Current Affairs Quiz: January 17, 2020

Notes:
The Swiss Bank Julius Baer has recently conducted a study on the 28 cities around the world to rank them as expensive in terms of luxury goods and services. According to the study, the bank tracked a basket of luxury goods and the most expensive city for the selected luxury goods is Hong Kong.
Asia is considered to be the most expensive continent as the 2nd, 3rd and 5th ranks were bagged by Shangai, Tokyo and Singapore respectively.

Notes:
The ‘National Highway Excellence Awards’ was instituted by the Union Ministry of Road, Transport and Highway, in the year 2018. It was then changed to an annual version and the second edition of the awards was presented by the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari in New Delhi recently.
The awards are presented to motivate the companies that perform well in the construction, operation, maintenance, tolling phase and road safety. There are seven categories in the award and 12 winners were selected from several shortlisted applicants.

Notes:
Union Culture Minister Prahlad Singh Patel inaugurated the country’s first of its kind special exhibition on ‘Indian Heritage in Digital Space’ and a two-day-long first international heritage symposium in New Delhi.
The exhibition was organised in association with Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and it will be made open to the general public for one month. Digital installations of Indian monuments were showcased, which were created under the Indian Digital Heritage (IDH) initiative of the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

Notes:
The 7th Conference of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA)- India Region, was recently inaugurated in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
The Speaker of Lok Sabha, Om Birla inaugurated the conference at the legislative assembly building in Lucknow. Several parliamentarians and delegates from some foreign countries will participate in the conference, whose theme is ‘Role of Legislators’. The CPA was formed to support the Parliamentarians and their staff to implement good governance measures and values of the Common wealth.

Notes:
Four astronauts, who are from Indian Air Force were selected for the first human space mission of India. Recently it was announced that the four astronauts will undergo a training in Russia for 11 months, which is to be started this month.
After the training phase in Russia, the astronauts will be trained in operation and simulation of the crew and service module in India, which has been designed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Before the first manned mission, ISRO will send a humanoid to space by the end of 2020.