Daily Current Affairs Quiz: January 10, 2024

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: D

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: D

• Assam recently hosted the famous Chandubi Festival in .

ABOUT CHANDUBI FESTIVAL

• The Chandubi Festival is a vibrant event that takes place near the picturesque Chandubi Lake in Assam’s Kamrup district.
• It is organised every year for five days starting from the first day of the New Year.
• The Chandubi Festival is organized by the people of Rajapara village in the Kamrup district, under the Rabha Hasong Autonomous Council (RHAC).
  • They have been organizing this festival for the past 14 years.
• It is a colourful display of Assamese culture and traditions featuring a diverse range of activities, including folk music performances, traditional dance shows, local handicraft exhibitions, and delicious Assamese cuisine stalls.

ABOUT CHANDUBI LAKE

• Chandubi Lake is a natural lake located in Kamrup district of Assam.
• Situated at the foothills of Garo hills, it is one of the beautiful lakes in Assam.
• Chandubi Lake was formed in 1897 during the devastating earthquake in Assam.
• Chandubi is derived from two words where Chand means five and Dubi means sinking in Khasi language.
• According to the locals, Chandubi was a hilly area with five mountains before 1897. The five mountains had sunken into the ground during the earthquake and form the lake.

ANSWER: B

• The UAE is set to contribute a critical piece of infrastructure — an airlock module — to the Artemis Lunar Gateway.
• The UAE is the fifth partner in this project after USA, Japan, Canada and the European Union.
• The Artemis Lunar Gateway is designed to be a pivotal outpost for long-term lunar exploration and research, providing a habitat for astronauts and serving as a staging point for missions to the Moon’s surface.
• It is humanity’s first lunar-orbiting space station.
• The station will double as a space laboratory, enabling a range of scientific and technical experiments, and will have a minimum lifespan of 15 years, which is subject to extension.
• The Artemis program, underpinned by the Artemis Accords — a set of principles guiding cooperative lunar exploration — aims to return humans to the Moon, landing the first woman and the first person of colour on its surface.

ANSWER: A

• Researchers at the Indian Institutes of Technology Madras and Mandi have metabolically engineered plant cells to increase production of anti-cancer drug camptothecin (CPT).
  • It is an important anti-cancer drug lead molecule for high-value drugs like Topotecan and Irinotecan.
  • Camptothecin is a molecule procured from nature and then (in a) one-step derivative it is produced as drug.
• The allopathic medicine is produced using Nathapodytes nimmoniana, a native, endangered plant.
• It requires nearly 1,000 tonnes of plant material to extract 1 tonne of CPT.
• Camptothecin is majorly produced in southeast Asian region, with the plant being largely found only in China and India.
  • The Chinese variety (Camptotheca acuminata) of the plant used to extract the cell is listed as critically endangered. There are only 4,000 of the species left.
  • In India the plant (Nothapodytes nimmoniana) is a native of western ghats (also found in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir) and in the last decade there was a 20% decline in population.

ANSWER: A

• The Israeli airforce has revived a massive radar blimp, now set to patrol the Israel-Lebanon border amid rising tensions.
• The “Tal Shamayim,” or “Sky Dew” is one of the largest high-altitude observation balloons of its kind.
  • It acts as a detection radar blip for small unmanned aircraft and cruise missiles.
• The High Availability Aerostat System is a collaborative project of the US and Israel, developed by the Israel Ministry of Defense and the US Missile Defense Agency.
• Manufactured by the US company TCOM, the reconnaissance balloon can carry 7,000 pounds and operates at an altitude of about 10,000ft.
• The radar on the balloon is capable of observing at 250 km and tracking multiple targets, including low-altitude ones and those in valleys.

ANSWER: B

• The Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), Pune, with the help of Hyderabad-based Dvipa Armour India Private Limited (DAIPL), has developed an indigenous assault rifle named ‘Ugram’ aka the fierce one.
  • The ARDE is one of the laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) that is primarily concerned with research, design, and development in the field of conventional armaments for defence services.

ABOUT UGRAM RIFLE

• It is a completely indigenous rifle.
• The rifle is a 7 to 15 mm assault rifle that was developed within 100 days for both the Indian Army and paramilitary forces.
• This rifle has a 20-round magazine that fires robust and full auto mode.
• The rifle is effective for 500 metres and the weight of the rifle including the magazine is less than 4 kg.

ANSWER: A

• French President Emmanuel Macron has made a significant political move by appointing Gabriel Attal as the new prime minister of France.
• At 34 years old, Attal is the the youngest prime minister in the country’s history
• He is also the first openly gay official to hold this prestigious position.
• Under the French political system, the prime minister is appointed by the president and is held accountable to the parliament.

ANSWER: D

• World Hindi Day, also called the Vishwa Hindi Diwas, is observed on January 10.
• It is marked to promote the language.
• On this day in 1949, Hindi was spoken for the first time at the United Nations General Assembly.
• With around 600 million speakers globally, Hindi is one of the most widely spoken languages across the world.
• Vishwa Hindi Diwas was marked for the first time on January 10, 2006, on the instructions of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
• In 1950, Hindi was declared the official language of the Union of India.
• It is designated as Hindi in Devanagari script in Article 343 of the Constitution of India.

ANSWER: B

• Lily Gladstone recently became the Golden Globes’ first Indigenous winner of best actress in a drama.
• She won for her role as Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon.
• During her acceptance speech, she spoke to the live TV audience in the Blackfeet language.
  • Blackfoot is an Algonquian language spoken in the Blackfeet Nation in Montana in the USA, and in the Piikani, Siksika and Kainai Nations in southern Alberta in Canada.
  • As of 2016, it had about 2900 native speakers.