Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
A German cybersecurity firm called Greenbone Sustainable Resilience recently published a report on medical data leaks. It revealed that the medical details of more than 120 million Indian patients have been leaked and made available on the Internet.
The state of Maharashtra is placed at the top of the list of states that are affected by the data leak, followed by Karnataka and West Bengal. It also classifies countries in three categories of good, bad and ugly, based on the action taken by the governments after its first report was released. India is placed second in the ugly category.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently conducted its sixth bi-monthly Monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting and released the statement. The repo rate was left unchanged at 5.15%, as a unanimous decision taken by the MPC members.
The central bank also announced that it had no plans to monetise the government’s fiscal deficit, which means to print fresh currency notes to balance the deficit. A Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO) for digital payment system is also to be set up by April 2020. RBI also decided to extend the Cheque Truncation System (CTS) to all regions across India.

Notes:
E-Commerce major Flipkart recently shut down its Jabong- lifestyle and fashion e-commerce portal. The users are being redirected to the website of its another fashion company, Myntra.
Flipkart, which is now owned by Walmart, had acquired Jabong for $70 million four years back. As there was a dip in number of app downloads and its business, the portal was closed. Myntra was acquired by Flipkart in the year 2014. After it was bought by Walmart, Flipkart had merged Myntra and Jabong.

Notes:
India’s leading defence PSU Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with RailTel Corporation of India for mutual co-operation in the fields of Cloud Services, IoT, e-Governance and Networks for Defence projects.
BEL also signed an agreement with a Bengaluru-based start-up, Newspace & Research Technologies Limited (NRT), for co-operation in design, testing and supply of Unmanned Systems. The PSU also partnered with Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) to develop and market products for defence and non-defence applications. All the agreements were inked during the ongoing defence exhibition-DefExpo 2020, at Lucknow.

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:
Indian weight-lifter Pardeep Singh was seen in news recently, as he won the men’s 102kg gold medal in the National weightlifting championships, recently held in Kolkata.
He improved his performance than what he did in the Asian championships in China, last year. Another leading lifter Vikas Thakur won gold medal in the men’s 96kg category. Both the lifters are in the promising list for the upcoming Asian championships in Kazakhstan. Mirabai Chanu and Jeremy Lalrinnunga were named as ‘Best Lifters’ of the championships.

Notes:
Alternaria brassicae is a fungus that causes blight in the Mustard and Rapeseed crops. Yield in a field infected by fungus Alternaria brassicae can come down by as much as by 47 per cent, if remedial measures are not taken.

Notes:
Pranash is the name of India’s 200-km strike range tactical ballistic missile which is currently under development by DRDO. This missile is advanced version of the 150-km strike range Prahar missile. Pranash will be a surface-to- surface ballistic missile and will be used by Air Force and Army.

Notes:
Kaamya Karthikeyan a student from Mumbai, recently became the youngest girl in the world to scale Mt Aconcagua. Mt Aconcagua is the highest peak in South America, located in Argentina. It is the highest peak outside Asia with the height of 6962 metres.
The student of Navy children school has already scaled the some of the highest peaks in Africa, Europe, and Australia in the past.

Notes:
The 33rd African Union (AU) summit has commenced recently in Addis Ababa, the capital of the African nation Ethiopia. The summit is being held under the theme ‘Silencing the Guns: Creating conducive conditions for Africa’s development’.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, took over as the African Union chair, from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Heads of countries and government officials from across Africa have assembled in the city for participating in the summit.