Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2020

Notes:
Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan recently announced that Saudi Arabia has assured India of uninterrupted supply of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG).
The Minister announced this after his discussions with Saudi Minister of Energy, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. As the cooking gas demand surged due to the nation-wide lockdown, Saudi Arabia has assured of LPG supplies to support the domestic requirement in the upcoming days.

Notes:
Punjab National Bank has unveiled its new logo ahead of its merger with the United Bank of India and the Oriental Bank of Commerce.
The new logo bears the symbols of all the three public sector banks. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a notification that the merger of ten banks into four will be carried out as scheduled, on April 1, 2020. After the amalgamation process, PNB will become the second largest lender in India after the State Bank of India.

Notes:
Domestic rating agency, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) recently announced that the Gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for the financial year 2020-21 is estimated at 3.6 per cent.
The agency had earlier estimated that India would grow at 5.5 per cent in 2020-21. The main reason for the big reduction in growth is said to be the Covid-19 outbreak and the resultant nation-wide lockdown imposed, which reduced all economic activities.

Notes:
As per the new stipulation of the Reserve Bank of India, all private sector and foreign banks will have to intimate cases of re-appointment of Managing Director and Chief executives to the Central Bank, 6 months in advance.
Earlier the practice was intimating the cases 4 months in advance. The number of names required to be mentioned in cases of fresh appointments of MD and CEOs has also been reduced to two, from three earlier.

Notes:
Veteran Indian historian Arjun Dev, who co-authored several popular NCERT books, recently passed away in Noida.
Mr. Arjun Dev served as a historian at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for many years. He wrote many famous NCERT books on Modern and Contemporary India and the World, along with his wife Indira Arjun. In the later part of his life, he was associated with the ‘Towards Freedom Project’ of the Indian Council of Historical Research.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India recently released some measures to deal with the consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. As per the new export norms, the exporters can take 15 months to realise their export proceeds, for exports made up to July 31 against the earlier 9 months.
RBI also increased the Ways and Means Advances limit for state governments and UTs by 30 % till September 30. It also said that the banks are not required to activate counter-cyclical capital buffers for one more year.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation has launched a new initiative called ‘Lifeline Udan’ under which flights are operated to transport essential medical supplies across the country amid coronavirus lockdown.
The air carriers which are involved in Lifeline Udan operations include Air India, Alliance Air, Indian Air Force and Pawan Hans. Cargo hubs have been established at Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata

Notes:
The Union Agriculture Minister launched new features of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) platform amid the lockdown, which includes Warehouse based trading module in e-NAM software, FPO trading module in e-NAM where FPOs can trade their produce from the collection centre and enhanced version of logistic module.
e-NAM platform was launched in India on 14 April 2016 as a nation-wide electronic trade portal, which links APMCs across the state. 585 mandis in 16 States and 2 Union Territories have been integrated on e-NAM portal.

Notes:
Tony Lewis devised the Duckworth-Lewis along with a mathematician Frank Duckworth, which is a mathematical formula used to determine the winner in cricket games that are affected by bad weather.
The method was introduced in 1997 and adopted by the International cricket council (ICC) in 1999. It was renamed as Duckworth-Lewis-Stern Method in 2014. Tony Lewis was a recipient of the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for his outstanding work in the field of Mathematics and Cricket.

Notes:
The 2021 World Games which were initially scheduled to be held in the city of Birmingham in the state of Alabama in the United States have now been rescheduled to 2022.
This postponement has been announced to avoid clashing with the Tokyo Olympics, which were also rescheduled to 2021, against this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The World Games are held every four years and comprises of 32 sports that are not included in the Olympic program.