Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
Veteran Folk musician Sonam Tshering Lepcha has recently passed away at Kalimpong, West Bengal at the age of 92.
He travelled to various parts of Sikkim and compiled several Indian folk and traditional Lepcha songs. He was also known for his efforts to popularise and represent Lepcha culture. He was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri award by the Government.

Notes:
The Sports Ministry has constituted a 12-member committee to select this year’s National Sports Awards winners.
The committee is to be headed by retired Supreme Court Justice, Mukundakam Sharma. It will select the award winners among both athletes and coaches. The members include Former India Cricketer Virender Sehwag, Hockey star Sardar Singh and Paralympic silver-medallist Deepa Malik.

Notes:
Global chemical company SABIC’s polycarbonate plant in Spain is set to become the world’s first that will run entirely on renewable power.
The Riyadh-headquartered company has signed a major agreement with an electricity utility company Iberdrola, in this regard. This plant is expected to be completely operational by the year 2024.

Notes:
India’s solar-powered ferry Aditya has won the prestigious Gustave Trouve Award for Excellence in Electric Boats and Boating.
It has been named the best electric boat in the category of ferries designed for paid passenger service. Aditya was the first solar-powered ferry of the country when it began its operations in 2017 in Kerala. The ferry built by NavAlt Boats belongs to the Kerala State Water Transport Department.

Notes:
Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) has received SKOCH Gold Award for its “Empowerment of Tribals through IT enabled Scholarship Schemes”.
The 66th SKOCH award ceremony was organised on the title “India responds to Covid through Digital Governance”. The Tribal affairs won the award in ‘Digital India & E-Governance’ competition. The Ministry had integrated its 5 Scholarship Schemes with Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Portal.

Notes:
Apple surpassed multinational petroleum company Saudi Aramco to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company.
The market capitalisation of the technology company surged to USD 1.82 trillion, as per the regulatory filing of the company. Whereas, the market capitalisation of Aramco stood at USD 1.760 trillion.

Notes:
Large companies with turnover of over Rs 500 crore are mandated to submit sales invoices electronically.
This has been notified by the Government under the Goods and Services tax (GST) regime. As per the notification released, Units in special economic zones have been exempt from complying with e-invoicing. Earlier, the limit of turnover was Rs 100 crore.

Notes:
The All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA) is an apex Ayurveda medicine and research institution located in New Delhi.
It was seen in news as the institute has started providing free testing and treatment to patients in its COVID 19 Health Centre (CHC). AYUSH Minister Shri Naik inaugurated the ventilator-equipped Intensive Care Unit of the centre as well as a COVID Call Centre at AIIA.

Notes:
Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) is an autonomous organisation of the Government of India head-quartered in New Delhi.
It promotes India’s external cultural relations by cultural exchange. The council was founded by the first Education Minister of independent India, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in the year 1950. ICCR recently organised a two-day international webinar on the theme of ‘Lokmanya Tilak – Swaraj to Self-reliant India’.

Notes:
The Union Government has expanded the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by doubling the upper ceiling of loans to Rs 50 crore.
The scheme also includes individual loans given for business purposes to professionals like doctors, lawyers and chartered accountants under its scope. The maximum amount of guaranteed emergency credit line funding under the ECLGS scheme is also increased from Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore.