Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2020

Notes:
India-Japan Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) cooperation has won the OECD MAP 2019 award for highest agreement ratio.
The award has been announced for a pair of jurisdictions for transfer pricing cases, which demonstrates the commitment of India to provide tax certainty and an effective dispute resolution mechanism for the Japanese companies.

Notes:
India’s first moss garden has been developed at Khurpatal, Nainital district, Uttarakhand. It was inaugurated by renowned water conservation activist Rajendra Singh.
The moss garden was approved under the CAMPA scheme by the Uttarakhand Forest Department, last year. It aims to conserve various species of moss and other bryophytes. Two of the moss species found here- Hyophila involuta (Cement Moss) and Brachythecium Buchanani are in IUCN red list.

Notes:
Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit has recently promulgated an ordinance to ban online gaming in the State.
The State government has submitted a proposal to the Governor to promulgate ordinance by amending several related acts. It provides for fine of Rs 5000 and an imprisonment for 6 months, for those found to be engaged in the act. Persons who are betting in cyber space can also be banned.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually participated in the convocation ceremony of the Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gujarat.
He inaugurated five state-of-the-art facilities including ‘India-h2o’, an Indo-EU bilateral project for industrial waste and desalination, under Horizon 2020 initiative. He also said that the country has set a target of reducing its carbon footprint by 30 to 35 per cent.

Notes:
A MoU was signed between the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and leading oil & gas marketing companies and technology providers to set up Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) plants across India.
The CBG plants are to be set up under the Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) initiative. The Union Government has set a target to set up 5000 CBG plants by 2023-24 with production target of 15 MMT.

Notes:
India has recently announced the launch of Phase-IV of the High Impact Community Development Projects in Afghanistan.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar announced this during the 2020 Afghanistan Conference organized in Geneva, co-hosted by the United Nations, the Government of Afghanistan, and the Government of Finland. India would undertake over 100 projects worth 80 million dollars in Afghanistan.

Notes:
‘International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women’ is observed every year on November 25, led by the United Nations General Assembly.
This year, the theme for the International Day is “Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!”, to focus on bridging the funding gaps to serve the survivors of violence. UN observed that violence against women and girls has increased during the pandemic, terming it ‘Shadow Pandemic’.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched ‘Har Ghar Nal Yojana’ in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The scheme aims to provide piped water supply to over 4.1 million people in the two districts of Sonbhadra and Mirzapur.
The outlay of the project is Rs 5,555 crore. The scheme will also benefit over 3,000 villages to access piped water supply.

Notes:
India and Finland recently signed an MoU for developing cooperation in the field of Environment protection and biodiversity conservation.
The MoU also seeks to exchange best practices in areas like prevention of air and water pollution, waste management, and promotion of circular economy. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar signed the MoU virtually with his Finnish counterpart.

Notes:
The promoter of the Sputnik V vaccine candidate – Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has entered into an agreement with Hyderabad based company named “Hetero Biopharma”.
Under the agreement, the Sputnik V vaccine candidate would be produced in India from beginning of 2021. The Sputnik V vaccine is recently claimed to have reached an efficiency of 91.4% in Phase 3 trials.