Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The ninth Nation’s Cup Boxing Tournament was held in the city of Sombor, Serbia. India finished the tournament with an impressive haul of six medals, including four silver and two bronze.
Monika, Ritu Grewal, M Meena Kumari and Bhagyabati won silver medals for India, under the categories of 48 kg, 51 kg, 54 kg and 75 kg respectively. Though all the four Indians were qualified for and contested the final bout for gold, they settled for silver medals. Other Indian boxers, Pavitra and Basumatary Pwilao won a bronze medal each.

Notes:
The US-based leading certification agency, Green Business Certification Inc. recently released the list of India’s top 10 States for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Maharashtra has been ranked at the top spot among the states, in the global green building rating system. The building which obtained the rating has low carbon emissions.
The system ranks Indian states in terms of cumulative gross square meters (GSM) of space, certified by the LEED system. Maharashtra has attained over one crore GSM development and retains its first position for the second year, followed by Karnataka, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

Notes:
The Head of the IT Industry at the World Economic Forum, Eric White announced that C. Vijayakumar, the President & CEO of HCL Technologies, would be the chairman of the World Economic Forum’s IT Governors community.
The announcement was made during the 50th annual meeting of WEF in Davos. The IT Governors community of WEF convenes CEOs of the world’s top Information Technology firms for tackling the issues in the field and solving them together. The community, under Vijayakumar will focus on the industry’s concerns including Talent re-skilling, Data governance and Security.

Notes:
The Ministry of Youth affairs and Sports has recently reconstituted the advisory body, All India Council of Sports (AICS) and extended the tenure of the body to three years. V. K. Malhotra remains the President of the Council.
The number of members of the advisory body was reduced to 18 from the original count of 27. The new inductees to the council are wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt, Paralympian Deepa Malik and Mountaineer Bachendri Pal among others. The names of notable sportspersons which were omitted include Bhaichung Bhutia, Sachin Tendulkar, Viswanathan Anand and P Gopichand.

Notes:
Katerina Sakellaropoulou was recently elected as the first female President of Greece. The Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis nominated Katerina Sakellaropoulou as the President. The 63-year-old Sakellaropoulou has worked as a top-level judge in Greece.
The term of the current president of Greece, Prokopis Pavlopoulos is to expire in March, this year. The newly elected President is expected to hold the post for next five years. According to the Greek constitution, the President is the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces and is often consulted on important national affairs.

Notes:
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was recently signed between the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) and National Petroleum Authority (NPA) of Ghana to expand the country’s Liquified petroleum gas (LPG) network.
Indian Oil will provide assistance and share its technical expertise with the Petroleum authorities of the African country to implement the National LPG Promotion Policy of Ghana. The announcement was made by the Ministry of Petroleum and natural gas. Indian Oil is also expected to assist Ghana in areas of infrastructure development for the new LPG Value chain.

Notes:
In the recently released 2019 Democracy Index’s global ranking, India slipped 10 ranks to be placed in 51, this year. The global index is released by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The overall score of India also came down to 6.90 from the earlier score of 7.23. India ranks eighth in the Asia and Australasia region.
The report assesses the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories to prepare the index. According to the report, there are only 22 full democracies, while it places India under “flawed democracies”, which includes countries that hold free and fair elections but have significant weaknesses in democratic aspects.

Notes:
The Team of Maharashtra dominated the Khelo India Youth Games by clinching the overall trophy for the second time with a huge haul of 256 medals, including 78 gold and 77 silver. Last year, Maharashtra topped the table with 228 medals. The trophy was presented to Maharashtra by the Chief Minister of Assam Sarbananda Sonowal in the presence of Union Sports Minister Kiren Rijju, during the closing ceremony.
The second place was bagged by the state of Haryana with 200 medals and Delhi with 122 medals. Khelo India Youth games has been organised in Assam’s Guwahati for the last 13 days.

Notes:
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has recently released a notification that the country has discontinued the production of the ozone-depleting chemical, Hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC)-141 b.
HCFC-141 b is one of the most powerful ozone depleting chemicals after the Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). It is a chemical used in the process of manufacturing production of rigid polyurethane (PU) foams, as a blowing agent. The chemical was not produced in the country and after the notification, the issuance of import license for HCFC-141b is also prohibited from 1st January, 2020.

Notes:
India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) has recently estimated that the gross domestic product (GDP) of India to grow at 5.5 per cent in FY21. The ratings agency also hoped that the growth would improve in 2021 but the country’s economy is stuck in a low consumption-low investment phase.
It observed that the shortfall in the tax plus non-tax revenue of the country will make the fiscal deficit slip to 3.6 % of GDP, against the budget target of 3.3 per cent. Even after accounting for the surplus transferred to the government by the RBI, the fiscal deficit target could not be possibly achieved, as per Ind-Ra.