BIMSTEC NDRF begins in Bhubaneswar,odisha.

NATIONAL NEWS

Ministry of Earth Sciences to set up a decadal forecast system.

• The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) is drafting a “decadal forecast” system along with the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office.
• The system plan is to ensure better predictability in the climate stretch.
• Dr. M. Rajeevan, Secretary, MoES announced the above plan during the 6th International Conference on Climate Services which was held at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune.

NIFM to be renamed as Arun Jaitley national institute of financial management.

• National institute of financial management(NIFM), Faridabad a registered society under Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance and Government of India.
• The government of India has planned to rename the NIFM, Faridabad to Arun Jaitley National Institute of Financial Management.
• The Organisation is formed to train officers of various Finance and Accounts Services recruited by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and also officers of Indian Cost Accounts Service (ICoAS).
• President of the NIFM Society:  Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

India and UK to hold joint military drill

• India and UK will carry out their 5^th edition of joint military drill “Ajeya Warrior-2020” at Salisburg plains in UK.
• Exercise “Ajeya warrior” will encourage defence cooperation and elevate compatibility between both the armies.
• This exercise is being held from 2005 conducting alternatively in India and United Kingdom.

Hornbill Festival celebrated for the first time in Tripura.

• The first-ever hornbill festival of Tripura was celebrated in the capital city of Tripura, Agartala.
• Chief Minister of Tripura Biplab Kumar Deb inaugurated the festival at Barmura Eco park.
• The festival begun with the aim to raise awareness among people for bird conservation.

AAP to hold power in capital city for the third time.

• Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) winning Assembly elections with a majority of 62 out of 70 assembly seats comes to power for the third time consecutively.
• Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal dissolved the Sixth Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. And the new seventh legislative assembly will be formed.

CCI approves joint venture of Mahindra & Mahindra and Ford Motor

• The Competition Commission of India (CCI) approves joint venture of Mahindra & Mahindra ltd (M&M) and Ford Motor company.
• And also the transferring of the automotive business of Ford India Private Limited (FIPL) to the joint venture.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Deadly coronavirus disease named as “COVID-19”

• WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that it named the coronavirus disease as “COVID-19”.
• The virus has claimed 1017 lives in china and infected 42,708 people all over the world.
• “COVID-19” – CO stands for corona, VI stands for virus and D stands for disease.
• The virus itself has been designated as “SARS-CoV-2” by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.
• The number of deaths has overtaken that of the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003.

African union (AU) summit,2020

• The African union (AU) summit was held at Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
• The theme of the summit is “silencing the guns”, aiming to get grips with terrorism.
• The summit becomes more important for India as it recently signed MoUs, defence agreements “Lucknow declaration” with 50 African nations during the DefExpo 2020.

BIMSTEC NDRF begins in Bhubaneswar,Odisha.

• The second BIMSTEC disaster management exercise 2020 is to be held in Bhubaneswar, Odisha from February 11 to February13, 2020.
• The event was hosted this time by the National Disaster Response Force of Government of India.
• The theme of the event is “A Cultural Heritage Site that suffers severe damage in the Earthquake and Flooding or Storm”.
• The BIMSTEC countries are namely, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand and Bhutan, where Thailand and Bhutan are not participating in the exercise this year.

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

Infosys to buy Simplus for $250 mn.

• The US – based salesforce partner Simplus is to be acquired by Infosys for about $250 mn to speed up its enterprise cloud capabilities.
• Infosys would conduct the acquisition through its subsidiary Infosys Nova Holdings.
• CEO & co-founder, Simplus: Ryan Westwood.
• CEO & MD of Infosys: Salil Parekh.

SPORTS NEWS

Australia awarded with ICC women’s championship trophy

• Australia was presented with the ICC championship trophy 2020.
• For maintaining their victories in the 8-team one-day championship from 2017 to 2020, they won the trophy for the last time as well (that is the first edition 2014-2016).
• The Australian team was led by Meghann Moira Lanning.

Lalremsiami – FIH women’s rising star of year,2019.

• India's Lalremsiami named as 2019 FIH Women's Rising Star of Year by the International Hockey Federation.
• She took the prize ahead of Julieta Jankunas(Argentina) and Frederique Matla (Netherlands).

Gulmarg to host National Winter Games

• A five-day national winter games event is to be hosted by Gulmarg under the banner of Khelo India.
• There will be 30 events under five major activities- snowboarding, snow skiing, cross country, snow show in which 800 players from all over India would participate.