Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The Bangladesh High Court recently ordered the Government to impose a ban on single use plastic in the country’s coastal areas and hotels.
Polythene has been banned in the country since 2002, but the usage of polythene could not be controlled in the country. Hence the court ordered to enforce the ban in a strict manner across the nation within one year from the order.

Notes:
North East Gas Grid project is being implemented by IGGL, a Joint Venture company of five CPSEs (GAIL, IOCL, ONGC, OIL and NRL). The total length of the pipeline is planned to be 1,656 km and will be built at estimated cost of Rs. 9,265 crore (Including interest during construction). It will cover eight states of the North-Eastern region i.e., Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, MeghMizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.

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:
Proposed “Global Electricity Grid” was an idea mooted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The grid plans to leverage solar power generated in one geography to feed the electricity demands of other nations. India is reportedly in talks with World Bank as its technical partner to implement the plan.

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh Government will receive Rs.711 Crores as loan for expansion of the Zero budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) project from the German Development Bank, KFW. A Memorandum of Understanding was recently signed in this regard at Amaravati.
The climate resilient ZBNF project of the state entails a cost Rs. 1015 Crores, of which Rs. 304 Crores would be contributed by the state Government and remaining 711 Crores is raised by way of loan from the German bank.

Notes:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently released the first in-depth review of India’s energy policies in collaboration with the Indian think tank NITI Aayog. The report was launched at the Head Quarters of NITI Aayog, New Delhi.
India was made as the association member of the Paris-based global energy organisation, International Energy Agency (IEA) on March 2017 and this is the first review after that. The report highlighted the growth of renewable energy sector in India, which is nearly 23% of the country’s total installed capacity now.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently released a report titled ‘National Strategy for Financial Inclusion’.
The report suggested that along with formal banking outlets, payment banks, small finance banks, cooperative banks and non-banking units like fair price shops should also practice digital banking. The Regulator directed the banks to increase the outlets in all villages and hilly areas by March 2020. The report also suggested to make the Public Credit Registry (PCR) fully functional by 2022.

Notes:
Veteran Kannada Scholar and writer Chidananda Murthy, also nick named as Chi Mu passed away recently. He has authored several literary works in Kannada and also earned his Doctorate for his research on a Kannada poet.
He played a very crucial role in securing Classical language status to Kannada and in the campaign to protect ancient monuments in Hampi. As per Murthy’s demand, the Hyderabad Karnataka region was recently renamed as Kalyana Karnataka.

Notes:
The Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) has started the ‘TB-free air for every child’ in the state of Kerala. The IAP will train its 2500 paediatricians in the treatment protocol of Tuberculosis and they will maintain a uniform and standardised procedure for the treatment.
The drive will ensure to that all the children of the state will be free of TB, ahead of the target year of 2025. They will also conduct campaigns in schools and explain about malnutrition, ill effects of tobacco usage by adults and cough etiquette.

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.