasthan will also get the benefit of Mukhyamantri Chiranjeevi Swasthya Bima Yojana under the ESI category.

Notes:
Madhya Pradesh is found to be the lightning hub of India with maximum flashes of 987,095 in 2022- 23 and highest deaths of 340 per year, according to the fourth annual lightning report.
It highlights that the country recorded more than 20 million lightning strikes in 2022-23, 60% increase in cloud-to-ground lightning from 2019-20. The Lightning Resilient India Campaign is a collaborative endeavour between the climate resilient observing systems promotion council (CROPC) and the India meteorological department (IMD).

Notes:
A team of technology experts of BITS Hyderabad, IIT Mumbai and IIT Kharagpur, has won Asian Development Bank’s grant of USD 3.99 lakh (₹3.32 crore) to develop TUTEM.
TUTEM stands for Technologies for Urban Transit to Enhance Mobility and Safe Accessibility. It aims for safe public transport travel in Hyderabad.

Notes:
Australia will send a delegation of industry, government, academic, media and arts representatives to Beijing for a dialogue with their Chinese counterparts next week to stabilise its relationship with China, as per Australia’s Foreign Ministry.
Trade, investment, people-to-people links as well as regional and international security are among the issues up for discussion in the next talks. The high-level dialogue had been held annually from 2014 until it was stopped in 2020.

Notes:
The Union government has formed a committee under former President Ram Nath Kovind to assess the viability of the “one nation, one election” concept.
The members of the panel include Union home minister Amit Shah, ex-J&K chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Finance Commission chairman N K Singh, Constitution expert Subhash C Kashyap, senior advocate Harish Salve, and ex-Chief Vigilance Commissioner Sanjay Kothari.

Notes:
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured an image of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander. Launched in 2009, the LRO’s primary mission is to create a 3D map of the Moon’s surface from a polar orbit. Equipped with seven science instruments, including a powerful telescope and camera system that can discern details as small as 2.5 meters across, the LRO has played a pivotal role in lunar geology, mineralogy, and environmental studies. It orbits the Moon in an eccentric polar mapping orbit. One of its remarkable instruments is a laser altimeter, which measures reflection times to produce precise 3D maps of the lunar surface. The spacecraft also carries instruments designed to explore dark craters for signs of water ice and a temperature sensor that uncovered the coldest spot in the solar system.

Notes:
The COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) has secured three new licensing agreements via the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP). Launched in May 2020 with WHO and Costa Rica’s collaboration, backed by 44 Member States, UN agencies, and partners like MPP, C-TAP operates under the Solidarity call to action. Its mission is to facilitate the voluntary sharing of intellectual property, knowledge, and data among developers of COVID-19 treatments, diagnostics, vaccines, and health products. This initiative aims to expedite technological advancements and enhance global production capacity to combat the pandemic.