Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, CBIC has recently launched its flagship faceless assessment programme Turant Customs.
The programme has been launched at Bengaluru and Chennai. With this, the goods imported at Chennai would be assessed by the Customs officers at Bengaluru and vice versa. This is the first phase of the nation-wide rollout of the facility. This step is expected to increase the ease of doing business in the country.

Notes:
The IT subsidiary of the Mahindra Group Tech Mahindra has signed a joint declaration with UN Global Compact urging governments to align their COVID-19 recovery efforts with the latest climate science.
The IT firm and business services provider has also reaffirmed its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions and target to increase the renewable source of energy to 50% by 2025. It has adopted a low emission technology path to increase the use of renewable energy from 1.7% in 2016 to 18% in 2020.

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.

Notes:
The forest department of Uttarakhand has dedicated a biodiversity park in Haldwani to the people of state and country.
The park is named as the ‘Sarv Dharm Vatika’, which spans over 18-acre area with 40 different sections and 479 plant species associated with all religions. It also possesses living fossils and a soil museum, that displays the earth from tropical, subtropical, temperature and alpine zones. It also has Jurassic garden with various living plant families of the Jurassic period.

Notes:
The World Bank has provided Rs. 1,950 crore loans to the state of West Bengal for tackling COVID crisis and developmental work in the state.
Announcing the news about the loan, the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that out of the total loan, Rs. 1,100 crore will be spent for creating Industrial infrastructures and remaining Rs. 850 crore has been allocated for social-Welfare schemes.

Notes:
India’s leading shipbuilder, Kolkata-based Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) has recently delivered the Fast Patrol Vessel named ‘ICGS Kanaklata Barua’.
It is the fifth and final ship in the series of Fast Patrol Vessels (FPV) for the Indian Coast Guard. This is also the 105th vessel delivered by the GRSE shipyard, a state-owned defence enterprise. It had earlier delivered vessels named ICGS Priyadarshini, ICGS Annie Besant and ICGS Amrit Kaur in this series to the Coast Guard.

Notes:
The state government of Haryana has announced that it would construct 1,000 water recharge bores in underground water deficient areas of the state.
The programme seeks to recharge underground water with rainfall. Announcing this programme, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said that 90 percent of the cost of the bore project will be borne by the government and the remaining 10 percent by the farmers.

Notes:
Indian-American soil scientist Dr Rattan Lal has won the prestigious World Food Prize. The award is considered to be equivalent to a Nobel Prize in agriculture.
Dr Rattan Lal has been awarded for his contribution in assisting small farmers to improve their soil’s health. This has let the global food supply to increase considerably. He has promoted soil-saving techniques which has benefitted the livelihoods of more than 500 million small farmers.

Notes:
The Aquatic Quarantine Facility (AQF), a premier institution of Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Aquaculture, MPEDA, Ministry of Commerce & Industry (RGCA-MPEDA), has received 3,600 numbers of L. vannamei (White-leg shrimp) brood stock imported by India’s shrimp hatchery operators from Hawaii.
The brood-stock were successfully quarantined for five days and handed over to the hatchery operators with 97.12 per cent survival. This has been achieved for the first time since the inception of the Aquatic Quarantine Facility.

Notes:
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has recently approved an additional $750 million loan to strengthen India’s fight against Covid-19.
This loan would be co-financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The funds will be utilised for boosting the businesses in informal sector, providing social security for the deserving and strengthening the health care systems of India.