Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2020

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has appointed former RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi and former banker Ananth Narayan on the board of Yes Bank.
They have been appointed as Additional directors on the board for two years. Ananth Narayan was serving as the regional head of financial markets in the Standard Chartered Bank. R Gandhi was earlier appointed to Yes Bank’s board last year. Prashant Kumar has been appointed Chief Executive of Yes Bank.

Notes:
In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly announced the decade commencing 1 January 2015 and ending on 31 December 2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent. The theme of the international decade is “People of African descent: recognition, justice and development”
Every year, March 21st is celebrated as ‘International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’ across the world.

Notes:
The city of Indore of Madhya Pradesh has become the first city in the country to deploy drones to sanitize city areas against the coronavirus outbreak by sprinkling chemicals.
The Municipal Corporation of Indore has hired two drones for sprinkling sanitising chemicals. Public places like vegetables markets and streets of the city are being disinfected by spraying. The chemicals are selected such that they are not harmful to the people.

Notes:
Senior leader of the Bharathiya Janata Party, Shivraj Singh Chauhan recently took oath as the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh for the fourth time.
The leader had ruled the state for nearly thirteen years, before Kamal Nath won in the assembly elections in December 2018. Now Kamal Nath has resigned after 22 rebel MLAs who were the supporters of Jyotiraditya Scindia, who recently joined BJP, resigned.

Notes:
Bollywood film-maker Zoya Akhter was presented the IIFTC Tourism Impact Award 2020, at the Asia’s largest film tourism event, 8th India International Film Tourism Conclave (IIFTC), held recently in Mumbai.
The Director was selected for her outstanding contribution to the world tourism through her films which were shot in Spain and Turkey.

Notes:
The Technical Advisory Committee of the National Supercomputing Mission (MSM-TAC) has approved the installation of a Supercomputing facility with 650 TFLOPS, at IIT Guwahati, Assam.
The installation of the supercomputing system has been started under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). It is co-ordinated by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The mission is being implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

Notes:
The Scientists from Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), Dehradun have recently found that glaciers in Sikkim are melting at a higher magnitude than other Himalayan regions. The Institute is an autonomous research institute for the study of Geology of the Himalayas, under the Department of Science and Technology.
The study, which has been published in Science of the Total Environment, revealed that glaciers in Sikkim have deglaciated at a higher magnitude from 1991 to 2015. They also revealed that small-sized glaciers in Sikkim are disappearing and larger glaciers are thinning due to climate change.

Notes:
The government recently approved to continue the scheme for Rebate of State and Central Taxes and Levies (RoSCTL) on export of garments beyond March 31.
It is to be continued till it is merged with the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products scheme (RoDTEP), which was introduced in last September. By continuing RoSCTL scheme, all taxes and levies in the textile sector which are not rebated under other mechanisms will be rebated.

Notes:
The Central Board of Direct Taxes is a statutory authority which frames policy for the tax department. It is headed by a Chairperson and composed of six other members.
Recently, Indian Revenue Service officers Satish Kumar Gupta and Krishan Mohan Prasad have been appointed new members in the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). At present, apart from the Chairman P C Mody, there are three other serving members. After this appointment, there will be one more vacancy in the organisation.

Notes:
National Book Trust of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry has launched a campaign called ‘StayHomeIndiaWithBooks’, to encourage people to stay home amid the Covid 19 pandemic.
As a part of this initiative, NBT is making its select and best-selling books available for free Download. More than 100 books are made available in PDF format and can be downloaded from the website of NBT.