Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
The National Geographic channel has released a film titled ‘Swachh Bharat: India’s Sanitary Revolution’, in collaboration with the Union Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation.
The film was recently premiered at a special screening for the Indian President and also on the NatGeo channel. The film is also made available on the YouTube channel of Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen. Many ‘Ambassadors of cleanliness’ share their connection with the scheme in the film.

Notes:
Chinese mobile communication cum consumer electronics company OPPO has recently partnered with Indian start-up incubator T-Hub to support start-up ecosystem in India.
Under the partnership, the start-ups specialising in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, 5G, Battery, Camera and Image Processing will be scaled up. The selected start-up firms will receive incubation support and market access from OPPO as well as mentorship from T-Hub.

Notes:
The Prime Minister has recently delivered the inaugural address at the 125th Annual Session of Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) through video conference.
The theme of this year’s annual conference is “Building India for a New World: Lives, livelihood, growth”. The Prime Minister addressed the conference on “Getting Growth Back”. He congratulated the industry body on completing 125 years of the organisation and said Intent, Inclusion, Investment, Infrastructure and Innovation important to build an Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

Notes:
The global innovation mapping and research company StartupBlink has recently released its annual Ecosystem Rankings Report.
As per this year’s report, India has been ranked at 23rd place out of 100 countries. In the last year’s report, India was placed at 17th rank. The report collects local data of every country to rank their start-up ecosystem based on the quality of start-ups and business environment. The United States was placed at the top spot. Only four Indian cities were ranked in the top 100 start-up cities list.

Notes:
Veteran bureaucrat Rajeev Topno, a 1996 batch IAS officer who had been serving as the private secretary to the Prime Minister, has been appointed as senior advisor to the Executive Director (ED), World Bank.
As per the Personnel Ministry order issued, five other officers have been appointed to various posts abroad. This includes the appointment of Ravi Kota as Minister (Economic) at the Indian embassy in Washington; Lekhan Thakkar as Counsellor (Economic) at the Indian Embassy in Beijing; H Atheli, as Advisor (Director-level) to the ED of the ADB among others.

Notes:
Indian poet cum writer Javed Akhtar has become the first Indian to receive the prestigious Richard Dawkins Award for 2020.
The award is named after the English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. It is provided to individuals from the fields of science, education or entertainment, who publicly proclaim the values of secularism, rationalism and upholds scientific truth. The first edition of the award was awarded in the year 2003.

Notes:
The Government has allowed filing of NIL GST monthly return in FORM GSTR-3B through SMS. The taxpayers with NIL liability are not required to log on to the GST Portal.
This step is expected to make the tax compliance easy for over 22 lakh registered taxpayers who had to otherwise log into their account and file returns every month. India ranks 115 out of around 190 countries in ease of paying taxes.

Notes:
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has recently released the results of the second ‘State Food Safety Index’.
The index was released on the occasion of the webinar ‘Food Safety is everyone’s business’, organised by FSSAI to celebrate the World Food Safety Day during a webinar. Gujarat has topped among larger States in the index, while Chandigarh tops among UTs. Goa topped among smaller States in the index. A e-handbook on ‘Eat Right during COVID-19’ was also released.

Notes:
Social media giant Twitter has recently launched a new test feature named ‘Fleets’ in India, which allows users post messages that would disappear after 24 hours.
This feature is similar to the ‘stories’ feature introduced on Instagram or Facebook. However, Fleets do not have features such as likes, retweets, or public replies. Twitter has introduced the fleets in India after Brazil and Italy. This will be available on the latest version of the Twitter application.

Notes:
The Union Government has created the Micro Irrigation Fund with the corpus of Rs. 5000 crore with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).
Under the fund, NABARD will provide the amount to states on concessional rate of interest to promote micro-irrigation. Moreover, the annual allotment of Rs. 4000 crore has been made under the ‘Per Drop More Crop’ component of Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY- PDMC). The scheme focuses on improving water use efficiency through micro Irrigation techniques.