Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment has partnered with TCS iON to offer free online “Career Skills Training” on its National Career Service (NCS) portal.
This scheme is to be implemented under the Ministry’s National Career Service (NCS) project, which provides several employment related services. This course also includes soft skills required by several industries. The training module is available to the registered job-seekers in both Hindi and English.

Notes:
The National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, has released the Provisional Estimates of National Income for the financial year 2019-20.
As per the data, the Indian economy grew by 4.2 percent in the year 2019-20, as compared to the 6.1 percent growth in 2018-19. This GDP growth rate is said to be the lowest in past 11 years. Also, during the January-March (final) quarter of the year 2019-20, the growth rate of GDP fell to 3.1%. The Per Capita Income (real) had a growth of 3.1 percent during 2019-20, as against 4.8 per cent in the previous year.

Notes:
The Tata Group has recently signed a partnership agreement with the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) of Thiruvananthapuram for commercial production of Covid-19 testing kits.
The kits to be produced are based on Reverse Transcriptase Loop-Mediated Amplification (RT-LAMP) technology for Covid-19 detection. The kits provide results in a lesser time against the conventional method. Earlier, Tata Sons had partnered with CSIR- Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology to produce CRISPR-based COVID test kits.

Notes:
June 1 was declared as the Global Day of Parents by the UN General Assembly in 2012. Since then, June 1 is being celebrated as Global Day of Parents every year.
The day is celebrated with an objective of honouring all the parents around the world for their commitment and sacrifice they do for their children. Among the efforts to build social development, the UNGA proclaimed 1994 as the International Year of the Family and 15 May of every year as the International Day of Families.

Notes:
Veteran politician and former Union Minister P Namgyal recently passed away at the age of 83, after contracting Covid-19.
He was also 3-time Member of Parliament from Ladakh representing the Congress Party. He had served as Minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs, Surface Transport and Chemicals & Petro chemicals. The Senior leader played a crucial role in obtaining ‘Tribal area’ status for Ladakh.

Notes:
Global credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service has currently degraded India’s foreign currency and local currency long-term issuer ratings to Baa3.
The agency had previously rated India’s ratings as Baa2. The reason for the downgrade of ratings was the high challenges to be faced by the policy-making institutions in enacting and implementing policies for sustainable growth in the country. Moody’s had upgraded India’s ratings to Baa2 in November 2017.

Notes:
The Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Kiren Rijiju has recently launched a 25-day Khelo India Community Coach Development Programme.
The programme seeks to train about 15,000 Physical Education Teachers and Community Coaches across India. Sports Ministry will collaborate with the Human Resources Ministry to implement this programme in all school in India.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu released the standard operating procedure for the salons, beauty parlours and spas, when they resume their service after the lockdown.
As per the rules, the mentioned service providers will have to maintain a record of the name, phone number, address and Aadhaar number of the customers as a preventive measure against Covid-19. It would also facilitate contact tracing. Other sanitation procedures were also provided for resuming.

Notes:
Central American countries El Salvador and Guatemala have recently witnessed a tropical storm Amanda.
The heavy rains from Tropical Storm Amanda caused many people dead and missing. It has caused extreme damages across the two countries. The countries have set up temporary shelters to accommodate thousands of people after their homes were damaged.

Notes:
Leading Private sector bank of India, Axis Bank has recently partnered with Mastercard India and payment service provider, Worldline India to launch a digital point-of-sale solution named as ‘Soft POS’.
The solution aims to assist offline merchants and local kirana stores in accepting payments using their smartphones, through several digital form factors including Bharat QR, sending payment links to customers etc. It can accept NFC-based payments to boost contactless payments in the country and features like e-Khata for reconciliations.