Current Affairs

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Current Affairs

By: MG Jayasankar (20+ Years Teaching Experience) ExamLounge.com

Practice Problems with Solution

Question 1: Kolkata Port Trust has been renamed as ______A: Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Trust B: A B Vajpayee Port Trust C: Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust D: Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Port Trust E: Kamarajar Port Trust

Question 2: What is India’s rank in world’s best start-up ecosystem ranking 2020? A: 17 B: 22 C: 23 D: 19 E: 43

Question 3: According to QS Asia University Rankings 2021 released in November 2020, which is the highest ranked Indian university? A: IIT Bombay B: IISc Bangalore C: IIT Delhi D: IIT Madras E: IIT Kanpur

Question 4: Basu Chatterjee, who passed away in June 2020, was a ______A: Singer B: Writer C: Social Activist D: Politician E: Film Maker

Question 5: India pledged how much amount to the Global Vaccine Alliance GAVI? A: USD 10 million B: USD 15 million C: USD 20 million D: USD 25 million E: USD 35 million

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Question 6: The first “virtual bilateral summit” of India was held with which of the following countries? A: USA B: Bhutan C: Israel D: China E: Australia

Question 7: Which Indian personality won the prestigious Richard Dawkins award in June 2020? A: M Vijayan B: K V Subba Rao C: Lalji Singh D: Javed Akhtar E: Urjit Patel

Question 8: The oldest and largest monument of ancient Maya civilisation “Aguada Fenix” which was discovered recently is located at ______A: Gulf of Mexico B: Gulf of Mannar C: Gulf of Kutch D: Gulf of Khambhat E: Gulf of Aden

Question 9: ‘Poonam Avalokan” is a routine monthly exercise conducted by Gujarat Forest Dept to estimate the population of ______A: Nilgiri Tahr B: Kashmiri Red Stag C: Bengal Tiger D: Asiatic Lion E: Snow Leopard

Question 10: Who is the recipient of the World Food Prize 2020? A: Ram Rajasekharan B: K T Acharya C: Hosahalli Ramaswamy D: Rattan Lal E: None of the above

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Answers and Solutions

1:- A, Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Trust Solution: The Board of Trustees of Kolkata Port Trust in its Meeting held on 25th February, 2020 passed a Resolution to re-name Kolkata Port as Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata considering his multifaceted genius as an eminent jurist, academician, thinker and leader of the masses. On the occasion of the inaugural ceremony of Sesquicentenary Celebrations of Kolkata Port on 12th January, 2020, keeping in view the sentiments of the people of West Bengal, it was announced that Kolkata Port will be renamed after Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, one of the most deserving sons of West Bengal and a front-runner in national integration, dreamer of Bengal's development, inspiration for industrialisation and ardent votary of one law for one nation. The Kolkata Port is the first Major Port as well as the only riverine port of the country. It came to be governed by a Trust on 17th October, 1870 on appointment of the Commissioners for Improvement of the Port of Calcutta as per Act V of 1870. It features at Serial Number 1 in The First Schedule, Part I—Major Ports of the Indian Ports Act, 1908 and is governed by the Major Port Trusts Act, 1963. Kolkata Port has traversed 150 years and in this journey it has been India's gateway to trade, commerce and economic development. It has also been a witness to India's struggle for independence, World Wars l & II and socio-cultural changes taking place in the country, especially in Eastern India. Generally, the Major Ports in India are named after the city or the town in which they are situated. Some ports, however, in special cases or in due consideration of contribution made by eminent leaders have been re-named after great national leaders in the past. Nhava Sheva Port Trust was renamed as Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust by the Government in the year 1989. The Tuticorin Port Trust was renamed as V.O. Chidambaranar Port Trust in the year 2011 and the Ennore Port Limited has been re-named as Kamarajar Port Limited in the honour of Shri K Kamarajar, eminent freedom fighter and former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Recently, in 2017 Kandla Port was re-named as Deendayal Port. 2:- C, 23 Solution: The Startup Ecosystem Rankings Report 2020 was released by StartupBlink in June 2020. India ranked 23rd in the report. The report ranks 1,000 cities and 100 countries worldwide, based on their startup ecosystem strength and activity level. StartupBlink is a global startup ecosystem map and research centre. ♦ India has dropped 6 places to be ranked at the 23rd spot in the latest ranking. India scored 5.698. In 2019, India ranked at the 17th spot. ♦ The Startup Ecosystem Rankings Report 2020 was topped by the United States with a score of 123.167 ♦ In terms of cities, only 4 Indian cities made a place in the top 100, compared to 7 cities in 2019.

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♦ India's Silicon Valley Bengaluru is the top Indian city with the best startup ecosystem ranking, ranked 14th in the list. ♦ Delhi ranked 15th rank, Mumbai ranked 22nd and Hyderabad ranked 96th. ♦ Globally, the top three cities with the best startup ecosystems are: San Francisco Bay, United States New York, United States London, United Kingdom Top 5 countries: United States United Kingdom Israel Canada Germany

3:- A, IIT Bombay Solution: Quacquarelli Symonds [QS], global higher education think-tank and compilers of the world's most-consulted university rankings portfolio, released the QS Asia University Rankings 2021 for the continent's best higher education institutions, in November 2020. The National University of Singapore has come up as Asia’s best university for the third consecutive year. The top-10 list does not feature any Indian university. The top three Indian universities to feature on the Asia Rankings are IIT Bombay (Rank 47), IIT Delhi (Rank 50), and IIT Madras (Rank 56). A total of 107 Indian institutes made it to the overall QS Asia Rankings. Of them, 7 bagged a spot in the top 100. The QS World University Rankings 2021 for higher education institutes across the world were released on June 10 and no Indian institute had secured a position among the top 100 universities of the world. Like last year’s QS rankings, IIT Bombay, Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, and IIT Delhi featured in the top 200 list. National University of Singapore [Singapore], Tsinghua University [China] and Nanyang Technological University [Singapore] bagged the top three spots in the ranking. 4:- E, Film Maker Solution: Basu Chatterjee [10 January 1927 – 4 June 2020) was a renowned Indian film director and screenwriter. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Chatterjee became associated with what came to be known as middle cinema or middle-of-the-road cinema filmmakers, such as Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Bhattacharya, whom he assisted on Teesri Kasam (1966). Like their films, his films dealt with light-hearted stories of middle-class families often in urban settings, focusing on marital and love relationships, with exceptions such as Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986) and Kamla Ki Maut (1989), which delved into social and moral issues. He is best known for his films Us Paar, Chhoti Si Baat (1975), Chitchor (1976), Rajnigandha (1974), Piya Ka Ghar (1972), Khatta Meetha, Swami (1977 film), Baton Baton Mein (1979), Priyatama (1977), Man Pasand, Hamari Bahu Alka, Shaukeen (1982), and Chameli Ki Shaadi (1986), which was his last commercially successful movie.

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Chatterjee directed the Bengali film Hothat Brishti (1998), which featured actors from both Bangladesh and India. The film featured Ferdous Ahmed from Bangladesh, and Priyanka Trivedi and Sreelekha Mitra from West Bengal. Chatterjee continued to cast Ahmed in subsequent Indian-Bengali films, including Chupi Chupi (2001), Tak Jhal Mishti (2002) and Hothat Sedin (2012), another joint production of Bangladesh and India. He wrote the script for the Bangladeshi film Ek Cup Cha, directed by Noyeem Imtiaz Neamul. 5:- B, USD 15 million Solution: The amount was pledged in June 2020 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the virtual Global Vaccine Summit hosted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in which over 50 countries - business leaders, UN agencies, civil society, government ministers, heads of state and country leaders participated. GAVI, officially Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (previously the GAVI Alliance, and before that the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) is a public– private global health partnership with the goal of increasing access to immunisation in poor countries. GAVI brings together developing countries and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialised and developing countries, research and technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private philanthropists. GAVI has observer status at the World Health Assembly. It currently supports the immunization of almost half the world's children, giving it power to negotiate better prices for the world's poorest countries and remove the commercial risks that manufacturers faced in serving this market. It also provides funding to strengthen health systems and train health workers across the developing world. To date Gavi has helped immunise over 760 million children, preventing over 13 million deaths worldwide, helping increase DTP3 vaccine coverage in supported countries from 59% in 2000 to 81% in 2019, contributing to a halving in child mortality. Gavi runs in five year funding-cycles which enables it to negotiate long-term deals with manufacturers, secure in the knowledge that funding will be available. Following the latest Global Vaccine Summit in June 2020 hosted in the UK, $8.8 billion (USD) was raised for the funding cycle 2021 to 2025; exceeding the target of $7.4billion. This included $2billion from the UK, $1.6billion from the Gates Foundation and $1billion from Norway. In the period of 2016–2020, the UK was Gavi's largest donor in the 2016– 2020, providing around 25% of total funding, with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, US and Norway behind. Industrialised countries are Gavi's principal donors, providing approximately three-quarters of the total funding. All donor governments are represented on the Gavi Board through a constituency system (i.e. one donor country will represent several donors in their constituency). In September 2020, GAVI was announced as one of the organisations leading the Covax vaccine allocation plan, created to ensure that any new COVID-19 vaccine would be shared equally between the world's richest and poorest countries.

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The following month, Gavi announced the approval of up to $150 million to help 92 low- and middle-income countries prepare for the delivery of future COVID-19 vaccines, including technical assistance and cold chain equipment. 6:- E, Australia Solution: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held India’s first ever virtual bilateral summit with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on June 4, 2020 as the Australian PM’s scheduled visit to India could not take place due to the covid-19 pandemic and the international travel restrictions imposed during the lockdown. As per Ministry of External Affairs, this was the first ever virtual bilateral summit that India has held with any country. 7:- D, Javed Akhtar Solution: The Richard Dawkins Award is an annual prize recognising those who exemplify values of secularism and rationalism. Named in honor of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the prize was first established by the Atheist Alliance of America in 2003, and since 2019 has been presented by the Center for Inquiry. Javed Akhtar (born 17 January 1945) is an Indian political activist, poet, lyricist and screenwriter. He is originally from the Gwalior area. He was a recipient of the Padma Shri (1999), Padma Bhushan (2007), the Sahitya Akademi Award as well as five National Film Awards. In the early part of his career, he was a screenplay writer, creating films such as Deewar, Zanjeer and Sholay. Later, he left screenplay-writing and became a lyricist and social-political activist. He also remained a member of Rajya Sabha. In 2020, he received the Richard Dawkins Award for his contribution to secularism, free thinking, for critical thinking, holding religious dogma up to scrutiny, advancing human progress and humanist values. Javed Akhtar was chosen as a recipient for the Richard Dawkins Award for being "the bright light for reason, free thought, and atheism in a dark time". 8:- A, Gulf of Mexico Solution: Aguada Fénix is a large Pre-Columbian Mayan ruin located in the state of Tabasco, Mexico, near the border with Guatemala. The Preclassic Maya site was discovered by aerial survey using laser mapping, and announced in 2020. The flattened mound, nearly a mile in length and between 33 and 50 feet tall, is described as the oldest and the largest Mayan ceremonial site known. The monumental structure is constructed of earth and clay, and is believed to have been built from around 1000 BC to 800 BC. The finding of Aguada Fénix was announced in June 2020 by Takeshi Inomata, an archaeologist with the University of Arizona in Tucson, who is part a research team started in 2017 called the Middle Usumacinta Archaeological Project. The site is located near the San Pedro River in northeastern Tabasco. It was mapped from the air and excavation begun, resulting in finds including pottery and jade axes. 9:- D, Asiatic Lion Solution: The exercise is carried out by Gujarat Forest Department monthly and in-house every full moon. On this day, all the officers and field staff

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members assess the number of lions for 24 hours across various areas within their respective jurisdictions. The Gujarat Forest Department has recently announced that the number of Asiatic lions in the state has gone up to 674 from 523 that were reported in a Lion Census done five years ago. The estimation of numbers was done through the Poonam Avalokan method and not through a fresh census. 10:- D, Rattan Lal Solution: Dr. Rattan Lal, native of India and a citizen of the United States, received the 2020 World Food Prize for developing and mainstreaming a soil- centric approach to increasing food production that restores and conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change. Over his career spanning more than five decades and four continents, Dr. Lal has promoted innovative soil-saving techniques benefiting the livelihoods of more than 500 million smallholder farmers, improving the food and nutritional security of more than two billion people and saving hundreds of millions of hectares of natural tropical ecosystems. World Food Prize is an international honor instituted by the World Food Prize Foundation and the prize recognises -- without regard to race, religion, nationality, or political beliefs -- the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. The $250,000 award recognises contributions in any field involved in the world food supply including, but not limited to: plant, animal and soil science; food science and technology; nutrition; rural development; marketing; food processing and packaging; water and the environment; natural resource conservation; physical infrastructure; transportation, storage and distribution; special or extraordinary feeding programs; social organization and poverty elimination; economics and finance; policy analysis; and public advocacy. The World Food Prize calls forth the global imperative to provide safe, affordable, nutritious, sustainable nutritious and equitable food for all. By honoring those who have worked successfully toward this goal, The Prize uplifts the work and reminds us all to be accomplished in the future.

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