Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
 D P Tripathi (Devisree Prasad Tripathi) was a senior political leader of Nationalist Congress Party and a former Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra. He also served as the General Secretary and chief spokesman of the Nationalist Congress Party. Though he was initially associated with the Congress (INC) party during his early life, he later moved to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). He was also an academic and the author of the journal titled “Think India”.

Notes:
Former Indian Hockey team captain and the team’s defender Sunita Lakra recently announced her retirement from International Hockey citing her knee injuries. In the 2018 Asian Champions Trophy, India bagged the second place under her captaincy. She was also a part of the Indian team that participated in the Rio Olympics, 2016. Though she could not participate in Tokyo Olympics, Sunita will hopefully return to play domestic Hockey after her knee surgery.

Notes:
The 17-year-old ace shooter of India, Saurabh Chaudhary clinched the men’s gold medal in 10-metre air pistol in the 63rd National shooting Championship, being held at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Saurabh had earlier won the gold medal in Youth Olympics and Asian Games. Sarabjot Singh won the silver medal while Shiva Narwal bagged the bronze medal. Saurabh is also qualified to represent India in the Tokyo Olympics in Shooting (Air pistol category).

Notes:
The Manas National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a biosphere reserve is situated in Assam. Recently a one-horned rhinoceros of the national park named R3A gave birth to its calf. The R3A was also born in the same park to the elder rhino ‘Laisri’ in 2013.
The One-horned rhinoceros or the Indian rhinoceros is an endangered species and is listed as ‘Vulnerable’ in the IUCN Red list of threatened species. At present, the national park is home to 42 rhinos.

Notes:
Tamil Nadu based leading Public sector bank, Indian Bank recently signed an MoU with the Women Entrepreneurs Welfare Association (WEWA), Tamil Nadu. By this partnership, Indian bank will provide financial assistance and training to the members of the association for starting their business.
The entrepreneurs will also be provided credit facilities with discounted rates. The members of WEWA will be trained in INDSETIs (Indian Bank Self-Employment Training Institutes) of Indian Bank society.

Notes:
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is set to launch its new block-chain based platform, which is named as ‘Vajra’. The new payment platform will be based on ‘Distributed Ledger Technology’ (DLT).
The platform is expected to make the payments secure and the transactions would be stored in a decentralised database. The bank nodes after receiving the requests from the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will process them on the Vajra platform.

Notes:
According to the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) Statement on Climate of India During 2019 report, the number of cyclones in the Arabian Sea was 400% higher than normal frequency because five out of eight cyclones affected Arabian Sea. These give cyclones were Vayu, Hikka, Kyarr, Maha and Pavan. This after the sea on India’s west coast normally undergoes only one cyclone annually — read a 400% rise. (India normally has five cyclones in total every year.) However, the Bay of Bengal — usually the more cyclone-prone coast of India — was relatively subdued in 2019 with three (Pabuk, Fani, Bulbul) instead of four cyclones that occur there annually on an average.

Notes:
For the first time in the state, the Kerala State Youth Commission has announced that it would conduct a state-level Adalat for LGBT community. The programme would be held at the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram.
The main objective of the Adalat is to encourage the transgender community to come out with their grievances and to make arrangements for redressal of the issues. The Government of Kerala had introduced a Transgender policy in 2015 and it has a dedicated ‘Transgender Cell’ working under the state’s Social Justice Department.

Notes:
The Union External Affairs Minister S. Jai Shankar recently launched the book titled ‘PAX SINICA: Implications for the Indian Dawn’ authored by Dr. Samir Saran. The book was co-authored by Akhil Deo. The book highlights the steps of China during the presidency of Xi Jinping and the key policy measures of China.
Dr Samir Saran is the President of the renowned Asian think tank, Observer Research Foundation. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s South Asia advisory board.

Notes:
As a part of the major Udhampur- Srinagar-Baramulla rail link project, which would connect the Kashmir valley with the Indian Railway network, a new railway bridge is to be constructed connecting Bakkal and Kauri. This bridge in the newly formed Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir will be the world’s highest railway bridge. The project is expected to be completed by December 2021.
The proposed bridge will be 1.315 km long and will be built 359 m above the river bed. Presently, the highest railway bridge in the world is the Beipan river Shuibai railway bridge of China.