04 JUNE 2021 CURRENT AFFAIRS

1.KHARG

Kharg, Iran’s largest warship caught fire and later sank in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz, a strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

About:

• The warship Kharg is named after the island that serves as the main oil terminal for Iran.
• Kharg or Khark Island is an island in the Persian Gulf belonging to Iran.

Source : Indian Express

2.H10N3 AVIAN INFLUENZA

China has reported the world’s first case of a human infected with H10N3 avian influenza in its eastern province of Jiangsu.

About:

• Influenza A virus subtype H10N3 is a subtype of viruses that causes influenza (flu). It is mostly present in wild avian species. The first human case was reported in 2021.
• H10N3 has been isolated across a wide geographic distribution, including in species such as domestic poultry (chickens), ducks, other waterfowl, and terrestrial birds.
• In animals, the viruses display a complex pathology, with complex reassortments and mutations contributing to pathobiology patterns in chickens, ducks and mice indicative of a possible threat to humans, although H10N3 is usually a less severe strain and is unlikely to cause a significant outbreak. 

Source : Indian Express

3.AFRICAN UNION

The African Union suspended Mali’s membership in response to last week’s military coup and threatened sanctions, if a civilian-led government is not restored. West African regional bloc ECOWAS had also suspended Mali.

Mali

• Mali is a landlocked country in West Africa. Its capital is Bamako.
• Mali borders Algeria to the north-northeast, Niger to the east, Burkina Faso to the south-east, Ivory Coast to the south, Guinea to the south-west, and Senegal to the west and Mauritania to the north-west.

African Union

• The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. In 2017, the AU admitted Morocco as a member state.

Timeline:

• The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya in 1999, calling for the establishment of the African Union.
• The bloc was founded in 2001 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• It was launched in 2002 in Durban, South Africa.
• Background: The AU replaced the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was established in 1963. The OAU was disbanded in 2002.
• The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Source : All India Radio

4.RANJITSINH DISALE

Ranjitsinh Disale, the first Indian teacher to receive the Global Teacher Award has been appointed by the World Bank as an Advisor to the World Bank.

About:

• The World Bank has appointed 12 advisors from world over and Mr. Disale is one of them representing India. He will be an advisor to the World Bank till December 2024.
• World Bank has recently launched the Global Coach Program, a new initiative focused on accelerating learning by helping countries improve in-service teacher professional development (TPD) programs and systems.
• This program forms part of the World Bank’s broader agenda to tackle the global learning crisis (WDR, 2018).
• Coach focuses on supporting countries improve in-service TPD through a two-pronged approach.
• The Coach program focuses on helping countries transform their TPD programs and policies to ones that adhere to a set of four key principles that have been shown to be linked to improved teaching quality.
• Disale’s work through the Advisory Board will impact the work World Bank on the ground, currently supporting over 18 million teachers around the world. 

Source : All India Radio

5.VENUS

NASA has selected two missions to the planet Venus, Earth’s nearest neighbour.

About:

• The missions are called DAVINCI+ and VERITAS and will be launched between 2028-2030.
• DAVINCI+ is short for ‘Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging’ and is the first US-led mission to the planet’s atmosphere since 1978.
• It will try to understand Venus’ composition to see how the planet formed and evolved.
• This mission also consists of a descent sphere that will pass through the planet’s thick atmosphere and make observations and take measurements of noble gases and other elements.
• Significantly, this mission will also try to return the first high resolution photographs of a geological feature that is unique to Venus. This feature, which is called “tesserae” may be comparable to Earth’s continents. The presence of tesseraes may suggest that Venus has tectonic plates like Earth.
• The second mission called VERITAS is short for ‘Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy’ and will map the planet’s surface to determine its geologic history and understand the reasons why it developed so differently from Earth.

Source : Indian Express

6.CAVES OF TRIRASHMI HILL

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has found three more caves in Trirashmi hill in Nashik where the Trirashmi Buddhist caves — also known as Pandav Leni — are located.

About:

• The antiquity of the caves is yet to be established; archaeologists studying them, however, believe they could be older than the Trirashmi caves.
• These caves may have been dwellings of Buddhist monks.
• All the caves have verandahs and the characteristic square stone platform for monks. There are special arrangements for monks to meditate, similar to the Kanheri and Wai caves.

Important Info :

Trirashmi caves

• The Trirashmi or Pandav Leni caves are a group of 25 caves that were carved out of Trirashmi Hill between the 2nd century BC and 6th century AD.
• The caves complex was documented in 1823.
• It is now an ASI protected site and a tourist destination.
• The Buddhist sculptures and caves (in Nashik) are a early example of Indian rock-cut architecture representing the Hinayana tradition of Buddhism.

Source : Indian Express

7.BICYCLE

June 3 is annually celebrated by the United Nations General Assembly as World Bicycle Day.

Bicycle sector in India: Key findings of NITI Aayogs report published in March 2020

• Nearly 45% households or 111 million households in India owned bicycles as per the 2011 census.
• The percentage share of households owning bicycles in India during the decade 2001 to 2011 increased by about 3%. In contrast, the corresponding growth of two-wheelers and cars increased by more than 10%.
• The Indian bicycle industry is largely located in the mega cluster of Ludhiana (in Punjab), comprising 4000 MSMEs and employing a workforce of 10 lakh in the entire value chain, including sales and repair shops, and producing more than 2 crore bicycles per annum.
• In 2018–19, the estimated bicycle production in India was around 2.2 crore (second largest after China).
• The bicycle ownership per 1000 persons in India is a meagre 90 as against 1100 of the Netherlands and 360 of China. 

Source : Indian Express

8.SINOVAC (a.k.a CORONAVAC COVID-19 VACCINE)

The World Health Organization approved China’s SINOVAC Covid vaccine for Emergency Use Listing, EUL. This makes SINOVAC the 8th vaccine to receive EUL from the WHO.

About:

• WHO’s Emergency Use Listing (EUL) is a prerequisite for COVAX Facility vaccine supply and international procurement. It opens the door for the jab to be used in the COVAX programme, which aims to ensure fair access to vaccines.
• The vaccine is produced by the Beijing-based pharmaceutical company Sinovac.
• The Sinovac-CoronaVac product is an inactivated vaccine (The disease-carrying virus or bacterium, or one very similar to it, is inactivated or killed using chemicals, heat or radiation).
• Its easy storage requirements make it very manageable and particularly suitable for low-resource settings.

Source : All India Radio

9.PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

India will vote in support of Maldives’ Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid in the election of the President of the UNGA on June 7, a decision which will disappoint Afghanistan, which has former Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul in the running.

About:

• The President is the chair and presiding officer of the General Assembly.
• The President is a position voted for by representatives in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on a yearly basis.
• The presidency rotates annually between the five geographic groups: African, Asia-Pacific, Eastern European, Latin American and Caribbean, and Western European and other States.
• It is customary that no permanent member of the United Nations Security Council ever serves as UNGA president.
• The only countries that had a national elected as President of UNGA twice are Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Nigeria; all the other member states had been represented only once by their nationals holding this office.
• Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900 – 1990) of India served as 8th President of the UNGA in 1953. she was also First woman president of UNGA. 

Source : The Hindu

10.WOMEN IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS (STEM)

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced 33.3 % reservation for girl students in engineering & medical colleges of the state.

About:

• The 33.3% quota for girls would be introduced in all engineering and medical colleges across the state from the coming academic session (2021-22).
• With this, Bihar will become the first state in the country to provide 33.3% quota to girls in the technical colleges.
• This will increase the number of girl students in the field of engineering and medical areas.

Source : Times of India