Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
India has signed an agreement with Sri Lanka to provide fresh assistance of $318 million credit line to develop the island nation’s railway sector. The agreement was signed in Colombo, Sri Lanka on June 6, 2017. India has already provided four Lines of Credit for the development of railway sector in Sri Lanka through its EXIM bank amounting to approximately $966 million. These credit facilities have been utilized to improve the Southern and Northern railway lines and for the procurement of rolling stocks for the Sri Lanka Railways.

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Chandrayaan was launched on October 22nd 2008 and successfully reached the lunar surface on November 14, 2008. The ISRO lost communication with Chandrayaan-1 on August 29, 2009, almost a year after it was launched on October 22, 2008. It operated for 312 days.
In 2017 NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have found India’s first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1 which was considered lost, is still orbiting the moon.

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”.

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Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve became part of World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 2016. ABR includes the Indian Ecoregions of South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests, South Western Ghats montane rain forests and Shola. It is the habitat for 2,000 varieties of medicinal plants, of which at least 50 are rare and endangered species. Rare animals include the tiger, Asian Elephant, and Nilgiri tahr. 

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Recently, NTPC started the power generation from India’s largest floating solar power plant at Kayamkulam in Kerala. Kerala was chosen for the installation due to abundant availability of water bodies and lack of enough land. The 100 kWp floating solar generation plant is the largest of its kind in India, and was indigenously developed as a part of ‘Make in India’ initiative, at Rajiv Gandhi Combined Cycle Power Plant (RGCCPP) in Kerala’s Kayamkulam district. Solar panels mounted on floating boards hold them in place saves land usage. The solar panels in water have been found to be efficient than the ones installed on land. These floating platforms were indigenously developed by NTPC Energy Technology Research Alliance, the R&D arm of NTPC Ltd BSE -0.30 %, in collaboration with Central Institute of Plastic Engineering & Technology (CIPET), Chennai and a patent has been applied for. 

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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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'Tulaipanji' and 'Gobindobhog' are varieties of aromatic rice. Recently, the Bengal Government applied in the Office of Geographical Indications, Chennai for GI certification of products.

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Project DARPAN (Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India) is an initiative by Ministry of Communication. It aims to improve the quality of services to rural poor, and achieve “financial inclusion” of un-banked rural population. The project will increase the rural reach of the Department of Posts and enable Branch Offices (BOs) to increase traffic of all financial remittances, savings accounts, Rural Postal Life Insurance, and Cash Certificates; improve mail operations processes by allowing for automated booking and delivery of accountable article; increase revenue using retail post business; provide third party applications; and make disbursements for social security schemes such as MGNREGS.

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Recently, the ministry of earth science (MoES) launched a high performance computer (HPC) system named Mihir. The system is meant to improve India’s weather forecasting. It will be India’s largest in terms of peak capacity and performance and will propel the country’s ranking from the 368th position to the top 30 in list of HPC facilities across the world. India will now also be ranked 4th, after Japan, UK and US for dedicated HPC resources for weather/climate community.

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The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi released a book titled “The Birds of Banni Grassland”. The Book is a compilation of the research work, relating to more than 250 species of birds found in the Banni area of Kutch, Gujarat.