Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated the third Defence Attaches conference at New Delhi. He also announced that India is set to have 10 more Defence Attaches in 10 different countries.
This creation of additional 10 defence wings will strengthen the defence diplomacy of the country and help in increasing exports in defence sector. Under the central government scheme of promoting defence exports, funds are allocated for export through Defence attaches to 34 countries.

Notes:
Fitch Ratings recently released its forecast for India’s economic growth for the next financial year. It estimated a growth rate of 5.6 per cent, which is lower than the 6-6.5 per cent growth rate, as projected by the Indian government in its recent Economic survey 2019-20.
The agency also stated that the Union budget recently presented did not alter its view towards the growth prospects of the country. The agency has affirmed the ‘BBB- rating’ to India, last December. The government has missed its fiscal deficit targets for the previous year and the target for the next year is furthermore relaxed to 3.8%.

Notes:
The 15th East Asia Summit conference of the year 2020 is set to be organised by India, in the southern city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The conference will mainly focus on co-operation in maritime security and challenges in maritime domain.
During the 14th East Asia Summit (EAS) in Bangkok in November 2019, the Indian Prime Minister announced that the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) would organise the next EAS conference, in partnership with the governments of Australia and Indonesia. As announced, the EAS Conference on Maritime Security Cooperation would be held in Chennai from February 6-7, 2020. This is the fourth EAS conference organised by India.

Notes:
Ace Indian weight-lifter, Mirabai Chanu set a new national record in the National Weightlifting Championships in Kolkata, by improving her previous record. The former world champion and common wealth gold medallist belongs to the state of Manipur.
Mirabai lifted a total of 203kg to win the 49kg gold, which was better than her previous best- 201 kg, which she had achieved at the World Championships at Thailand, in September last year. The 25-year-old weight-lifter was placed fourth in the world rankings. Jeremy Lalrinnunga, another top weight-lifter from India won the men’s 67kg title in the Championship.

Notes:
US-based social networking and microblogging service, Twitter recently announced that it would label the fake media shared on its platform.
From next month, Twitter will start labelling the photo or video, so that its users can identify that the media has been manipulated. It also announced that, the firm may remove some media, which are harmful to public safety. Twitter is proposed to use three tests by analysing whether the media is doctored by authenticity, source of sharing and its potential for harm.

Notes:
Veteran Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas has recently passed away at the age of 103. The legendary actor was born in Amsterdam and his original name was Issur Danielovitch Demsky.
He made his Hollywood debut in 1946 with the film “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” and Kirk Douglas became a leading box-office icon of Hollywood during 1950-60. One of his most popular movies was ‘Spartacus’, which made a universal box-office record. He was the recipient of the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award given to a US civilian.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently projected the economic growth of the country to grow by 6 per cent during the next financial year. This is the lower end of the growth projection as announced by the government in the economic survey, which estimated a rate of 6-6.5 per cent. RBI also stated that the Indian economy continues to be weak.
The first half of the year would grow in the range of 5.5-6.0 per cent and the third quarter at 6.2 per cent, as per the RBI. But this projection is higher than the GDP growth projection of 5%, made in the monetary policy statement of December 2019.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Telangana recently flagged off the stretch of Hyderabad Metro between Hyderabad and its sister city Secunderabad. With this, Hyderabad Metro has become the second largest operational metro rail network in the country, only after the Delhi Metro Rail.
Hyderabad Metro is also the biggest metro project in the world in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode, with a total project cost of ₹20,000 crore, constructed by Larsen & Toubro.

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:
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.