Current Affairs-09.01.2021

09.01.2021

1. Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi

• Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, is a Pakistani Islamic terrorist.
• He is the leader of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and serves as Supreme Commander of Operations in Kashmir.
• He is listed on India's NIA Most Wanted list.
• He has orchestrated terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq and South-East Asia and is referred to as Chachu, or Uncle, by trainees.

2. Gangetic River Dolphin

• The Ganges river dolphin is found in parts of the Ganges-Meghna-Brahmaputra and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
• The Gangetic river dolphin is India's national aquatic animal and is popularly known as ‘Susu’.
• IUCN Status: Endangered
• Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary (VGDS) in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district is India’s only sanctuary for its national aquatic animal.

3. Indian Super League

• The Indian Super League (ISL) is a professional football league which represents the sport's highest level in Indian football system.
• It is organized by the All India Football Federation and their commercial partners Football Sports Development.
• The league comprises 11 clubs with each season generally running from November to March. During the league stage of the competition, each club will play 20 games against the others in a round-robin style.
• The league has been officially known as the Hero Indian Super League since its inception, due to a sponsorship agreement with Hero MotoCorp.

4. Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

• The vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was 90 per cent effective in preventing Covid-19 infections in ongoing Phase 3 trials.
• It uses messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which relies on synthetic genes that can be generated and manufactured in weeks, and produced at scale more rapidly than conventional vaccines.
• Unlike traditional vaccines, which work by training the body to recognise and kill proteins produced by pathogens, mRNA tricks the patient’s immune system to produce viral proteins itself. The proteins are harmless, but sufficient to provoke a robust immune response.

5. N501Y Variant

• It is a mutated variant of the novel Coronavirus.It is likely to be a mutation in the spike protein.
• It is the coronavirus spike protein that binds to a human protein to initiate the process of infection.
• Changes here could possibly affect how the virus behaves in terms of its ability to infect, or cause severe disease, or escape the immune response made by vaccines.
• There has been a single nucleotide change in one portion of the spike protein, so there would be no bearing on the disease biology or even diagnostics.

6. China Pakistan Economic Corridor

• The CPEC is the flagship project of the multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping, aimed at enhancing Beijing’s influence around the world through China-funded infrastructure projects.
• The 3,000 km-long China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) consists of highways, railways, and pipelines. It also passes through PoK which is concern for India.
• CPEC eventually aims at linking the city of Gwadar in South Western Pakistan to China’s North Western region Xinjiang through a vast network of highways and railways.
• The proposed project will be financed by heavily-subsidised loans, that will be disbursed to the Government of Pakistan by Chinese banks.

7. Trans Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity Network

• The Trans-Himalayan Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network (abbreviated as THMCN and sometimes referred to as the Trans-Himalayan network) is an economic corridor between Nepal and China and part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, a global development initiative that develops connectivity especially across Eurasia.
• The corridor consists of several transportation infrastructure projects.
• The projects also consist of internal improvements to Nepalese transport infrastructure including serving three north–south corridors of the country

8. Chakkan-Da-Bagh Point

• It is a crossing point along the Line of Control in Poonch district.
• It is located on 46 kms long cross LOC Poonch-Rawlakote road at a distance of about 8kms in south of Poonch Town.

9. Plateaus of Kurbathang and Mulbekh

• The plateaus are located in Ladakh’s Kargil district.
• Recently the Armydecided to relocate from the plateaus of Kurbathang and Mulbekh, which will allow the township to expand in an organised manner.