Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2020

Notes:
A team of engineers at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) had developed an intensive care unit (ICU) grade ventilator under the name of ‘Project Praana’.
Recently, the team has successfully completed the prototyping of the ventilator, which is now in the process of being commercialised. The affordable ventilator uses only components made in India or components which are easily available in the domestic markets. The team developed the ventilator in a record 35 days.

Notes:
Amazon has recently acquired the Self-driving Car start-up firm Zoox, in a deal estimated to be worth over USD 1 billion.
Zoox is an American company, which employs more than 1000 persons and was also developing an electric self-driving vehicle. As per sources, this is Amazon’s biggest investment so far in self-driving car technology. This is also one of its biggest purchases ever. The technology is expected to be deployed in automated delivery projects of Amazon.

Notes:
June 30 is the day designated by the United Nations to celebrate the International Day of Parliamentarism.
The United Nations General Assembly recognized the role of parliaments in developing the world, and designated the special day. On the same day in the year 1889, the global organization of parliaments called the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) was established.

Notes:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has released the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report.
As per the report, 40% of poorest countries failed to support learners at risk during COVID-19 crisis. It also revealed that fewer than 10% of countries have laws that help ensure inclusion in education. UNESCO urged all countries to focus on people who are left behind and improve inclusion.

Notes:
India celebrates National Doctor’s Day on July 1 each year, in honour of the birth and death anniversary of Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy.
He was a veteran physician of the country and the second Chief minister of West Bengal. Indian Government established the Doctor’s Day in the year of 1991. This year, the theme of the day is “Lessen the mortality of COVID-19”.

Notes:
The President of France Emmanuel Macron has named Jean Castex as the next French Prime Minister.
The previous Prime Minister Edouard Philippe had resigned earlier. The President has reshuffled the Government to restart the country’s economy. Jean Castex is a 55-year-old public servant, who has also coordinated the re-opening strategy in the country.

Notes:
The Vice President of India is set to launch the first social media super-application of the country named ‘Elyments’. More than 1000 IT professionals have created the application.
The application, that will be available in more than 8 Indian languages, aims to combine the features of popular social media applications and present it on a single unified app. It also has features such as free audio and video calls and chats.

Notes:
Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel has authored a book titled ‘Overdraft: Saving the Indian Saver’.
The book is set to be released by the end of July 2020. The book focusses on the non-performing assets (NPAs) issue that has caused huge distress to the country’s banking sector. It also highlights the causes of NPAs and the efforts of Urjit Patel to deal with the issue as the Governor of RBI.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee has launched the state’s own document scanning application named ‘Self Scan’.
The application has been developed by the state’s information technology department. This has been launched amidst the ban imposed by the Centre over 59 Chinese mobile apps. The Chief Minister also inaugurated the state’s first Plasma Bank for treatment of COVID-19 positive patients.

Notes:
The fourth edition of the Ministerial on Climate Action (MoCA) was recently held through video conferencing.
India’s Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar represented the country in the meeting. It was co-chaired by European Union, China and Canada to discuss on the implementation of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).