Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2020

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has launched revised version of Swachhata App to handle queries specific to COVID 19.
The Swachhata-MoHUA Application is a flagship grievance redressal tool of MoHUA, under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban). Now using this app, the COVID19-related complaints of the citizens will be redressed by the Urban Local bodies.

Notes:
Chris Cassidy, an astronaut of NASA, along with two cosmonauts of Russia- Roscosmos, Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner docked at the International Space Station.
The three-man crew docked successfully aboard the Soyuz MS-16 capsule, which was launched from the Russia’s space hub, Baikonur, in its neighbouring country Kazakhstan. The crew reached the ISS at 1413 GMT, over six hours after blasting off. The next crew to return to Earth from the ISS will fly to their home countries on April 17.

Notes:
Manila-based international financial institution, Asian Development Bank (ADB) assured $2.2 billion assistance to India, for tackling the Covid-19 outbreak.
Earlier, the World Bank has approved to provide $1 billion assistance to India for fighting against Covid-19, especially to detect and prevent the disease and to strengthen its public health preparedness.

Notes:
The Union government recently announced that it has removed customs duty and health cess on the import of medical equipment related to COVID-19 till September 30, 2020.
The exemption on customs duty and cess have been given to all related medical equipment including ventilators, surgical masks, PPE, and test kits. This step is expected to boost availability of the products in the country, as per the Department of Revenue. The exemptions will be applicable on inputs used to manufacture the equipment.

Notes:
The National Commission for Women (NCW) has recently launched a WhatsApp number, where people can report cases of domestic violence.The head-quarters of NCW is New Delhi.
As per the announcement of NCW, the cases of domestic violence have seen a big increase during the lockdown period resulting from coronavirus pandemic. This WhatsApp number service will be operated in addition to the existing online complaint links and emails and only for the period of lockdown.

Notes:
Anak Krakatau volcano is located in Indonesia and was seen in news recently as it was continuously erupting ash and lava.
This was the longest eruption since 2018, when the explosion and collapse of the island caused a deadly Tsunami along the coasts of Sumatra and Java, which killed 430 people. A level 2 alert status on a scale of four was made for the eruption.

Notes:
As per a survey released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), incomes of about 85% of households in the National capital region (NCR) have been impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak and the resulting lockdown.
The survey also highlighted that casual labourers were excessively affected with the wages of nearly 75% of them were affected. For salaried class, the income was affected for about 46.7% of the employees.

Notes:
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has announced an ‘Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution’ under the Digital India Programme.
The winning team which presents the world-class solution will receive a prize money and assistance of ₹1 crore with additional annual support of ₹10 lakh for three years, for operations and maintenance. Any Indian IT start-up and software product company can participate in the challenge.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Tourism has launched a webinar series named ‘DekhoApnaDesh’. The webinar will have information about the important destinations of the country.
The webinar series was aimed at highlighting the history and diverse culture of various Indian destinations. Several features like monuments, cuisine, art, dance forms and festivals are being focussed. The first webinar in the series was about the city of Delhi and was titled ‘City of Cities – Delhi’s Personal Diary’.

Notes:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released the latest version of its flagship report ‘World Economic Outlook (WEO)’.
In the report, it has lowered India’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate to 1.9 per cent in the fiscal year 2020-21 amid the prevailing lock-down. However, the global agency expects the GDP growth rate of India to rise to 7.4 per cent in the next fiscal year 2021-22.