Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2021

Notes:
Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited, a subsidiary of Piramal Enterprises has reverse merged itself with the debt-ridden Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) after paying a sum of Rs.34,250cr to the creditors of DHFL.
The process was fully completed on 30th September 2021, as per the resolution plan under the Insolvency Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

 

Notes:
The Tropical Cyclone Shaheen has hit the coast of Oman and has caused human and material damage in the region. This cyclone is an offspring of the cyclone Gulab which had a devastating impact on the east coast of India in late September 2021.
The remnant of cyclone Gulab along with the low-pressure region over Gujarat had gained strength to form the new cyclone Shaheen.

Notes:
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently published the latest edition of “Model Lists of Essential Medicines and Essential Medicines for Children”. The new list has prioritized access to diabetes and cancer treatments.
The list has included new medicines to assist people who want to stop smoking and new antimicrobials to treat serious bacterial and fungal infections.

Notes:
The Union Environment Ministry has released a consultation paper on amending the Forest Conservation Act 1980 to bring some important changes to Forest governance in India.
In includes enabling private plantations for harvesting and exploration or extraction of oil and natural gas deep beneath forest land by drilling holes from outside the forest areas. State governments have been asked to send their comments within 15 days.

Notes:
India and the UK kickstarted a two-week military exercise ‘Ajeya Warrior’ at Chaubatia in Uttarakhand.
It aims to strengthen bilateral defence cooperation between the two countries. As per the Indian Army, this edition of the ‘Ajeya Warrior’ exercise is part of an initiative to develop interoperability and sharing of expertise, it said.

Notes:
The Ministry of Women and Child Development has issued the detailed guidelines for PM CARES for Children Scheme.
The aim of the scheme is to ensure protection of children who have lost their parent(s) to COVID pandemic. The scheme is expected to continue till the year when every identified beneficiary shall turn 23 years of age.

Notes:
Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize for his compassionate literary works on colonialism and refugees.
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean but arrived in England as a refugee at the end of the 1960’s. He was a professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury and has published ten novels and several short stories.

Notes:
From the images captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by Timothy Hamilton have discovered an unusual gravitational lensing configuration.
Named as ‘Hamilton’s Object,’ it consists of two images of a spiral background galaxy in a fold configuration and a third resolved image of the same spiral galaxy. Together, they create a tangential point configuration.

 

Notes:
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar held talks with the top Kyrgyztan leadership to boost bilateral ties, including defence cooperation.
India also agreed to provide a USD 200 million Line of Credit for development projects in the country. Jaishankar is on his four-day visit to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Armenia with an aim to further expand bilateral ties with the three Central Asian countries.

 

Notes:
Former bureaucrat Amit Khare, who retired recently as higher education secretary, has been appointed as advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He has been appointed for two years on contract basis, as per a personnel ministry order issued. Mr Khare is a 1985 batch (retired) IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre.  The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment in the rank and scale of secretary to government of India.