Current Affairs - 2019-20

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The Vishakhapatnam railway station in Andhra Pradesh has been adjudged as the cleanest railway station among the 75 busiest stations in the country in category A1, followed by Secunderabad, Jammu Tawi, Vijayawada and Anand Vihar railway stations. This was revealed by Third Party Audit Report on Station Cleanliness i.e. released by Ministry of Railway in New Delhi on May 17, 2017. The railway stations are categorised — A1, A, B, C, D, E and F — based on their annual passenger revenue by the ministry. Among the ‘A’ category stations, Beas railway station in Punjab was rated the cleanest station followed by Khammam station in Telangana and Ahmednagar station in Maharashtra. Zone wise South-East Central railway has been ranked first followed by East Coast railway and Central Railway. The survey was carried out by the Quality Council of India (QCI) and was based on criteria such as toilets on platforms, management of tracks and dustbins.

Notes:
Aleksandar Vucic, the chairman of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), has been sworn-in as the new President of Serbia on May 31, 2017 and succeeded Tomislav Nikolic. He won the 2017 Serbian Presidential election by 55% of votes on April 2017. Prior to this post, Vucic was the Prime Minister of Serbia.

Notes:
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has constituted a 2-member monitoring committee to oversee the Yamuna rejuvenation project. The committee, comprising former Delhi Chief Secretary Shailaja Chandra and retired NGT expert member Bikram Singh Sajwan, has been directed to submit the first action plan by September 2018 and report by December 2018. The green panel also directed the Haryana and Uttar Pradesh governments to assist the committee on the project. The Tribunal directed the authorities to take strict action against encroachments on the Yamuna floodplains. It also directed the Delhi Development Authority and the Delhi Jal Board to hold a meeting on July 30 for identifying land for setting up of a sewage treatment plant on a drain which falls under phase-II of the Yamuna cleaning programme. The current chairperson of the NGT is Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, retired Supreme Court Judge.

Notes:
Recently, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, has proposed to develop a dedicated 200 acre industrial park for the manufacture of medical devices in his state. The Park will be having a Common Manufacturing Facility Centre to act as a Hub for SME Sector to enable it to flourish as a Cluster. Focus will be on creating an Eco System for High End Medical Device Manufacturing and Import Substitution with an eye for Export Market. Though the Medical Device Park has been proposed to be set up in three states viz. Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, but Andhra Pradesh has become the first to implement the programme. The proposed medical devices park will have ‘Centre of Excellence’ in which research for medical device will be conducted.

Notes:
Gujarat’s Dahej is all set to get India’s first roll on-roll off (Ro-Ro) vessel passenger ferry services around April 2017. The Rs 550 crore projects being executed by the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB), and is expected to bring down travel time between Saurashtra regions in Gujarat with its Southern parts significantly. From Ghoga in Saurashtra to Dahej in South Gujarat takes around 10-12 hours for trucks and buses, and even by cars it is not less than 6-8 hours. Once the Ro-Ro ferry service commences, this time would be dramatically shortened to one and a half hours. Roll-on/roll-off (RORO or ro-ro) ships are vessels designed to carry wheeled cargo, such as cars, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, trailers, and railroad cars that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels or using a platform vehicle, such as a self-propelled modular transporter. This is in contrast to lift-on/lift-off (Lolo) vessels, which use a crane to load and unload cargo. Roll-on/Roll-off or ‘Ro-Ro’ services for freight transport have being proposed to be introduced at five places – Kolkata, Sahibganj, Varanasi, Patna and Bhagalpur besides setting up small terminals at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore.

Notes:
National Accountability Bureau is Pakistan’s corruption watchdog. Its an autonomous and constitutional body of that country responsible to build efforts against corruption and prepare critical national economic intelligence assessments against economic terrorism to Pakistan government. It has been frequently in news in context with corruption charges on Nawaj Sharif. It recently also ordered the freezing of properties and assets of finance minister Ishaq Dar, who is also facing a reference in the Accountability Court for possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

Notes:
Recently, on 12 December 2017, two years after the historic Paris Climate Change Agreement was adopted, Heads of State, governments, civil society and the private sector met at Paris to drive forward climate action. The summit was named “One Planet Summit”. The One Planet Summit is designed to launch new initiatives that assist in ramping up financial flows to developing nations as they implement their climate action plans under the Agreement. The three aims of the One Planet Summit are:

• Take tangible and collective action
• Innovate
• Support one another

Notes:
Government has recently announced the setting up of National Nutrition Mission which would benefit nearly 10 crore people in the country. It aims to cover all the States and districts in the country i.e. 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20. It aims to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anemia and low birth weight babies. It would strive to achieve reduction in Stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022). The mission will be funded by Government Budgetary Support (50%) and 50% by IBRD or other MDB. The support ratio would be 60:40 between Centre and States/UTs, 90:10 for NER and Himalayan States, and 100% for UTs without legislature.

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Recently, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in its environment report entitled, “Solid approach to waste: how five cities are beating pollution” has recognised 5 cities in the world for their excellent waste management system. These include Osaka in Japan, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Penang in Malaysia and Cajica in Colombia and Alappuzha in India.

Notes:
Recently, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has revised the standards on petrol and diesel as per Bharat Stage (BS) VI fuel norms from the earlier BS IV emission norms. As per new BS VI emission norms, the amount of Sulphur in both petrol and diesel in BS-VI fuel is limited to a maximum of 10 parts per million (PPM). Government has decided to implement BS VI emission norms in Delhi NCR from 1 April 2018 and in rest of the country from 1 April 2020.