Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2020

Notes:
Lakhs of women gathered in the Thiruvananthapuram city of Kerala to perform the annual Attukal Pongala festival at Attukal Devi temple. This cultural festival is participated by only women.
Amid fear of coronavirus outbreak after six positive cases in the state, many devotees participated in the festival. It is reported that more than 2.6 million people participated in the festival. The temple which is also called Sabarimala of women, had made the Guinness World Record for the largest annual gathering of women in a single function.

Notes:
As per the recent announcement of the International Cricket Council, Indian bowler Poonam Yadav is the only Indian player to feature in the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup team of the tournament.
Poonam Yadav secured ten wickets in the tournament, including four wickets in the opening match of the tournament against the host Australia. Another Teen-aged Indian player Shafali Verma has been selected as the 12th member of the team. She scored 163 runs in the tournament and reached the top spot in ICC T20 rankings.

Notes:
Andhra Pradesh government has recently launched a mobile application which aims at curbing the malpractices occurring during the election.
Through the application, any person can file complaints about the corruption or malpractices during the campaign in the upcoming civil polls. With the photos, audio or video files sent by the people, suitable actions will be taken by the government.

Notes:
The traditional festival called ‘Fagli’ has been recently celebrated in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The annual festival is being celebrated for several years to observe the “victory of good over evil”. This festival is also celebrated to mark the end of winter or the beginning of spring.
The people of the state were dressed in traditional attire with masks on their faces and followed the traditional celebrations associated with the festival. This festival will continue for the next few days in the district.

Notes:
The Largest lender of India, State Bank of India (SBI) recently announced that the penalty charges for non-maintenance of average monthly balance (AMB) for all its savings bank accounts are to be waived.
At present, the customers shall have to maintain average monthly balance of ₹3000, ₹2000 and ₹1000 in metro, semi urban and rural areas respectively. The Bank levies a penalty of ₹5 to ₹15 plus taxes when average monthly balance is not maintained. Now the penalty has been waived for all its 44.51 Crore savings bank account holders. The bank also lowered interest rate on all SB accounts to 3%.

Notes:
Veteran Indian cueist Pankaj Advani clinched the National 6-Red Snooker Championship with a 7-3 win over Ishpreet Singh. It is the 34th national title overall for Advani.
The National 6-Red Snooker Championship was held at Ahmedabad, Gujarat. In the summit clash, Pankaj trailed 1-3 in the beginning but defeated the young cueist Ishpreet Singh of Maharashtra to claim his 34th title.

Notes:
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced that it will provide USD 200 to companies which manufacture and distribute medicines and other things required to combat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
The financial assistance will be made available through ADB’s Supply Chain Finance Program and provided to selected companies. This support is to provide additional working capital to such manufacturing companies for their requirements to address the virus outbreak.

Notes:
The Necurs is a botnet and is one of the largest networks in the spam-mail threat system. It has infected more than nine million computers worldwide. Botnet means a computer network which is infected with malware, through which cyber criminals gain access to computers.
It was seen in news recently as Microsoft and its partners across 35 countries took legal and technical steps to disrupt Necurs botnet.

Notes:
The state government of Haryana has declared the contagious coronavirus infection an epidemic.
As many as 270 isolation wards with 1200 beds have been set up in government and private hospitals to deal with any contingency related to the outbreak. The state government has also issued several regulations under ‘The Haryana Epidemic Disease, COVID-19 Regulations, 2020’, to control the spread of the virus.

Notes:
‘Hola Mohalla’ is a festival celebrated annually in Punjab’s Anandpur Sahib by the people from the Sikh community.
The festival is usually celebrated on the second day of lunar month of Chet, which will follow the day of Holi festival. This year, the ‘Hola Mohalla’ festival fell on March 10. It is celebrated to symbolise martial bravery and fighting prowess with music.