Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2020

Notes:
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved the appointment of Ravinder Singh Dhillon as Chairman & Managing Director (CMD) of Power Finance Corporation (PFC) Limited.
It is a Navratna PSU which functions under the aegis of Ministry of Power. Ravinder Singh Dhillon is currently serving as Director (Projects) in the same PSU. He had also served as Director (Public Grievances) in PFC earlier.

Notes:
The Central bank of the United States-the Federal Reserve has recently cut its benchmark interest rate to almost zero.
The Fed Reserve also announced that it would buy $700 billion in bonds to ease the economic activities. The bank also said that it shall maintain this target range until the economy is on track to achieve its maximum employment and price stability goal.

Notes:
Veteran journalist Patil Puttappa who was fondly known as Papu, passed away recently at the age of 99. He was an ardent follower of Gandhian principles and a Khadi activist.
Patil Puttappa had also served as a former Rajya Sabha member. He remained as a strong representative of Kannada and had received several prestigious awards including the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award, T.S.R. Award, and “Nadoja’. He had recently been presented the ‘Basava Award’ by the Chief Minister of Karnataka.

Notes:
Business application Khatabook entered into a strategic partnership with former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
M.S.Dhoni is set to invest in the firm and also serve as their brand ambassador. Khatabook is an application which helps MSMEs to streamline their business transactions online. The start-up firm has recently crossed 2 crore registered merchants on its app.

Notes:
The United Kingdom recently announced that it will start charging a 2% tax on digital services from 1st April this year.
The tax is to be imposed on revenue from digital services such as search and advertising. This tax will apply to firms with global sales of more than £500 million with at least £25 million from UK users. This decision of the government has been facing continuous opposition from the US government and top technological firms.

Notes:
‘World Cities Summit’ is a global biennial conference hosted by Singapore. This year, World Cities Summit (WCS) 2020 is scheduled to be held from July 5 to 9.
The theme of this year’s summit as announced by the Singapore government is ‘Liveable and Sustainable Cities: Adapting to a Disrupted World’. Leaders from several governments and industry experts discuss on challenges in climate change, social shifts and technological disruptions.

Notes:
Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) approved the procurement of 83 Tejas fighter aircrafts, which are manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
The Light Combat Aircraft Tejas is indigenously designed by Aircraft Development Agency (ADA) under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). This order of 83 air-crafts is in addition to the previous order of 43 air-crafts approved earlier.

Notes:
Legendary India footballer P.K. Banerjee recently passed away at the age of 83. He was a member of the 1962 Asian Games gold-medal winning India football team.
The veteran football player scored 65 international goals in a total of 84 appearances for the national team. Banerjee represented India in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and led India in the 1960 Rome Olympics. The international governing body of Football game, FIFA awarded him the Centennial Order of Merit in 2004.

Notes:
In order to curb the spread of misinformation and fake news on coronavirus and to reduce the panic among the citizens regarding the COVID-19, the Government of India has launched an official chatbot on the social media platform WhatsApp.
This Chatbot is named ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk’ and is available to all WhatsApp users. Any user can save the number announced (9013151515) and start using the chatbot.

Notes:
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh unveiled an updated manual DPP-2020 (Defence Procurement Procedure-2020).
For the last 18 years, this DPP is the procurement manual that has been used for governing the purchase of weapons and equipment from the defence capital budget. The 2020 draft version aims to promote more indigenous content in defence equipment which are manufactured in India. It also introduced ‘leasing’ as another category to make defence equipment affordable.