Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2020

Notes:
NASA has recently selected a new space capsule from Elon Musk-owned SpaceX to ferry cargo and supplies to be used in its proposed lunar space station.
The Lunar space station aims to build a permanent post on the moon and mount future missions to Mars. SpaceX will get a portion of a $7 billion NASA contract to send ‘Dragon-XL’ spacecraft by using its Falcon Heavy rocket.

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:
According to the April 2020 update of the World Bank, titled ‘East Asia and Pacific in the Time of Covid-19’, it has estimated that nearly 11 million people would be affected by poverty in East Asia and the Pacific as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Bank has earlier estimated that about 35 million people would escape poverty in East Asia and the Pacific in 2020.

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 Indian state of Odisha was formed on 1st April 1936. Its statehood day is called as ‘Utkal Divas’, which is celebrated in the state and across the country.
On the memory of the formation of Odisha as a separate state from the earlier Bihar and Orissa province, the day has been celebrated. Due to the nation-wide lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, there were no prominent celebrations in the state.

Notes:
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has registered its first overseas case and has started investigation into the terrorist attack on a gurdwara at Kabul, Afghanistan.
On March 25, 2020, some gunmen entered a gurdwara in Kabul and fired, which killed 27 devotees and injured several others. The recent amendments in NIA Act have permitted NIA to investigate cases against the Indian citizens or affecting the interest of India, which are committed at places outside India.

Notes:
The Government of India has recently launched a mobile application named ‘Aarogya Setu’, to enable people assess the risk of coronavirus infection.
The app is built in a public-private partnership mode and has been launched on both the Google Play Store and the Apple Store. The app assesses the risk of a person based on their interactions, by using Bluetooth technology and Artificial intelligence. The app will detect other devices with the same app installed near-by.

Notes:
Technological major Google has recently shut down its neighbourhood community app called Neighbourly, which will be completely closed on May 12, 2020.
The application which was launched two years ago, hasn’t gained much userbase as expected and hence it has been shut down. The users will be able to download the content of the application until October 12 of this year.

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.

Notes:
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has notified three incentive schemes to boost electronics manufacturing namely Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI), Electronics Manufacturing Clusters 2.0 (EMC 2.0), Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronics Components and Semiconductors (SPECS).
The schemes which were cleared by the Cabinet last month, include incentives worth more than Rs 48,000 crore. PLI is the largest scheme with an outlay of Rs 40,000 crore which will give incentives of 4-6% on incremental sales on mobile phones and specified electronic components.