Current Affairs Quiz: February 22, 2020

Notes:
Pandemic Bonds were launched by World Bank under its Pandemic Emergency Financing umbrella in 2017 in response to the 2013 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. However, their efficacy has always been under fire. The bonds issued by the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), offer investors high coupons in return for the risk of having to forgo some or all their money in the event of pandemic outbreaks of a number of infectious diseases.

Notes:
Shanidar Cave is located in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq in Zagros Mountains. Shanidar Cave was excavated in the 1950s, when archaeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered partial remains of ten Neanderthal men, women and children. Some were clustered together, with clumps of ancient pollen surrounding one of the skeletons. Solecki claimed this showed Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers. The ‘flower burial’ captured the public imagination, and prompted a reappraisal of a species that — prior to Shanidar Cave — was thought to have been dumb and animalistic.

Notes:
Cobalt is a critical element for not only cell phones but also electric vehicles that might be good for the environment. Roughly 60% of mined cobalt is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Its continued availability is becoming an issue due to political environment of DRC.

Notes:
Telecom companies in India have reduced from nine in 2016 to four in 2020, including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), the government-owned telecom company. This has happened even as consumption of mobile services rose 88% from 366 minutes per user per month to 691 while data consumption grew from less than 0.5 gigabytes (GB) to nearly 11 GB between 2016 and 2019, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Notes:
As of 2020, India is largest importer of Palm Oil. India imported 9.4 million tonnes of palm oil in the marketing year that ended on October 31, including 2.72 million tonnes of refined palm oil. Palm oil makes up nearly two-thirds of India’s total imports of edible oil. It buys palm oil mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, which are the world’s top and second biggest producer of the commodity respectively.