Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
India is a USD 2 trillion economy with around 1.3 billion people.

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

Hence option [B] is the right answer.

Notes:
Night clouds or noctilucent clouds, made of crystals of water ice, re most commonly observed in the summer months at latitudes between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator. They can only be observed when the Sun is below the horizon. They are the highest clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 kilometres (47 to 53 mi). They are normally too faint to be seen, and are visible only when illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the atmosphere are in the Earth’s shadow. Noctilucent clouds are not fully understood and are a recently discovered meteorological phenomenon; there is no record of their observation before 1885.

Notes:
The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) was a national agency of Government of India, which was responsible to consider or give approval to FDI in India. FIPB is now abolished as announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during 2017-2018 budget speech in Lok Sabha.

Notes:
India’s first and the only Minority Cyber Gram village is Chandauli village in Rajasthan. It was recently praised by the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg during his visit to India. The village has 1300 households with average two persons per family (2600 persons) including non minorities in the village were selected for Digital Literacy. The project has been completed under the digital literacy programme.

Notes:
SERIIUS stands for the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States. It is co-led by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc)—Bangalore, India, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, Colorado, USA. It aims to accelerate the development of solar electric technologies by lowering the cost per watt of photovoltaics (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) and create a strong workforce development program in solar energy science and technology. Supercritical carbon dioxide-based power generation is said to offer an efficient alternative to conventional steam-based power plants and reduce the carbon footprint of power generation significantly.

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The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has unanimously agreed to lift sanctions against Eritrea after nine years. An arms embargo, asset freeze, and travel ban were imposed in 2009 amid claims that Eritrea supported al-Shabab militants in Somalia. However, Eritrea has always denied the accusations. The resolution, drafted by the UK, was backed by the US and its allies. The UN vote comes amid a thaw in relations between Eritrea and its neighbours following years of conflict. Eritrea agreed on a peace deal with Ethiopia in June 2018 following two decades of animosity, while the leader of Eritrea and the UN-backed government in Somalia recently signed a joint cooperation agreement. The leaders of Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia met recently in northern Ethiopia to push for regional economic development. Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, and war broke out later that decade over a border dispute. It is an African nation which is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast.

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The 2018 Women’s World Chess Championships were held in Russia at Khantymansiysk.

Notes:
The 2017 edition of the IAAF World Cross Country Championship was held at Kampala in Uganda on Kololo Independence Grounds. 60 countries had participated in the event. Where will be the 2019 edition of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships held?

Notes:
Spain National Football team was given the Fair Play Award in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The Team is controlled by the Royal Spanish Football Federation the governing body for Football in Spain.