1. Which of the following countries has recently launched a Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB)?
a. US
b. UK
c. Russia
d. China
S-a
EXPLANATION-
• The US Army and US Navy jointly launched the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.
• The flight experiment will inform the ongoing development of systems designed to defend against adversary hypersonic weapons."
• The U.S. military has a "goal of fielding hypersonic warfighting capabilities in the early- to mid-2020s.” The test was built upon a previous flight experiment in October 2017.
• Earlier that year, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled an arsenal of nuclear-capable, hypersonic and state-of-the-art weapons that included a boost-glide vehicle called Avangard. Moscow has claimed it could travel up to 27 times the speed of sound, though some in Washington and the Pentagon have shed doubts about this.
2. As of March 2020, how many countries are the members of CDRI (Global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure)?
a. 11
b. 15
c. 12
d. 19
S-b
EXPLANATION-
• CDRI was launched by India at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in New York,US in 2019. It is an international knowledge and capacity development platform where countries can collaborate to make their existing and new infrastructure strong enough to withstand natural disasters.
• As of March 2020, the CDRI comprises 15 member countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Bhutan, Fiji, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mauritius, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and United States. The secretariat is based in New Delhi,India.
• This was built to rapidly expand the development of resilient infrastructure and retrofit existing infrastructure for resilience, and to enable a measurable reduction in infrastructure losses.
• The Governing Council is the highest policy-making body of the CDRI.It is co-chaired by India and a representative of another national government nominated by rotation every two years.
3. African Lion is the largest annual military exercise done by which of the following countries?
a. UK
b. US
c. Iraq
d. India
S-b
EXPLANATION-
• African Lion is the largest annual military exercise done by US Army Africa. It is a multinational exercise that helps all the partner countries to learn from each other.
• African Lion Military Exercise has become the latest victim of Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) as it has been cancelled for this year.
4. In which of the following years was South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) established?
a. 1985
b. 1990
c. 1972
d. 1961
S-a
EXPLANATION-
• SAARC was founded in Dhaka on 8 December 1985. Its secretariat is based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
• It is a regional intergovernmental organisation and geopolitical union of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
5. Which of the following has donated $1 million to the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which will be used to fund the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance?
a. Whatsapp
b. Facebook
c. Microsoft
d. Google
S-a
EXPLANATION-
• WhatsApp also donated $1 million to the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which will be used to fund the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance, a group which includes 100 local organizations in over 45 countries.
• WhatsApp has worked to bring over a dozen fact-checking organizations directly onto WhatsApp so they can crowdsource and report on rumors that may be circulating on various messaging services including WhatsApp or SMS.
• WhatsApp said the grant will support training to use the advanced features within WhatsApp Business, including the WhatsApp Business API.
