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- Moody’s Investor Services, a Global credit rating agency, has upgraded India’s sovereign rating from Baa3 to Baa2. Sovereign rating is the standard of how well a country may repay the debts it borrows and how its government can function to repay its debts. The better the economic prospects of a country, the better the confidence of paying its debts. Hence, this is a good news for us. Note that Baa3 was the lowest rating possible.
- UNICEF, Telangana police, and C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) created a mobile app called ‘Bal Suraksha‘ to inform parents, teachers, media, etc. on their roles in the incidents of child sexual abuse.
- The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has allowed the Amaravathi capital city construction project of Andhra Pradesh. Note that NGT has been in the news often and a question is likely to appear in CLAT. Things you need to remember:
- NGT is a statutory body established by the NGT Act, 2010.
- Its chairman should be a serving or retired judge of the Supreme Court or a Chief Justice of a High Court. Currently, it is Justice Swatanter Kumar.
- Its headquarters is at New Delhi. It has four benches at: Pune (West Zone), Bhopal (Central Zone), Chennai (South Zone), and Kolkata (East Zone).
- The NGT Act mandates that the NGT follow principles of sustainable development, precautionary principle, and polluters’ pay principle.
- The Centre Government has asked the Supreme Court to allow the annual Kambala buffalo race in coastal Karnataka. In 2014, the Supreme Court has banned Kambala due to reports of cruelty and harassment of Buffaloes. But to reverse this ban, the Karnataka government promulgated an ordinance allowing Kambala. Currently, it is pending in the Supreme Court as PETA challenged the ordinance and wants to restore the ban.
- ISRO is planning to hand over manufacture of launch vehicles to the private sector by 2020. As of now, ISRO manufactures such vehicles while private partners only supply certain components. Note than the PSLV C-39 launch carried IRNSS-1H, the first satellite manufactured by the private sector. However, as the heat shield did not open to eject the satellite, the launch failed.
- Conference of Parties (COP) – 23 of United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was conducted at Bonn, Germany. Participants discussed implementation of the Paris Agreement concluded in 2015.
TODAY’S QUIZ
