Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently announced that it has discovered a new natural gas field with 80 trillion standard cubic feet of shallow gas resources. The new gas field was named ‘Jebel Ali gas field’.
The field is located between the territories of Dubai and Abu Dhabi and reported to span around 5,000 square kilometres. This discovery would help the country become more energy independent, and self-sufficient. As of now, the UAE imports natural gas from its neighbouring country Qatar for electricity. The National Oil companies of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are set to further explore the field.

Notes:
Indian Oil and Gas company, the Indian Oil Corporation recently signed an MoU with Russian energy firm, Rosneft for importing Crude Oil from Russia.
The crude oil purchase agreement was signed during a meeting between Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and the Chairman and CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. Under the agreement, Russia would export 2 million tonnes of crude oil to India this year. Rosneft bought Essar Oil in 2017, which is now Nayara Energy and holds 49 per cent stake in the firm.

Notes:
Tripura government is to hold the two-day Hornbill Festival for the first time from February 8, 2020. The festival has been an important state festival of Nagaland, which is usually held in the month of December in the Naga heritage village of Nagaland.
Tripura hosts the festival with an aim to conserve the Hornbill bird and to boost the livelihood of the state’s people through tourism. Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur also had started organising the Hornbill festival in their states, following Nagaland.

Notes:
The fifth edition of the India-Russia Military Industrial Conference was recently organised in the northern Indian city, Lucknow. The Conference was organised on the sidelines of the biennial Defence exhibition DefExpo 2020.
As many as 14 MoUs related to production of different defence equipment, radar systems, ASW Rocket launchers and 3D modeling were signed between the companies from India and Russia. Among several Indian companies, the prominent ones which signed the agreements were BHEL, Bharat Dynamics Limited and Vista control.

Notes:
The Sharang Artillery gun would be inducted into the Indian Army on February 7, 2020, as per the recent announcement of the Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane. The 155 mm-Sharang is an upgraded version of the existing 130 mm M-46 field guns.
He also announced that Sig Sauer assault rifles and Spike anti-tank missiles are being issued to the army troops, who are deployed in the forward areas. The Gun Carriage Factory (GCF) in Jabalpur upgraded the Sharang artillery gun along with the ordnance factories and technical teams of Army and DRDO.

Notes:
High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) is a laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Head-quartered in Pune, it conducts research in the area of High Energy Materials and Explosive materials.
Recently, the lab has tied up with the Russian state military organisation Rosoboronexport to import new technologies for the development of high energy materials required for missiles, rockets and guns. A technology development contract was signed with the organisation in this regard.

Notes:
Christina Koch has set the record for the longest stay in space by a woman. The U.S. astronaut landed in Kazakhstan on February 6 after 328 days on the International Space Station (ISS).

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB) bagged the national award for e-Governance 2019-20 for its Real-Time Pollution-Monitoring System (RTPMS) project, during the 23rd National Conference on e-Governance held in Mumbai.
Under the RPTMS project, an alert is sent to the concerned officials if an industrial unit exceeds the desired pollution levels.

Notes:
The National Deworming Day was recently observed across the country on February 10. All children and adolescent boys and girls in all states and Union Territories, who are in the age group of 1 to 19 years are given a single dose of the medicine called Albendazole.
The day is observed with an aim of deworming children and adolescents to reduce the occurrence of parasitic worms in intestine. It is observed under the supervision of the Union Ministry of Health and Family welfare.

Notes:
The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 was legislated to protect the scheduled communities from harassments and atrocities.
In March 2018, the Supreme court gave a judgement diluting the original act and it even granted anticipatory bail for those booked in the atrocity case. After huge protest, the government amended the original act and passed the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Act, 2018. This amendment has been upheld by the apex court.