Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2020

Notes:
Union Minister of Tribal Affairs Arjun Munda has recently launched a new e-portal named ‘Swasthya’ and a e-newsletter named ALEKH.
The portal aims to consolidate all health and nutrition related information of the tribal population of India. It also provides best practices collected from different parts of India and enables an effective decision making related to the nutrition of tribal population.

Notes:
The Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu has announced the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2020. It is an initiative of Education Ministry.
The Indian Institute of Technology Madras bagged the first place under the ‘Best centrally funded institution’ category, while IIT Mumbai and IIT Delhi bagged the second and third place respectively. The ranking assesses the colleges on various criteria including support for entrepreneurship, innovative learning intellectual property generation and technology transfer etc.

Notes:
The World’s tallest Pier bridge is being constructed by Indian Railways in Manipur across the river “Ijai”. The height of its tallest pier is 141m. The bridge is a part of Jiribam-Tupul-Imphal railway line project. The existing record for the tallest pier bridge is 139m at Montenegro in Europe.
The bridge is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs.280 crore and the construction work is expected to be completed by March 2020. The total length of the bridge is estimated to be 703 meters.

Notes:
Union External Affairs Minister S Jai Shankar has represented India in the roundtable of ASEAN-India Network of Think Tanks (AINTT) held recently.
The 6th Roundtable of AINTT was held through a webinar and its theme was “ASEAN-India: Strengthening Partnership in the Post-COVID Era”. As per the Minister, the global loss due to Covid-19 is in the range of USD 5.8 to 8.8 trillion or 6.5 to 9.7 per cent of the global GDP.

Notes:
As per a recent release by the Government, India ranks first in terms of number of organic farmers and 9th in terms of area under organic farming.
In order to boost organic farming, the Union Government had launched “Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North East Region” (MOVCD) and “Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana” (PKVY) in 2015. Sikkim became the first state in the world to become fully organic in farming.

Notes:
In order to reduce the dependency of China, three countries namely India, Japan and Australia have begun discussions to launch a trilateral “Supply Chain Resilience Initiative” (SCRI).
The initiative was originally proposed by Japan, which had approached India to take forward the initiative. The first meeting of the commerce and trade ministers of the three countries will be held next week.

Notes:
Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda has virtually launched the tertiary processing centres of ‘Trifood Project’.
It is an initiative of TRIFED, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, in association with Ministry of Food Processing (MoFPI). The Minister launched the project in Raigad of Maharashtra and Jagdalpur of Chhattisgarh. It aims to enhance the income of tribal population by making value addition in the Minor Forest Produces.

Notes:
Indian e-commerce company Flipkart has signed a strategic partnership with Nepal’s leading e-commerce company Sastodeal.
This partnership will provide lakhs of sellers registered with Flipkart, an access to the e-commerce market of Nepal. Sastodeal will host more than 5,000 products from Flipkart sellers including the Flipkart Private Brands, MarQ and SmartBuy in various categories.

Notes:
Madhya Pradesh is set to be the first state in the country to recruit candidates to government jobs on the basis of National Recruitment Agency (NRA) test.
This decision has been informed by the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, a day after the Union cabinet approved setting up of NRA to conduct a Common Eligibility Test (CET), for conducting examinations which are presently conducted by IBPS, RRB, SSC among others

Notes:
The Government of India has appointed former finance secretary Rajiv Kumar as the new Election Commissioner. He is set to succeed Ashok Lavasa, who has resigned from the post, to join the Asian Development Bank.
Rajiv Kumar is a 1984 batch Indian Administrative Service officer of Jharkhand cadre. He has been instrumental in merger of 10 public sector banks into four.