Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
Veteran Kannada actor Kishori Ballal recently passed away at the age of 82. She was known for starring with Shah Rukh Khan in his movie -Swades as ‘Kaveri Amma’.
She made her acting debut during 1960 in the movie ‘Ivalentha Hendathi’ and has acted in more than 75 movies of different Indian languages. The artist had been acting for more than 50 years and starred in several Bollywood films too.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Soil Health Card (SHC) Scheme on 19th February, 2015 at Suratgarh in Rajasthan. Fifth year of the launch of the scheme is being observed on the ‘Soil Health Card (SHC) Day’, this year.
The scheme aims at issuing soil health cards to all farmers every two years. The card would provide details about the nutritional deficiencies in soil, so that the farmers can supplement the soil with suitable fertilizers and increase the yields.

Notes:
Election commission chief of Afghanistan announced the result of last September’s election held in the country. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has been declared the winner of the polls with 50.64% of the vote.
There were allegations of vote-manipulation and fraud after the September poll, though only a small part of the country came forward to vote. Abdullah Abdullah came second with 39.52% votes.

Notes:
As of now, fuel, construction, alcohol are out of GST. GST on movie tickets is based on slabs, with 18% GST for tickets that cost less than Rs. 100 and 28% GST on tickets costing more than Rs.100. The rate on under- construction property booking is 12%. Some industries and products were exempted by the government and remain untaxed under GST, such as dairy products, products of milling industries, fresh vegetables & fruits, meat products, and other groceries and necessities.

Notes:
The Far East Development Fund was established by the Russian government for infrastructure financing. It facilitates investments in the Far East and Baikal regions, providing preferential and long-term financing for prioritized investment projects across industries such as infrastructure, upstream and downstream production of minerals, small and medium enterprises and agriculture. It has reportedly shown interest to bid for Jet Airways (India) Ltd.

Notes:
As of 2020, India is largest importer of Palm Oil. India imported 9.4 million tonnes of palm oil in the marketing year that ended on October 31, including 2.72 million tonnes of refined palm oil. Palm oil makes up nearly two-thirds of India’s total imports of edible oil. It buys palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, which are the world’s top and second biggest producer of the commodity respectively.

Notes:
11 Indian institutions have been placed in the top 100 of ‘Times Higher Education’s (THE) Emerging Economies University Rankings 2020’, released in London. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India’s top-ranked institution, is ranked 16th among the top 100 universities of emerging economies.
It is followed by Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (32nd rank) and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (38th rank). In the total of 533 universities ranked, India has a total of 56 universities in the list.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently approved the elevation of Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG) as Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG(N)).
The institute located in Gujarat is placed under Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MEITY). This step is expected to expand its exposure of research activities.

Notes:
Veteran Indian cricketer Pragyan Ojha recently announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket.
The 33-year-old left-arm spinner played 24 Tests between 2009 and 2013 and grabbed a total of 113 wickets. He last played for India in 2013, against the West Indies in Mumbai. He had also played ODIs and T20 Internationals, representing India.

Notes:
World Bank has released a report titled “Delivering Road Safety in India” during the ongoing ‘Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety’ in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm.
As per the report, India has to invest an estimated amount of additional $109 billion in road safety in the next decade. With the investment, economic benefits equivalent to 3.7 per cent of the GDP can be witnessed annually.