Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
The famous arts festival called ‘Kala Ghoda Arts Festival’ is celebrated annually in the city of Mumbai. The 21st edition of the street festival has recently commenced. This year, the nine-day-long festival has a variety of events in 12 sections, related to arts, music, cinema, literature, theatre and heritage walks.
This year’s edition of KGAF has been organised entirely through crowd-funding using the platform named ‘Ketto’, without the conventional sponsorship. The annual festival has been organised by the Kala Ghoda Association since 1999.

Notes:
World Cancer Day is organized by the Union for International Cancer Control and celebrated every year on February 4, from 2000. This year the theme of the campaign is ‘I am and I will’.
The World Cancer Day campaign was first created in the year 2000, and this year’s is the 20th edition of the day. It is observed to create awareness about the disease across the world and to improve individual and government action. The campaign aims at reducing the number of premature deaths from cancer and noncommunicable diseases by one third by 2030.

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:
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 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 Administrative Council under the chairmanship of Lt Governor G C Murmu recently approved the renaming of the state’s Public Health Engineering, Irrigation and Flood Control Department as the ‘Jal Shakti Department’.
The council also approved the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission and the strategy to achieve 100 per cent coverage of piped water supply across the UT, by December 2021. It was also proposed to set up a Mission Directorate of Jal Jeevan Mission for implementation of the scheme. Seven districts of the UT would be covered for 100 per cent piped water supply by June 2020, in the initial phase.

Notes:
A private Indian firm has recently unveiled the indigenous air to ground missile ‘Khagantak’, during the ongoing DefExpo 2020. The firm has manufactured the air to ground missile with a strike range of 180 km.
The Managing Director of JSR Dynamics Air Marshal SB Deo announced the missile and said that when released from a height of 12 km, the missile is an air-launch weapon. It can be used as a guide weapon, which also has artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise the targets. Such indigenous missiles are expected to be a boost to the ‘Make in India’ initiative and reduce our dependence on foreign defence manufacturers.

Notes:
The Department of telecommunications (DoT) recently approved the merger of consumer mobile operations of the Tata group with Bharti Airtel.
During the month of October 2017, the Tata group announced that the company would sell its consumer mobile business to Bharti Airtel. After nearly two years of their plan, the final approval has been granted by DoT. Airtel has acquired Tata’s mobile phone operations across the country in 19 circles across the country. This merger would expand the spectrum availability and 4G coverage of Bharti Airtel.

Notes:
Ministry of Corporate Affairs is replacing the existing SPICe (Simplified Proforma for Incorporating Company Electronically) form with a new web form called SPICe+. The existing form, which is used for reservation of name, company incorporation, DIN allotment, and application for PAN/TAN, in its new avatar, would offer 10 services by three central government ministries and departments.

Notes:
M.J. Akbar’s new book “Gandhi’s Hinduism – The Struggle Against Jinnah’s Islam” chronicles the endgame that led to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan.