Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
India’s leading trade association, the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has partnered with GeM to organise the ‘National Public Procurement Conclave’.
The fourth edition of the conclave has been inaugurated by the Union Commerce& Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. He also asked more buyers and sellers to join the Government-e-Marketplace (GeM). He also warned sellers from selling poor quality goods or charging hefty prices.

Notes:
One of India’s leading Food delivery platforms Swiggy has launched a doorstep delivery service called INSTAMART in Gurugram. It is aimed to deliver essentials and groceries within 45 minutes.
The Instamart facility is available within the Swiggy app. Swiggy has proposed to make this service available to customers from 7 am to 12 midnight. A wide range of deliverables would be available to the customers. The company has proposed to make this facility available at Bengaluru shortly.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani has recently launched a State-funded scheme named Mukhya Mantri Kisan Sahay Yojana.
It has been launched to replace the central crop-insurance scheme Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). Gujarat has exited from the scheme as it considers that the insurance scheme charges hefty premium cost to the State. The new alternate scheme will cover all farmers for the current kharif season.

Notes:
According to a recent data from the NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft, the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is not a barren space rock.
It was earlier believed that the dwarf planet is barren but the data collected reveal that it is a water-rich place and there could be a large and deep reservoir of salt water. In the year 2015, the Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres, which us far smaller than the Earth’s moon.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has permitted registration of Electric Vehicles without pre-fitted batteries.
The ministry has stated that Electric Vehicles without batteries can be sold and registered only with the type approval certificate issued by the Test Agency. Also, the Ministry has clarified that there is no need to mention any other details of the Battery for the purpose of Registration.

Notes:
The Government of the Union Territory of Delhi has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding MoU with Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay and Tata Projects Limited for construction of a smog tower at Connaught Place.
The proposed 20 meter-high smog tower would be fitted with several air purifiers to purify the air. As per the terms of the MoU, the construction of the smog tower would be completed in 10 months.

Notes:
With an aim to improve the efficiency and transparency in asset classification process, the Reserve Bank of India issued a direction to implement “system-based asset classification” in Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs).
Those UCBs having total assets of Rs.2000 crore or above as on 31st March 2020, should implement system-based asset classification from 30th June 2021. Those UCBs having total assets equal to or more than Rs.1000 crore but less than Rs.2000 crore shall implement it from 30th September 2021.

Notes:
An application called the ‘Interactive Neural Machine Translation (INMT) tool’, has been developed by the Microsoft Research Lab.
Microsoft Lab has collaborated with CGNet Swara, an Indian voice-based online portal and IIIT Naya Raipur for developing this tool. It translates sentences from Hindi to South-Central Dravidian language Gondi and vice-versa. The application aims to motivate youth from the Gond tribal community to learn the language.

Notes:
An assistance of USD 1 million has been extended by India to the Caribbean country Antigua & Barbuda for combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ventilators, full cover goggles, disposable gowns, face shields, examination gloves and disposable masks and hydroxychloroquine tablets were supplied as a part of the assistance. This assistance is for improving health infrastructure facilities in Antigua and Barbuda.

Notes:
The Center for Biopharma Analysis (CBA), which is set up at Pune has been virtually inaugurated by the Secretary of Department of Bio Technology. It is an initiative of the Venture Centre, which is a Technology Business Incubator hosted by CSIR- National Chemical Laboratory, Pune.
The CBA is supported and funded by National Bio Pharma Mission implemented by the Department of Bio Technology. The CBA is a facility with high end instrumentation which complies with globally accepted standards of Bio pharmaceutical analysis.