Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
International Yoga Fest is organized as a curtain raiser for International Day of Yoga (IDY) 2018. The event is organized by Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga (MDNIY).

Notes:
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the North East Industrial Development Scheme (NEIDS), 2017 with financial outlay of Rs.3000 crores upto March, 2020. Government will provide necessary allocations for remaining period of scheme after assessment before March 2020. NEIDS is a combination of the incentives covered under the earlier two schemes with a much larger outlay. In order to promote employment in the North East States, Government is incentivising primarily the MSME Sector through this scheme and is also providing specific incentive through it to generate employment. The newly introduced scheme will promote industrialization in the States of the North Eastern Region and will boost employment and income generation. All eligible industrial units which are getting benefits of one or more components of other schemes of the government will also be considered for benefits of other components of this scheme. The overall cap for benefits under all components of incentives will be of Rs 200 crores per unit.

Notes:
The 5/20 rule is a norm of the Indian Aviation Ministry according to which under which national carriers are required to have five years of operational experience and a fleet of minimum 20 aircraft to fly overseas. Recently, the Cabinet gave its approval for partial abolition of the 5/20 rule, which will enable new carriers like Vistara and Air Asia to start international operations sooner. The government has decided to scrap a requirement that mandated airlines to have five years of domestic operations to be eligible to fly overseas. However, an airline will have to allocate 20 aircraft or 20% of their total fleet of aircraft, whichever is higher, to the domestic sector if they wish to fly overseas. So in place of 5/20 rule, the new proposed options are like 0/10 and 0/20.

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The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has started its Twitter Seva. The Twitter Handle is ‘DARPGSEVA’. The Twitter Seva aims to address issues relating to the DARPG like Public Grievances and Administrative Reforms etc. The Twitter Seva will enable the DARPG to reach out to the common public and various stakeholders for facilitating redress of grievances and other issues of importance relating to the department.

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss nonprofit foundation. World Economic Forum meeting for the year 2016 was held at Davos, Switzerland. The theme for WEF-2016 meet was Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution

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By convention, the Secretary General, Lok Sabha or the Secretary General, Rajya Sabha is appointed as the Returning Officer, by rotation. Two other senior officers of the Lok Sabha/ Rajya Sabha Secretariat and the Secretaries and one more senior officer of Legislative Assemblies of all States including NCT of Delhi and Union Territory of Puducherry, are also appointed as the Assistant Returning Officers. The Election Commission of India makes such appointments. For the Presidential Election, 2017 the Secretary General Lok Sabha was the Returning Officer.

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NASA has selected two missions to further explore past targets. First is the Mission “Dragonfly” to explore the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Second is the Mission Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) to explore the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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Section 8B of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 empowers the Central Government to impose Safeguard Duly on goods which enter in increased quantities and cause or threaten to cause serious injury to domestic industry producing like or directly competitive goods.

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As per the India State of Forest Report 2017, Arunachal Pradesh has the maximum carbon stock of 994.5 million tonnes followed by Madhya Pradesh (695.5 million tonnes), Chhattisgarh (560.9 million tonnes) and Maharashtra (493 million tonnes).

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Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation project is an ambitious project of Telangana state government to provide water to farmers by December 2017.