Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The edition of ‘Crime in India’ statistics for the year 2018 was released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). As per the report Uttar Pradesh is the worst place for women’s security with the most crimes against women at 59445.
Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of rape cases in the year and West Bengal registered the highest number of acid attack cases. The report also said that Crime in India has increased by 1.3% in 2018 compared to that of 2017. The overall number of crime against women has also steadily increased in the last 3 years.

Notes:
Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Textiles, Smriti Irani recently launched a scheme named ‘Yashaswini’ from Goa. It is a women empowerment scheme, which aims at supporting women Self Help Groups (SHGs) with interest free loans up to ₹5 lakh. The scheme will also help them to get guidance from experts.
During the event, the Minister also launched Swasthya Sakhi Project and a mobile breast cancer screening initiative, which will be carried out by Anganwadi workers to screen all women of Goa for breast cancer.

Notes:
China recently added a significant bullet train to its Fuxing series of bullet trains. The recently added train is capable to ply with a speed up to 350 kilometres per hour. Another great feature of the train is it could run without a driver for operating the train.
The new train would connect the cities of Beijing and Zhangjiakou and is expected to be deployed during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Each seat of the train is furnished with a touch screen and a wireless charging port. The train also features 5G connectivity and removable seats to assist Paralympians.

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.

Notes:
As per the recent notification of the Securities Market Regulator SEBI, the deadline to separate roles of chairman and MD in top 500 listed companies by market capitalisation is deferred by two more years to April 2022. Earlier, the top 500 companies were mandated to perform the separation by April 2020.
The proposal of splitting the roles of Chairman and MD was first made by the SEBI’s Committee on Corporate Governance headed by Uday Kotak.

Notes:
Senior IPS Officer A.P. Maheshwari has been appointed as the new Director General of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. The previous DG of CRPF, Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar retired last month and ITBP Director General S.S. Deswal was given the additional charge in CRPF.
Maheshwari is a 1984-batch IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, who is the Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Union Home Ministry at present, has been appointed as the new Director General up to 28 February, 2021.

Notes:
The first mission of the year of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is the communication satellite GSAT-30. It is scheduled for launch on January 17,2020 aboard the Ariane-5 launch vehicle (VA 251) from French Guiana.
The satellite will provide communication services from Geostationary orbit and is expected to serve as the replacement satellite to INSAT- 4 A with extended coverage. GSAT-30 would be beneficial in several ways including supporting VSAT networks, Cellular connectivity and DTH-Television services.

Notes:
Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari launched the ‘Integrated Road Accident Database (IRAD)’ during the road safety stakeholders’ meet. IRAD is a central accident database management system, to analyse the causes of road accidents and create solutions to reduce them.
The database was developed by the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) with the project cost of Rs. 258 Crores. This initiative is supported by the World Bank and it is implemented through the National Informatics Centre.

Notes:
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is an agency, which functions under the Ministry of Earth Sciences. It is responsible for various functions including meteorological observations, communications, forecasting and weather services.
Recently, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) celebrated its 145th foundation day. The Director General of IMD, also called as the cyclone man, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra has been elected as Member of Executive Council of the World Meteorological Organisation for 2019-2023.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray launched the first girder for the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) mega project, along with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority officials.
The project connects Mumbai to the adjacent Raigad district and is expected to be made operational by 2022. The project entails a cost of nearly ₹18,000 crore and it is financed by a loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The foundation stone for the project was laid by Narendra Modi in 2016.