Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2021

Notes:
India’s GDP forecast for the FY 2021-22 has been revised to 9.8% by S&P Global Ratings recently. The rating has been downgraded from its earlier projections of 11%.
This downgrade comes in the wake of the second COVID wave in India. The agency stated that the second wave could weaken the economic recovery.

Notes:
The Government of Zimbabwe, has proposed for mass killing of elephants, which is known as culling. This is aimed to reduce the population of elephants in the country, which has crossed more than a lakh.
The country is of the opinion that the large number of elephants is leading to destruction of other species habitat and is leading to increased human – animal conflict.

Notes:
Cryogenics is defined as the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. A cryogenic liquid is the liquid with boiling point below –90°C.
The main purpose of Cryogenic liquid containers is safe transportation and storage of liquefied gases at cryogenic temperatures i.e lower than –90°C. These containers are insulated and liquid gases are stored at very low temperatures.

Notes:
Colombia is witnessing violent days of protests against a tax reform proposal, made by the government of conservative President Ivan Duque.
The protests have left at least 19 people dead and 846 injured in clashes between the police and demonstrators. The proposal sought to increase the taxes of businesses, remove some exemptions given to individuals and decrease the limit of salaries that would be taxed.

Notes:
China accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world’s developed nations combined, according to new research from New York-based climate research group-Rhodium Group.
China’s emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, rose to 14.09 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2019. This is higher than the total of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members by about 30 million tons.

Notes:
For the first time, NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the low-pitched sound of the Ingenuity helicopter’s blades as it flies through the atmosphere of the Mars.
NASA released new footage shot by the six-wheeled robot making its fourth flight on April 30. Perseverance landed in the Jezero crater in February on a mission to search for signs of ancient microbes.

Notes:
The National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA) has framed a provisional database of companies and auditors that come under its regulatory purview. This includes 6,500 companies, comprising listed companies, unlisted companies and insurance and banking companies.
The NFRA is an independent regulator that oversees auditing profession and accounting standards in India and has been constituted under the Companies Act 2013.

Notes:
HDFC Bank and Common Services Centres (CSCs) launched a chatbot ‘Eva’ on CSCs Digital Seva Portal to support the Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs).
The chatbot will provide banking services in rural areas. It is a 24×7 service that will allow VLEs to access information about various products, processes and solve the queries about HDFC Bank’s services.

Notes:
Haryana conducted a three-day Monkey Census as a part of a larger Wildlife Census for Haryana-2021.
Over 600 people throughout Haryana participated in Monkey Census and documented approximately 6,000 monkeys on a mobile application by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) titled ‘Wildlife Census Haryana’.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced its Second Tranche of Open Market Purchase of G Sec, under G-sec Acquisition Programme (G-SAP 1.0), for an amount of Rs.35,000 crore.
The suction is set to be conducted on 20th May 2021. Earlier, in the month of April, RBI conducted the first tranche of G-SAP 1.0 for a quantum of Rs.25,000 crore.