Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The international sports event for the members of the Common wealth, the Commonwealth Games of 2022 will be conducted in the city of Birmingham, England. England plays host to the event for the third time. The prestigious event is scheduled to take place between July 27 and August 7, 2020.
Recently, Commonwealth Games India (CGI) submitted its proposal to host a Commonwealth shooting event and an archery event in India during 2022. But the federation is yet to announce that if the medals won in the proposed Shooting Championship will be added to the final CWG tally of the countries.

Notes:
According to the recent study published in ‘Astrophysical Journal’, Scientists have discovered thirteen huge black holes in some dwarf galaxies. The galaxies are found to be located several light years from the earth and in half of the galaxies, the black holes are not in the centre of the galaxies.
The high-resolution images of the galaxies with black holes were captured using the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory. It is a radio telescope observatory, which is situated in New Mexico, U.S.A. VLA was set up by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani recently announced that a new centre for fostering innovation among the children would be set up in the state of Gujarat. It is named as the Vikram Sarabhai Children Innovation Centre.
The announcement was made during the Children Innovation Festival held at Gandhinagar, Gujarat. This festival was organised by the Gujarat University’s start up council, GUSEC in association with UNICEF. During the event, a letter of intent was also exchanged between the Gujarat University and UNICEF.

Notes:
Niti Aayog and Indian Railways have recently released a discussion paper for running 150 trains on 100 routes by private operators. The plan envisages a total investment of Rs. 22500 crore. The discussion paper titled ‘Private Participation: Passenger Trains’ has identified 100 routes, including Mumbai Central-New Delhi, New Delhi- Patna, Allahabad-Pune and Dadar-Vadodara.

Notes:
India’s cabinet has recently (January, 2020) approved the mobility pact with France that would allow skilled workers, students and academics from the two countries to live and work in each others’ countries. The agreement was signed between India and France during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to India in 2018. France, however, is yet to ratify the pact, awaiting the French parliament’s consent.

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:
The apex body of India’s pulses and grains industry and trade, India Pulses and Grains Association (IPGA) will organise the 5th edition of the biennial global pulses conference, called ‘The Pulses Conclave 2020’ from February 12 to 14, 2020 at Lonavala, Pune in Maharashtra.The Association is based at Mumbai.
More than a thousand participants across the world are expected to attend the conference. This would help the people from pulses-producing nation to explore business opportunities in the field.

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:
The Prime Minister of India recently attended the 150th celebration of the historic Kolkata Port Trust. During the event, he announced that Kolkata Port Trust would be renamed to ‘Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Port’.
The Prime Minister also released a Commemorative Stamp to mark 150 years of the Kolkata port trust. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was the founder of Bharathiya Jana Sangh, following which the Bharathiya Janata Party was formed.

Notes:
The Kempegowda International Airport of Bengaluru is the first Indian airport to be with the capability of recovering disabled aircraft. Recently the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) has partnered with the leading aircraft equipment supplier KUNZ GmbH to manufacture and deploy Disabled Aircraft Recovery Equipment (DARE) for the Bengaluru Airport.
By this partnership, KUNZ GmbH will establish a centre for disabled aircraft recovery training in association with BIAL.