Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has released e-book on Standard Treatment Guidelines for the Management of Substance Use Disorders (SUD) and Behavioural Addictions.
The Minister cautioned that the World Drug Report 2020 suggests that COVID-19 will induce disorders in the country. The substance use is associated with non-communicable disorders like cardiovascular, cancer and mental health. He also highlighted that smoking increases the risk for Covid-19.

Notes:
India’s leading credit rating agency ICRA Ltd has appointed N Sivaraman as the Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer.
The appointment has been made for three years with effect from August 10. His tenure may also be extended for two more years. He had held senior positions in L&T Finance Holdings and he has served as the Chief Operating Officer at IL&FS till July 31, 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:
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:
The 15th Finance Commission had set up an eight-member High-Level Group on Agricultural Exports headed by the Chairman of ITC, Sanjiv Puri.
It was set up to recommend performance incentives for States to encourage agricultural exports. The group has recently submitted the report that recommended a State-led Export Plan for a crop Value chain cluster (VCC). It also suggested to focus on 22 crop value chains.

Notes:
The former Defence Minister of the African country Ivory Coast Hamed Bakayoko, has been recently named as the Prime Minister of the country.
Earlier, the previous Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly passed away suddenly on July 8 and Hamed Bakayoko has been serving as the acting Prime Minister. The 55-year old leader has been serving as the Defence Minister since 2017 after serving as the Interior Minister since 2011.

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:
Former Maharashtra Chief minister Shivajirao Patil Nilangekar passed away at the age of 89, due to prolonged illness.
He had earlier been tested positive for coronavirus disease. Nilangekar was a Congress leader, who was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra from June 1985 and March 1986. However, he resigned from the post after an allegation and order of the Bombay High Court.

Notes:
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has touched a record high transaction of 1.49 billion in the month of July.
This is its highest count of transactions since its inception and a 11% growth over that of the previous month. The monthly transactions were worth Rs 2.9 trillion. IMPS recorded 222.1 million transactions in July while Bharat Bill Payment Services hit 20.16 million transactions.

Notes:
The state government of Andhra Pradesh signed an MoU with leading Multinational companies such as ITC, Procter and Gamble and Hindustan Unilever Limited.
The MoU seeks to conduct skill-based training programmes for women in rural areas of the state aged between 45-60 years. The state would also launch a scheme called YSR Cheyutha to provide financial assistance to women belonging to backward and scheduled communities.