Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2020

Notes:
Every year April 10th is observed as World Homeopathy Day. The theme of this year’s World Homeopathy Day is selected as “Enhancing the scope of Homeopathy in Public Health”.
This day is celebrated to commemorate the birth anniversary of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the father of the Homeopathy system of medicines. Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy (CCRH), under the Ministry of AYUSH organized an international webinar on the occasion of World Homoeopathy Day.

Notes:
The World Bank has released its bi-annual flagship report titled ‘South Asia Economic Focus’ recently. In the report, it estimates a sharp economic crash in eight countries of the South Asian region.
The report has also estimated India to grow at 1.5%-2.8% this fiscal year, which will be the worst economic phase since the liberalisation policies implemented in 1991. It also forecasted that all countries would see a decline in GDP in the worst-case scenario.

Notes:
The Central Bank of China, the ‘People’s Bank of China (PBoC)’ has joined the group of investors with more than one per cent stake in Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd (HDFC).
People’s Bank of China now holds 1.01 per cent in HDFC, which is the largest standalone housing finance company of India. The Central Bank has been included in the group of 8 foreign portfolio investors (FPIs), who own more than one per cent stake in HDFC.

Notes:
Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog and National Informatics Centre (NIC) jointly launched a collaborative software system called ‘CollabCAD’.
The system provided a comprehensive engineering solution from two-dimensional drafting to three-dimensional product design. This software is aimed at enabling the students of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) to create 3D designs, models and printing.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Agriculture has recently set up a call- centre for enabling free inter-state movement of agricultural commodities.
Named the ‘All India Agri Transport Call Centre’, it coordinates the movement of perishable goods like vegetables and fruits as well as agricultural inputs like seeds, pesticides and fertilisers from one state to another. If any query in transport is received, the call centre forwards it to officials of state government.

Notes:
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is a leading non-government and non-profit Industry association of India. It has recently released a report titled ‘Exit from The Lockdown- A CII Strategy’.
In the report, the association suggested that government should give adequate notice before announcing the end of restrictions. It also recommended a calibrated lifting of the lockdown. The association also expects the announcement of an economic package before the lifting of lockdown.

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 state of Uttar Pradesh becomes the first to be approved by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to start the method of ‘Pool Testing’ the samples for Covid-19.
The pool testing method is aimed at speeding up the process of testing the samples. In this method, multiple swab samples are pooled together and tested. If the result of the particular pool comes negative, it is assured that all samples of the pool are negative. If the result is positive, all individual samples are tested again. This method was widely used in Germany.

Notes:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently launched an interactive service on Facebook Messenger to provide accurate information about the coronavirus outbreak to the general public.
More than 1.3 billion monthly active users can resolve their queries on Covid-19 from the “Health Alert” interactive service, launched by the WHO. The global health agency had already launched an alert service on WhatsApp.

Notes:
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has recently released the first stage of Long Range Forecast (LRF) for south-west monsoon season.
As per its forecast, the southwest monsoon from June to September over India may be normal across the country. It also forecasted that the intensity of monsoon rainfall would be between 96 and 104 per cent of the long period average (LPA) of the country, which is 880 mm during 1961-2010.