Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2021

Notes:
The combined net profit of all the listed companies in India has moved up by 57.6% in FY 21 to Rs.5.31 trillion.
The Corporate Profit to GDP ratio in India stood at 2.63% in FY 21 which is an all-time high in the last 10 years. Although the sales and revenue of many firms were low due to nationwide lockdown, higher profitability was achieved mainly due to decline in raw material prices and input cost.

Notes:
NASA’s Curiosity rover captured the images of the clouds seen above Gale Crater of the Mars. The crater is 154 km in diameter and estimated to be about 3.5-3.8 billion years old.
The image is a combination of 21 individual photographs the rover took recently to study a strange type of cloud over the Gale Crater. The Scientists made the rover watch for the early clouds, as it was observed that the cloud type was forming earlier in the Martian year.

Notes:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cut its growth projection for India for FY22 to 9.9 per cent from 12.6 per cent estimated in March.
OECD also estimated the Global GDP growth at 5.8 per cent this year, compared with 4.2 per cent projected in December. It also changed its projections to 4.4 per cent in 2022, compared to 3.7 per cent, estimated in December.

Notes:
The State Bank of India, in its economic research report “Ecowrap” has predicted India’s GDP to grow at 7.9% for the FY 2021-22.
Earlier the report had predicted a growth of 10.4%, and it has now been downgraded due to the large impact of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

Notes:
The Gujarat government has decided to grant Centre of Excellence (CoE) status to seven private universities in the state.
The Chief Minister Vijay Rupani gave in-principle approval to grant CoE status to seven universities including Nirma University, CEPT University, Pandit Deendayal Energy University, DAIICT, Ahmedabad University, Charotar University of Science and Technology and Marwadi University.

Notes:
NASA has planned to send 128 baby squids and some 5,000 tardigrades, also called as Water Bears to the International Space Station for research purposes.
The water animals will be launched aboard SpaceX’s 22nd cargo resupply mission to the ISS. The experiments will also help to understand how beneficial microbes interact with animals. The experiments would also help design protective measures for astronauts going for long space travel.

Notes:
Oil sector PSUs in India namely Indian Oil, HPCL, BPCL, GAIL and IGL have come together into a Cooperation Agreement for promotion and development of SATAT Scheme.
SATAT stands for Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation, which was launched on 01.10.2018 to set up Compressed Biogas production plants and make CBG available in the market.

Notes:
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 was launched recently by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO).
The organisations also launched a report titled ‘#GenerationRestoration: Ecosystem restoration for People, Nature and Climate’, to mark the launch of the decade. The report urges the countries to restore at least 1 billion degraded hectares of land in the next decade.

Notes:
A bipartisan legislation was re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to eliminate the per-country cap on employment-based green card.
This new law is called as the EAGLE Act 2021. Currently, there is a 7% per-country limit on Visa issuance by the United States. If this law is cleared by the Senate, this would benefit a lot of Indian professionals and their family members who wish to immigrate to the country.

Notes:
The Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ has announced that the validity period of the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) qualifying certificate would be extended from the present 7 years to life time.
This decision was made in the National Council for Teacher Education’s (NCTE) 50th general body meeting.