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• Zero Discrimination Day is celebrated globally on [latex]1^{st}[/latex] March every year so that everyone live life with dignity regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, skin colour, height, weight etc.


• The symbol of Zero Discrimination Day is the butterfly. Firstly, on [latex]1^{st}[/latex] March, 2014 UN had celebrated this day.

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• World Civil Defence Day is celebrated every year on [latex]1^{st}[/latex] March to bring attention of the world public about the importance of Civil protection and to pay tributes to the efforts, sacrifices and accomplishments of all the services responsible to fight against disasters.


• International Civil Defence Organisation (ICDO) decided to celebrate this day in 1990. The theme of World Civil Defence Day 2019 is "Children's safety, our responsibility".

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• Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi admitted that Masood Azhar, founder of banned terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad, is indeed in Pakistan.


• Qureshi said, "Azhar is in Pakistan. According to my information. he's very unwell. He is unwell to the extent that he cannot leave his house."


• Masood Azhar is the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad – the organisation that has carried out multiple attacks on India over the last nearly two decades, including the recent Pulwama attack that killed 410 CRPF officers.
  
• India has been repeatedly trying to list him as a “global terrorist” at the United Nations Security Council. However, China has single-handedly blocked all attempts of India.

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• The United States won a World Trade Organization ruling on China's price support for grains, successfully challenging a calculation methodology that is also used by India.


• A WTO adjudication panel agreed with the US complaint that China had paid farmers too much for wheat, Indica rice and Japonica rice in 2012-2015. A disputed corn subsidy had already expired.

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• US President Donald Trump said he had walked away from a nuclear deal at his summit with Kim Jong Un in Vietnam because of unacceptable demands from the North Korean leader to lift punishing US-led sanctions.


• Trump said two days of talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi had made good progress in building relations and on the main issue of denuclearisation, but it was important not to rush into a bad deal.

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• A day after feigning bravado at Pakistan Air Force jets violating Indian air space, he was hit on Thursday by India's stern warning to return the captured IAF pilot - Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.


• With it being clarified that India won't negotiate or make deals for his return, Imran announced by the afternoon that Abhinandan would be released on Friday as a 'goodwill gesture.'


• The 'goodwill gesture' from Pakistan came largely due to the position India took through the day to bring its pilot back home - immediately and safely.

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• NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and Adobe signed a Statement of Intent (SOI) to collectively drive the charter of developing creative skills and spreading digital literacy across all Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) in India.


• 100 schools will be adopted by Adobe under the ATL initiative and will be implementing its Digital Disha Program in ATLs, under which free licenses of Adobe Spark premium shall be offered to ATLs.


• The Adobe Digital Disha Programme, launched in 2018, is aimed at driving synergies in creative thinking and technology-based learning. Under this collaboration with AIM, children and teachers across these schools and communities shall benefit from creative learning resources and empowering them with new age skills to thrive in the current digital era and preparing them for long term success.


• It is the Government of India’s flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in India.


• As a part of AIM, ATLs are being established in more than 5,000 schools in India where students of class 6th to class 12th acquire problem solving and innovation skills, developing innovative solutions leveraging Tinkering technologies like 3D printers, robotics, miniaturised electronics, IOT and programming, do it yourself kits with support from teachers.

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• Union Human Resources Development Minister, Shri Prakash Javadekar, launched the Scheme for Higher Education Youth in Apprenticeship and Skills (SHREYAS) with an aim to provide industry apprenticeship opportunities to the general graduates exiting in April 2019 through the National Apprenticeship Promotional Scheme (NAPS) in New Delhi.


• The program will enhance the employability of Indian youth by providing ‘on the job work exposure’ and earning of stipend.


• SHREYAS portal will enable educational institutions and industry to log in and provide their respective demand and supply of apprenticeship and the matching of students with apprenticeship avenues will take place as per pre-specified eligibility criteria.


• These courses will be available from Academic year April-May, 2019 and more than 40 higher educational institutions have already been tied up for taking up embedded apprenticeship courses.


• SHREYAS is a programme basket comprising the initiatives of 3 Central Ministries, which are Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Ministry of Labour & Employment.

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• Van Dhan, a scheme for Minimum Support Price (MSP) for Minor Forest Produce (MFP) and Development of Value Chain of MFPs was launched by TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairs at a National Workshop in New Delhi.


• Ministry has expanded the coverage of the Minimum Support Price for Minor Forest Produce Scheme to 50 Minor Forest Produces. Also the MSP has risen between 30-50% for all commodities.


• 6000 Van Dan Vikas Kendras comprising 300 tribal gatherers are to be set up to provide employment to almost 45 Lakh Tribal.

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• Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Smt. Anupriya Patel, inaugurated the International Digital Health Symposium and an exhibition on Digital Health as a part of the Symposium, at New Delhi, where participant countries along with various Government Ministries, states and other stakeholders showcased key innovations, implementation experiences and innovative Digital Health Interventions.


• The Symposium provided a forum to learn from global leaders in the field of digital health and innovation and was an opportunity for countries to showcase innovations and share experiences of implementing digital health interventions for health systems strengthening and Universal Health Coverage.


• Discussions on various themes were held including Futuristic Health Systems, Challenges in Health IT Sector, Privacy and Security in the Digital Arena, Aadhaar and National Health Stack, Innovation Ecosystem, Start-ups and AI for Health, Digital Health Innovations for transforming primary care, Remote Monitoring/Wearables /IOT/Home based care National health information systems, Financing Digital Health, Public Health Surveillance Systems, Enabling Environment for Public Private Partnerships in Digital Health, Personalized Precision Medicine leading to possible policy interventions and clear outcomes.

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• Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal announced a new railway zone for Andhra Pradesh, that is the Southern Coast Railway and it will be headquartered in Visakhapatnam.


• It will be the 18th zone in the country.


• The new zone will comprise the existing Guntakal, Guntur and Vijayawada divisions that currently fall under the South Central Railway.


• The cost of creating infrastructure for a new zone is around Rs. 205 crore.

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• The Cabinet approved the promulgation of an ordinance which allows children to exit Aadhaar on attaining 18 years of age.


• The Lok Sabha had passed a bill for the purpose on January 4 but it's pending in Rajya Sabha. The ordinance also allows voluntary use of Aadhaar as identity proof for opening bank accounts and obtaining SIM cards.

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• IDBI Bank and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) signed a bancassurance agreement under which the lender will offer LIC’s insurance products at its branches.


• As part of the agreement, IDBI Bank will become the preferred bank for LIC premium payments and also function as premium point to boost sale of LIC products, thereby gaining from fees and float income.


• The State-owned life insurer, LIC, acquired a majority stake in IDBI Bank, and the bank has also appointed LIC Chairman Hemant Bhargava as its non-executive whole-time Chairman.

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• According to BCG-IBA Report on EASE Reforms index released by Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs, Punjab National Bank (PNB) which is fraud hit bank, secured the top spot among all public sector banks in the implementation of ‘Reforms agenda’.


• Index has measured Banks on 140 objective metrics across 6 themes including customer responsiveness, credit off-take and digitalization.


• The EASE (Enhanced Access and Service Excellence) report has shown significant enhancement in PSB performance on the back of Government’s 4R’s strategy- recognition, recovery, recapitalisation and reforms.


• PNB which topped the list with a score of 78.4 out of 100 in the EASE-index was followed by BoB (77.8), SBI (74.6), Oriental Bank of Commerce (69).


• The PSB banks have recovered Rs 98493 crore in first nine months of FY19.


• The Government has infused Rs 3.19 lakh crores in PSB to strengthened their balance sheet and five banks have come out of PCA (Prompt Corrective action) restrictions.

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• UAE based company will release 12 bank notes of zero value which is the first ever limited edition commemorative series to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.


• Dubai based Indian artist Akbar Saheb has designed these special notes. He was the main illustrator for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s book ‘Mann Ki Baat’.


• As a tribute to Gandhi, each note will feature memorable incidents from his personal and political life. The initiative will bring Mahatma Gandhi back to life using incidents that are more than just history lessons.


• It will be a 12 part series. The first 2 notes with just 5000 pieces to be printed in each design will go on sale at selected outlets globally and online while the rest will be released in different phases till October 2.


• Out of the first 2 notes released, the first note shows the ‘Promise to Mother’ in 1880 made by Gandhi to his mother and the second note features the historic incident of 1893 when the young lawyer Gandhi was thrown off from a ‘Whites only’ compartment of a train at Pietermaritzburg railway station in South Africa.

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• International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) World Cup was held in New Delhi, India from [latex]20^{th}[/latex] February to [latex]28^{th}[/latex] February 2019. It is the annual edition of the ISSF World Cup which is governed by International Shooting Sport Federation. It is a qualifier for 2020 Olympic Games. India ranked 1st in the World Cup along with Hungary.


• Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker claimed gold medal in 10m Air Pistol Mixed team event on ISSF World Cup in New Delhi.


• Saurabh Chaudhary finished top of the 10m Air Pistol category and brought an Olympic quota for Tokyo 2020 in the category.


• Indian shooter won women’s 10m Air Rifle and bagged India’s first gold medal by breaking the world record in the Shooting World Cup 2019. She was the only Indian shooter to qualify for the final round.

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• Former Kerala Blasters Football Club (FC) and Jamshedpur FC player Mehtab Hossain has announced his retirement from professional football.


• He currently plays for Mohun Bagan in the Hero I-League and revealed his decision on the eve of the team’s final home fixture against Indian Arrows.


• He represented Kerala Blasters in the Indian Super League (ISL) for the first three seasons before playing for Jamshedpur FC during the last season.

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• British Indian World War II spy, Noor Inayat Khan, confirmed as the first Indian-origin woman to be honoured with a Blue Plaque at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, London (her former home).


• She was the daughter of Indian Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan and an agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. She was captured and killed by the Nazis in 1944 at the age of 30 years.


• The Blue Plaque scheme run by English Heritage honours notable people who lived or worked in particular buildings across London.

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• Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani became the first Indian and the only Asian to enter the Global top 10 richest billionaire list compiled by Hurun Research, China after a USD 9 billion or 20% surge in his wealth to USD 54 billion.


• India is at 5th spot with 104 billionaires. Last year, the country had added 32 billionaires, but this year it lost 28.


• Mumbai and New Delhi are the billionaire capitals of the country.

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• Amazon has reportedly appointed Nader Kabbani, who has worked at the e-commerce giant for 14 years, as the head of its pharmacy business.


• Under his new role, Kabbani will also lead the team of US startup PillPack, acquired by Amazon last year for roughly $1 billion, the report said. Kabbani has earlier helped to build Amazon's Kindle self-publishing platform.

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• Bengaluru based semiconductor company “SIGNALCHIP” unveiled India’s first Indigenous Semiconductor Chips for 4G/LTE and 5G NR MODEMs at an event in New Delhi which was addressed by the Secretary, Telecom, Mrs Aruna Sundararajan.


• She acknowledged the need for India to manufacture its own chips as Data Security is a huge concern in today’s world and informed that currently only 8 companies and few countries in the world can do the task, which makes the launch of Indigenous Chip a real sense “Make in India” for the World.


• The Radio Frequency (RF) sections cover all LTE/5G-NR bands up to 6GHz and they also support positioning using India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC.


• The Agumbe series builds up on SCRF1401, India’s first RF transceiver chip for high performance wireless standards like 3G/4G and WiFi, created by Signalchip in 2015.


• The combined multi-standard system-on-chip (SoC) can serve as a base station chipset for a wide range of form and are optimally designed to support evolving network architectures like Open RAN/CRAN with flexible interface configurations.

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• Researchers have discovered “methane hydrates“, a potential fuel of the future just two meters below the sea-floor in the Krishna-Godavari (K-G) basin off the coast of Andhra Pradesh in the Bay of Bengal.


• A team of scientists from the National Institute of Geography in Goa and the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad have reported the discovery in the Journal of Earth System Science, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.


• This is the first report on the discovery of an active methane seepage site. The occurrence of shallow methane hydrate deposits in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and opens up the possibilities of using a new and still untapped reservoir of fossil fuel, as methane hydrate contains large quantity of methane, the main component of natural gas.

A. Gurgaon B. Lucknow C. Chandigarh D. New Delhi Answer: D

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A. Arunachal Pradesh B. Tripura C. Sikkim D. Assam Answer: B

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A. Satna B. Indore C. Jabalpur D. Bhopal Answer: D

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A. SURYAVIR B. SURYA C. SHAURYA D. SHREYAS Answer: D

A. West Bengal B. Odisha C. Kerala D. Telangana Answer: A

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A. Rs 84000 cr B. Rs 95000 cr C. Rs 85000 cr D. Rs 98000 cr Answer: D

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A. Kanpur Metro Rail B. Lucknow Metro Rail C. Greater Noida Metro Rail D. Kolkata Metro Rail Answer: A

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A. Metro Rail Projects B. Construction of Roads & Highways C. River dams D. Integrated Bioethanol Projects Answer: D

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A. K L Rahul B. Virat Kohli C. M S Dhoni D. Jasprit Bumrah Answer: A

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