Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
B.N. Mohapatra, an officer of Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS) of 1980 batch, has been appointed the new Financial Commissioner (FC) of Indian Railways. Prior to this posting, he served as Additional Member (Finance) since November 2016,

Notes:
Nirupama Rao, the former Indian Ambassador to US, has been appointed as a public policy fellow to a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) where she will work on a project on the Sino-India ties. Rao will be affiliated with the Wilson Centre’s Asia program and spend 3 months in residence at the Wilson Centre from June 2017, which is a key non-partisan policy forum for tackling global issues. The WWICS is the living, national memorial to President Wilson, created by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington DC. The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact.

Notes:
Parvathamma Rajkumar (77), Kannada film producer and the wife of the legendary Kannada superstar Dr Rajkumar, has passed away in Bangalore, Karnataka on May 31, 2017. She was the first woman producer, distributor, exhibitor who only marketed Kannada films. She produced 87 films under her banner Vajreshwari Combines — one of the oldest and most successful banners in Kannada film — and Poornima Enterprises.

Notes:
Judicial corporal punishment, such as whipping or caning, has disappeared from most European countries. However, it remains lawful in parts of Africa, Asia, the Anglophone Caribbean, and indigenous communities in South America.
Corporal punishment of children is legally banned in most countries in Europe and Central Asia. The latest countries to prohibit it are France (July 2019) and Kosovo (June 2019).
Corporal punishment is explicitly prohibited by several international conventions on human rights, including the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations’ “Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners”.

Notes:
The percentage difference in expenditure on housing and transport = (15 – 5) % = 10%
The required difference

Hence option [B] is the right answer.

Notes:
Sahel region is an ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between Sahara Desert to the north and Sudanian Savanna to the south. It stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. 12 African countries fall in this region including parts of (from west to east) Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea.

Notes:
NTPC Ltd. is on course to implementing the country's largest 1 GW solar park at Kadiri in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. Phase-I of the project has been completed by Tata Solar (100 MW), Sterling and Wilson (50 MW), BHEL (50MW) and Lanco (50 MW) and is generating power upto 250 MW. The balance 750 MW is expected to be completed over the course next fiscal by year 2018.

Notes:
First option is the correct answer.

Notes:
Petroleum coke, or pet coke, is a byproduct of oil refining. It is a key input material for cement producers and is a highly polluting fuel. The Supreme Court requested all states and union territories to move forward towards a blanket ban on the use of pet coke. Pet coke is a dirtier alternative to coal. The use of pet coke has come under scrutiny due to rising pollution levels in major cities. Pet coke is most widely used in the cement industry. It is also used as a primary material for electrodes used in electric steel furnaces for smelting and refining steel scrap.
The majority of pet coke is produced in the US but is transported to India and China. In 2016, the US sent more than 8 million metric tons of pet coke to India.

Notes:
On 20 July 2015, the United Nation Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2231 (2015) endorsing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The full implementation of Resolution 2231 (2015) provides for the termination of the provisions of previous Security Council resolutions on the Iranian nuclear issue and establishes specific restrictions that apply to all States without exception.