10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: December 12, 2020

Western Sahara is a sparsely-populated area of mostly desert situated on the northwest coast of Africa.

A former Spanish colony, it was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then it has been the subject of a long-running territorial dispute between Morocco and its indigenous Saharawi people, led by the Algeria backed Polisario Front.

# Morocco has become the latest Arab League country to agree to normalize relations with Israel in a deal brokered with US help. As part of the deal, the US has agreed to recognise Morocco’s claim over the disputed Western Sahara region.

Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) is the Integrated Mountain Initiative’s flagship annual conclave. Each year 3-5 salient themes engaging the immediate attention of and relevant to the mountains and hills are identified for threadbare discussion and debate. Conclusions and recommendations emerging from this exercise would be pursued by IMI subsequently.

The 9th edition of SMDS, being hosted by Sustainable Development Forum Uttaranchal (SDFU), will focus on the overall objective of building pathways toward a resilient and sustainable mountain economy in the IHR in the context of a post COVID-19 scenario and Climate Change.

Bhasan Char, also known as Char Piya, is an island in Bay of Bengal under Hatiya Upazila of Bangladesh. Recently Bangladesh has sent the first group of more than 1,500 Rohingya refugees to an isolated Bhasan Char island.

Both statements are correct.

Union Cabinet has recently given its approval for the proposal of DoT for setting up of Public Wi-Fi Networks by Public Data Office Aggregators (PDOAs) to provide public Wi-Fi service through Public Data Offices (PDOs) spread across length and breadth of the country to accelerate proliferation of Broadband Internet services through Public Wi-Fi network in the country. There shall be no license fee for providing Broadband Internet through these public Wi-Fi networks.

Salient Features:

–This Public Wi-Fi Access Network Interface will be known as PM-WANI.PM-WANI eco-system will be operated by different players as described herein under:

–Public Data Office (PDO): It will establish, maintain, and operate only WANI compliant Wi-Fi Access Points and deliver broadband services to subscribers.

–Public Data Office Aggregator (PDOA): It will be an aggregator of PDOs and perform the functions relating to Authorization and Accounting.

–App Provider: It will develop an App to register users and discover WANI compliant Wi-Fi hotspots in the nearby area and display the same within the App for accessing the internet service.

–Central Registry: It will maintain the details of App Providers, PDOAs, and PDOs. To begin with, the Central Registry will be maintained by C-DoT.

Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs’ scheme PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) aims to empower Street Vendors by not only extending loans to them, but also for their holistic development and economic upliftment.

The scheme intends to facilitate collateral free working capital loans of up to INR10,000/- of one-year tenure, to approximately 50 lakh street vendors, to help resume their businesses in the urban areas, including surrounding peri-urban/rural areas.

Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launched a programme of Socio-Economic Profiling of PM SVANidhi beneficiaries and their families recently, as an additional component of PM SVANidhi Scheme. Based on the profiled data, benefits of the various eligible Central Schemes would be extended to them for their holistic socio-economic upliftment.

The Climate Change Performance Index published by Germanwatch, CAN International and the NewClimate Institute evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of 57 countries and the EU.

Published annually since 2005, the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) tracks countries’ efforts to combat climate change.

The latest Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2021 has placed India among the top 10 countries to have adopted substantial measures to mitigate climate change. The report has ranked India at the 10th position with 63.98 scores.

The index follows the directives led by the 2015 Paris Agreement, established with the goal to limit global warming to well below 2°C or even to 1.5°C. Therefore, CCPI assesses the countries on how much they have worked towards achieving this goal and how the countries are faring with respect to their 2030 targets.

The Gwalior and Orchha fort cities of Madhya Pradesh have been included in the UNESCO World Heritage cities under its urban landscape cities programme.

Gwalior was established in 9^th century and ruled by Gurjar-Pratihara rajvansha, Tomars, Baghel and Scindhias. It is known for its palaces and temples including the famous Sas Bahu Ka Mandir.

Orchha was the capital of Bundela kingdom in 16^th century and has palaces and temples as major attractions for tourists.

Statement 1 is correct. The first Trilateral Working Group Meeting between India, Iran and Uzbekistan on joint use of Chabahar Port will be held virtually on December 14, 2020.

India has welcomed the interest of Uzbekistan to use the Chabahar port as a transit port. This would open up economic opportunities for the traders and business community of the region. Besides Uzbekistan, other Central Asian countries have also shown interest in using the port.

Statement 2 is correct. India is participating in the development of the first phase of the Shahid Behesti Port in Chabahar in cooperation with the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

An Indian company, India Ports Global Limited, has taken over port operations of Shahid Behesti Port in Chabahar in December 2018.

SpaceIL, the nonprofit Israeli initiative whose spacecraft crashed as it tried to land on the moon last year, announced recently that it is launching another lunar mission with its Israeli government partners. The Beresheet 2 project will aim to send three spacecraft — an orbiter and two landers — to the moon.

The first Beresheet, or “Genesis,” spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries had crashed on moon surface in 2019.

The mRNA vaccines do not use the conventional model to produce immune response. Instead, mRNA vaccine carries the molecular instructions to make the protein in the body through a synthetic RNA of the virus. The host body uses this to produce the viral protein that is recognized and thereby making the body mount an immune response against the disease.

Option 1 is incorrect. ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is a recombinant adenovirus vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. It has been developed by Oxford University in collaboration with AstraZeneca. It is being produced in India by Serum Institute of India under brand name COVISHIELD.

Option 2 is incorrect. COVAXIN by Bharat Biotech is an inactivated vaccine developed from an Indian strain of the novel coronavirus isolated by NIV.

Option 3 is correct. India’s first indigenous mRNA vaccine candidate has received approval from Indian Drug regulators to initiate Phase I/II human clinical trial. The novel mRNA vaccine candidate, HGCO19 has been developed by Gennova, Pune and supported with seed grant under the Ind-CEPI mission of Department of Biotechnology of Ministry of Science & Technology.