Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2020

Notes:
Leading Private sector bank of India, ICICI Bank recently launched voice-banking services to its customers by integrating its AI chatbot iPal with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
This initiative is aimed at assisting customers avail the banking services amid the nation-wide lockdown due to Covid-19. The customers will have to download the Alexa / Google Assistant and link their ICICI Bank account to it. Queries about their account and products of the bank will be answered by the voice assistant apps.

Notes:
An e-office application called ‘e-karyalay’ has been launched by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to prevent coronavirus infection.
The e-office application enables digital movement of files in offices, which is similar to the physical and traditional file movement in CISF offices. The application has been developed by the in-house technical team and they have also created the data recovery site.

Notes:
The World Malaria Day is observed on April 25 every year by the World Health Organisation (WHO), across the world. This year WHO has partnered with the global platform RBM Partnership to promote “Zero malaria starts with me” campaign.
The campaign aims to sensitise malaria politically, mobilize additional resources and encourage people to fast-track malaria prevention and care.

Notes:
International Delegate’s Day has been celebrated on April 25 for the first time in the year 2020. It marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the San Francisco Conference, a historic event which laid the foundations of the United Nations. It is also known as the United Nations Conference on International Organization.
The day is observed to raise awareness of the role of the representatives and delegates of the United Nations’ Member States.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh has launched a new scheme called ‘Jeevan Shakti Yojana’, which aims to encourage urban women to make masks and provide them a financial assistance to sustain their livelihood.
The urban women of the state who are interested in joining this scheme will have to register themselves through the Call centres. Then, as per the orders they receive they can start making cotton masks and submit to nodal officers. A payment of Rs.11 per mask will be credited to their bank account.

Notes:
According to the recent annual report of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States continue to be the highest military spender in the world in 2019 with $732 bn.
This is the first time two Asian countries China and India occupied the top-three positions. The military expenditure of China reached $261 billion in 2019, which is a 5.1% increase from the previous year. India’s expenditure rose by 6.8% to reach 71.1 billion.

Notes:
The chemical exports of India increased by 7.43 per cent to 2.68 lakh crore rupees during April-January period of the last fiscal.
The chemical industry became the top exporting sector of the country for the first time. The export of chemicals in the said period constitutes 14.35 per cent of the total exports. This was announced by the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers.

Notes:
The Prime Minister of India recently launched the SWAMITVA Scheme, on the occasion of National Panchayati Raj day. It was in news recently, as the Union Minister of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj Narendra Singh Tomar issued guidelines regarding the scheme.
SWAMITVA scheme aims to provide rural people with the right to document their residential properties by engaging the latest Drone surveying technology. It is currently being implemented in six states – Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Notes:
Domestic Credit rating agency India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) has further decreased the GDP growth rate of India to 1.9% for the current fiscal. It had previously estimated the growth rate for this fiscal to be 3.6%. The estimate was significant as this would be the lowest GDP growth in the last 29 years.
The report also highlighted that in the absence of any stimulus measures from the government, the fiscal deficit would touch 4.4% of GDP in this fiscal 2020-21, the official target being 3.5%.

Notes:
A unit of the top IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), TCS iON, has recently launched a free online self-certification course for frontline health workers, named ‘Corona Warriors’.
The health workers who are dealing with COVID-19 patients will be offered profession-specific modules. The digital course is available in English and it is offered through TCS iON Digital Learning Hub. The software venture of TCS, Digitate has also announced a platform called ‘ignio Cognitive Procurement’ to assist enterprises in decision making of purchases.