Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The 18-year-old student from a tribal family of Telengana and the famous mountain climber Malavath Poorna recently scaled the highest mountain peak of Antartica, Mt. Vinson Massif. By conquering this 4987 m high peak, Poorna became the first and youngest tribal woman in the world to climb six tallest mountain peaks across six continents. She is now preparing for her next venture of scaling North America’s highest mountain peak, Mt. Denali.

Notes:
The ‘Antarrashtriya Yoga Diwas Media Samman’ award was instituted in June 2019, to recognise the contribution of media in spreading Yoga. The first edition of the award is to be conferred to 30 media houses, by the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar. The awards will be presented in three categories, namely ‘Best Media Coverage of Yoga in Newspapers’, ‘Best Media Coverage of Yoga in Television’ and ‘Best Media Coverage of Yoga in Radio’.

Notes:
E-Commerce Giant Amazon recently partnered with the leading retailer, Future Group. By this partnership the Future Group would be allowed to access the online platform of Amazon and Amazon India will be designated as the authorised online store of the Future Retail Ltd (FRL) stores.
This agreement would also deepen the market presence of Amazon in India, while increasing the reach of the Future Group’s products. Big Bazaar is a famous subsidiary of Future Group.

Notes:
Retired Indian Police Service Officer and Former Director General of CRPF, Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar was recently appointed as the advisor to the Lieutenant Governor of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Rajiv Rai retired from the Central Reserve Police Force in December 2019.He will serve as the third advisor to the Lieutenant Governor, Girish Chandra Murmu. The other two advisors are retired IAS officer K K Sharma and retired IPS Officer Farooq Khan.

Notes:
India’s Central bank, the Reserve Bank of India recently released various stipulations for the Urban Cooperative Banks (UCB). A UCB shall be placed in the Supervisory Action Framework upon certain conditions announced by the RBI, which include Net NPA exceeding 6% and CRAR ratio falling below 9%. Depending on the financial stress, the lending powers of the UCBs may also be cut short.
The Reserve Bank has made this announcement at the backdrop of the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank scam. The new norms would provide faster resolution to the bad assets of UCBs.

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 country’s largest public sector bank, State Bank of India has announced a ‘residential builder finance with buyer guarantee’ (RBBG) scheme. It aims at giving a push to residential sales and improve homebuyers’ confidence. Under this scheme, SBI will issue a guarantee for completion of select residential projects to customers who have availed home loans from it. The scheme will focus on affordable housing projects priced up to 2.50 crore rupee in 10 cities initially.

Notes:
MILAN is a multilateral naval exercise, which is scheduled to be held at Vishakhapatnam in March 2020. The event was previously planned at Andaman and Nicobar Islands and then has been changed to Vishakhapatnam as navies from many countries are participating in the event.
Nearly 30 international navies have confirmed their participation in the event. The theme of the exercise is “Synergy Across the Seas”. This event would help the navies to have professional discussions and learn the best practices in the naval arena across the world.

Notes:
The Global political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group recently released the list of ‘Top Risks 2020’ ranking the biggest geo-political risks of the world. In the list, India under the Modi Government is placed as the 5th biggest risk. Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan of Eurasia name it as ‘India gets Modi-fied’
The group releases the ‘Top Risks’ list every year in the month of January. This year, the top three risks in the list are unstable US domestic politics under President Donald Trump, Separation of US and China in the technology sphere, and unfriendly US-China relations.

Notes:
In the recently held presidential election of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected as the country’s President. With more than 57% of the votes, Tsai won her second presidential term. Her victory in the election has gained significance as she vowed to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan amidst of the threats posed by China.
China has announced that Taiwan must be united with China at any cost and it would use power if necessary. There were several protests across the country against China’s Authoritarian behaviour.