Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2020

Notes:
Human rights group Amnesty International has announced that it is halting all its ongoing campaign and research work in India.
The Group said that the Government has frozen the bank accounts for speaking out about rights violations. Amnesty had earlier highlighted rights violations that occurred in Jammu and Kashmir and riots in Delhi.

Notes:
Leading Power Sector organisation, NTPC Ltd has recently signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ministry of Power.
Under the MoU, the key targets were fixed for the year 2020-21, which include 340 BU of electricity generation, 15 MMT of coal production under excellent category. It also includes other financial parameters including Capex and Revenue from operations.

Notes:
India’s Sehgal Foundation has emerged as a co-runner up of the USA’s “Citizen Diplomacy Award”. The institution has been selected for its human rights and women empowerment work in rural India.
The Department of States – Bureau of Global Public Affairs of USA, launched the Citizen Diplomacy Award in 2017 to recognize significant contributions by citizens and organizations to deepen USA’s foreign policy around the world.

Notes:
The CEO of NITI Aayog, Amitabh Kant has stated that the organization is fine tuning parameters and indicators used in ranking the 112 Aspirational Districts of India.
The Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) was launched by the national think tank NITI Aayog in January 2018. It aims to transform 112 most backward districts that have shown relatively lesser progress in key social areas.

Notes:
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) is celebrating the sixth anniversary of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U).
To commemorate the event, the Ministry is organising a webinar titled ‘Swachhata Ke 6 Saal, Bemisaal’. The Ministry said that 4,327 urban local bodies have been declared open defecation-free (ODF) so far.

Notes:
Major Tech company Google has planned to pay USD 1 billion to publishers globally for their news over the next three years.
The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai said the new product called Google News Showcase will be launched first in Germany. It will be unveiled in Belgium, India, the Netherlands and other countries. Google will pay publishers to create high-quality content for the news feature.

Notes:
China is expected to send the world’s first mining robot into space by November 2020 through a private Beijing company, Origin Space.
The mining robot named as an ‘Asteroid mining robot’ will be a part of the preliminary assessment to identify and extract valuable resources. The spacecraft NEO-1 will be launched onboard a Chinese Long March rocket.

Notes:
Suresh Prabhu, Member of Parliament from BJP, took part in the 3rd G20 Sherpas’ meeting, which was held in a virtual mode. He encouraged the member nations to enhance renewable energy production.
The G20 meeting is being organised under the Presidency of Saudi Arabia and the Sherpas’ meeting was attended by 30 participants including 20 countries.

Notes:
India has committed to build a 100-bedded cancer hospital and a 22,000-seater cricket stadium in Hulhumale, Maldives.
According to the Indian Embassy in Maldives, this facility is provided under the USD 800 million Line of Credit (LoC) extended to the country, by the Export Import Bank of India (EXIM) Bank in March 2019.

Notes:
The Union Defence Ministry has designated Alpha Design Technologies Limited (ADTL) to upgrade the soviet era Pechora surface to air systems.
As per the Rs.591 crore contract, the firm would be upgrading 16 such systems. Alpha Design Technologies Limited is a Bengaluru based company that is specialized in defence electronics, avionics and space satellite systems.