Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2020

Notes:
According to the guidelines issued by the insurance regulator, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) has directed the general and health insurance companies to offer one short-term Covid-19 policy.
Named as the “Corona Kavach Policy”, the standard health policy would have a tenure period of 3.5 months to 6.5 months, and 9.5 months. As per the guidelines, the mode of payment would be a single premium. Another policy called Corona Rakshak, a standard benefit policy is also to be launched.

Notes:
Economist and former Indian Administrative Service officer N K Singh is the Chairperson of the 15th Finance Commission.
Recently, the Finance Commission has decided to form a group to develop a mechanism to incentivise states for carrying out the agricultural reforms, that were announced as part of the Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package. The group consists of Finance Commission member Ramesh Chand, Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Agarwal and Agriculture, Research and Education Secretary T Mahapatra.

Notes:
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) leaders have met during the recent annual summit held via video conference.
ASEAN is a regional association with 10 member countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Brunei, Laos. The Chair of ASEAN in 2020 is Vietnam, which hosted the virtual summit, due to travel restrictions amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Notes:
The electoral commission of the East African country Malawi has declared opposition alliance leader. Lazarus Chakwera, as the winner of the country’s presidential re-election.
The result of the previous May 2019 election has been declared invalid by the constitutional court, over allegations of irregularities. Lazarus Chakwera secured the required majority defeating the incumbent President Peter Mutharika, who has been in power since 2014.

Notes:
Veteran American Designer Milton Glaser, who was famous for his “I (HEART) NY” logo, passed away recently at the age of 91.
He was considered as a Pioneer in using brightly coloured, extroverted posters and book covers in American visual culture in the 1960s and ’70s. Glaser had designed more than 400 posters during his long art career. A book titled “The Push Pin Graphic: A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration” describes his life.

Notes:
The government of New Delhi has recently announced the launch of the country’s first dedicated plasma bank for treating Covid-19 patients.
The facility would be set up at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS), and it will be made available to all government and private hospitals of the UT. The therapy involves drawing blood from patients who have recovered from covid-19 and using the plasma and antibodies to treat active patients.

Notes:
National Statistics Day is observed on June 29 every year in India. This year it was celebrated through virtual conference with the theme of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages) and SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls).
The Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation instituted a new award ‘Prof. P. C. Mahalanobis National Award in Official Statistics’, which was conferred upon Former RBI Governor C Rangarajan. ‘Prof. P.V. Sukhatme National Award in Statistics 2020’ was given to Dr Arvind Pandey and Dr. Akhilesh Chandra Kulshreshtha.

Notes:
International Day of the Tropics is celebrated every year on 29 June. The United Nations General Assembly declared the day in the year 2016.
The International Day of the Tropics was designated to raise awareness to the specific challenges faced by tropical areas. June 29 was selected because on the same day in 2014, the inaugural State of the Tropics Report was launched by leading tropical research institutions.

Notes:
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has recently released the ‘State of World Population 2020’ report.
UNFPA is the sexual and reproductive health agency of the United Nations (UN) located in New York. As per the report, the number of missing women has more than doubled over the past 50 years, from 61 million in 1970 to 142.6 million in 2020. Out of that, India accounts for 45.8 million of missing females of the world.

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.