Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recently released a report titled ‘Statement on Climate of India During 2019’. According to the report, almost 1560 people died in 2019 due to unusual weather events including heavy rain and floods, heat wave, lightning and thunderstorm.
With nearly 650 deaths, Bihar had the highest number of people who died due to extremities in weather. The report also cited that five of the eight cyclones that hit India, were on the Arabian Sea, which was against the normal count of 1 cyclone on the west.

Notes:
To commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, a ten-day art exhibition was recently inaugurated in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. The exhibition was named as ‘Gandhi @ 150 Art Exhibition’
The Indian High Commission in Bangladesh organised the exhibition in association with the national cultural centre of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. The art products of the Bangladesh artists created during the art camp and photographs of Gandhi were exhibited in the event.

Notes:
Supreme Court recently asked the Centre to consider the deployment of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to guard the various courts in India — taking over the job of securing the courts from the local police forces.

Notes:
In first week of January, 2020 the government has released the first advance estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2019-20. The economy will grow at 5% this year, a massive downgrade from the 7% projected by the Economic Survey last year and much lower than the 6.8% growth in the previous year.

Notes:
On January 8, 2020, Union Cabinet has approved promulgation of Mineral Laws (Amendment) Ordinance 2020. The Ordinance will amend Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation ) Act 1957 and Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act 2015. The Ordinance will ease rules for auctioning of coal mines and to open up to all sectors. Government has also done away with end-use restrictions of the coal mining blocks.

Notes:
India has Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties with 42 countries and is signatory to various International Conventions for cooperation in criminal matters. The Home Ministry is the designated central authority for this. The recently revised guidelines have incorporated various legal and technological developments in recent years and aim to make documentation more compliant with international requirements. The revised guidelines provide step-by-step guidance to the investigation agencies for drafting and processing letters rogatory or mutual legal assistance requests and service of summons, notices and other judicial documents. The guidelines have taken into account the concerns raised by various courts for prompt and timely responses in service of documents to person residing abroad. These revised guidelines have provision for service of documents to authorities of foreign country preferably within ten days of receipt of request in respect of offences committed against women and children.

Notes:
India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant is being manufactured at the Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in Cochin. The manufacturing of the carrier is currently under the third phase and it is expected to be commissioned by early 2021.
The Directorate of Naval Design of the Indian Navy has created the basic design of the indigenous aircraft carrier. The plan was subsequently developed by the Cochin Shipyard Limited. The 40000-tonne aircraft with the MiG-29K aircraft fleet will be fully operational by 2022.

Notes:
The World Future Energy Summit recently began in Abu Dhabi. The summit is the largest future energy and sustainability event of the Middle East Region, which is held annually at the National Exhibition Centre of Abu Dhabi.
The theme for the 2020 edition of the summit is “Rethinking Global Consumption, Production, and Investment”. The event is to be held for four days and several thousand participants and exhibitors from across the world are expected to take part in it. The Climate Innovations Exchange and the Future Sustainability Summit are also organised along with this event.

Notes:
Kaspersky Labs, an international cyber-security and anti-virus provider recently made an announcement about a trojan application or a malware named ‘Shopper’. It is said to randomly increase the ratings of some popular e-commerce applications through the social media counts of the victims.
Nearly 14% of the users, who were affected by the malware were Indians while the highest number of people affected were from Russia.

Notes:
The Paytm Payment Bank recently announced that it has issued three million FASTags so far and has become the largest issuer of FASTags in the country. The Common Service Centre (CSC) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Paytm Payment Bank Ltd (PPBL) for selling FASTags.
The users can recharge the FASTags provided by paytm directly from their paytm wallet without having the necessity of using another wallet or application. FASTag is an electronic toll collection system, which is based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.