Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
Veteran economist and former member of the Planning Commission, A.Vaidyanathan recently passed away.
He served as a Chairperson of the Government of India Task Force on Revival of Cooperative Credit Institutions in 2004. He joined the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in 1956. He also served in the Food and Agricultural Organisation, Rome. He played a crucial role in developing India’s statistical system and the National Sample Survey.

Notes:
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has recently launched an Internship programme named ‘Sahakar Mitra’.
The scheme seeks to provide paid internship to youth and to ensure availability of loans to young co-operators. Each intern will get financial aid for the 4 months internship period. As a paid intern, the young professionals get practical exposure from the working of National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) and co-operatives.

Notes:
The Union Government has recently constituted an Empowered Group of Secretaries to facilitate investment in the country.
The committee, which is to be headed by the Cabinet Secretary, will identify potential investors and help in accelerating investment in key sectors of the economy. The committee will also recommend specific incentive packages for both domestic and foreign investors. The 7-member empowered group has CEO of NITI Aayog along with secretaries of DPIIT, Commerce, Revenue and Economic Affairs as its members.

Notes:
The first population estimation exercise of the Indian gaur carried out in the Nilgiris Forest Division in recent years.
As per the exercise, that was conducted in February, more than an estimated 2,000 Indian gaurs are present in the entire division. However, majority of animals were in the conflict-prone areas close to human habitations. Among the 2000 gaurs, about 794 gaurs were directly sighted over a one-week period.

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh government has recently signed a concession agreement with GMR Airports for construction of a greenfield international airport at Bhogapuram.
The proposed place is located in Vizianagaram district, which about 40 km from Visakhapatnam. The concession agreement was signed in the presence of Chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. The state cabinet had earlier approved the selection of the GMR Group as the developer for Bhogapuram international airport.

Notes:
Leading payments bank of India, Airtel Payments Bank has recently launched a salary account for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME).
Named as the ‘Suraksha Salary’ account, it will enable MSMEs and other organisations to make cashless payments. It also provides Hospicash Insurance and Personal Accidental insurance cover. As of now, it is only available to new customers and will be extended to existing account holders soon.

Notes:
The co-founder and chief executive of digital music platform Qyuki Digital Media, Samir Bangara, recently passed away following a motorcycle accident.
Samir Bangara had served as Managing Director (Digital) at Disney India, before joining the start-up firm Qyuki. In 2012, Director Shekhar Kapur and Oscar-winning musician AR Rahman launched Qyuki in Mumbai. Samir also played an instrumental role in the sale of Indiagames firm to Disney.

Notes:
India has recently joined the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) as its founding member, along with USA, UK, EU, Australia among others.
Union minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad announced that this multi-stakeholder international partnership will promote responsible human centric development and use of Artificial Intelligence. India has recently launched the National AI Strategy and also launched its dedicated National AI Portal.

Notes:
Chinese internet company ByteDance has recently announced that it is set to discontinue two of its applications Vigo Video and Vigo Lite.
The applications that allow users to create and share short videos, will be discontinued in India at the end of October 2020. ByteDance also said the users can opt to transfer their videos to TikTok, download or delete all their Vigo data from the app.

Notes:
As per the recent report of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), India received $51 billion of foreign investments in 2019.
With $51 billion, India was the world’s 9th largest recipient of foreign direct investments (FDI) in 2019. This rank was released in the flagship report of UNCTAD titled ‘The World Investment Report 2020’ released recently. Last year, India managed to attract 42 billion dollars of FDI with the rank of 12. India’s market will continue to attract market-seeking investments, UNCTAD said.