Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2021

Notes:
The ongoing 74th World Health Assembly declared January 30 as ‘World Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Day’.
The proposal to recognise the day was initiated by the United Arab Emirates and it was adopted unanimously by the member countries. NTDs are a group of infections caused by a variety of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, protozoa and parasitic worms.

Notes:
The Chandra X-ray Observatory, previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, was launched by NASA, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Recently, an image from this observatory was released by NASA. It shows threads of superheated gas and magnetic fields weaving around each other, at the center of our Mily Way Galaxy. These new observations stretch above and below our galaxy’s plane, where most of the stars are found.

Notes:
Marine mucilage or “sea snot” is reported to have accumulated along the coast of Turkey. The sea snot is a thick jelly-like layer of slime which is formed by the population explosion of microscopic plants called phytoplankton.
Some Researchers believe that the increase in sea surface temperature due to climate change, has led to this effect while few others see over-fishing as the root cause.

Notes:
Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) said that it has introduced the world’s first Nano Urea Liquid for farmers across the world.
The technology was developed at Nano Biotechnology Research Centre, Kalol. This is expected to reduce the input cost of farmers and will significantly bring down the cost of logistics and warehousing.

Notes:
China has announced that it would permit couples to have three children as against the present two children limit, which was brought in 2016.
This decision has been made by the Chinese government, since the country’s birth rates have registered a steep decline as per the latest census release.

Notes:
The Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has launched the Horticulture Cluster Development Programme. The programme has been launched on a pilot basis in 12 clusters covering 11 States/UTs.
This is a central sector programme implemented by the National Horticulture Board (NHB), which aims to make identified horticulture clusters globally competitive.

Notes:
Microsoft has launched the first Asia Pacific Public Sector Cyber Security Executive Council. It aims to build a strong communications channel for addressing cyber threats.
It also aims to share best practices across the participating countries by accelerating public-private partnerships in cybersecurity. The council has policy makers from many Asian countries, supported by cybersecurity professionals.

Notes:
Mahesh Jethmalani, who is a noted advocate has been recently nominated by the Union Government to the Rajya Sabha. Additionally, former journalist Swapan Dasgupta has also been nominated to the upper house.
Mahesh Jethmalani has been nominated to Rajya Sabha to fill the vacancy of seat due to the demise of Raghunath Mohapatra.

Notes:
China recently launched into orbit a new-generation weather satellite named Fengyun-4B (FY- 4B) successfully.
The Fengyun-4B satellite was launched aboard a Long March 3B rocket into the geostationary orbit, to join the network of Fengyun satellites. The first of the Fengyun series, a low-Earth orbit satellite testing machine – FY-1A, was launched in 1988.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced to create a Special liquidity window of Rs 15,000 crore with a tenor of 3 years at the repo rate to provide liquidity support to the contact-intensive sectors hit by Covid-19.
This encourages banks to provide fresh lending support to hotels, restaurants, tourism, aviation ancillary services, and other services including private bus operators, car repair and rental service providers, event/conference organizers, spa clinics, and beauty parlours/saloons. RBI will extend a special liquidity facility of ₹16,000 crore to SIDBI for on-lending/refinancing.