Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
The 18th Bench of Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has been recently inaugurated for the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh inaugurated the bench through video conference. The CAT Bench would deal exclusively with service matters of government employees. With this all the departments of the Department of Personnel Training (DoPT) namely Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Central Information Commission (CIC) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) are now operational in the UTs.

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:
Major technology company IBM has dropped facial recognition software amid racial profiling concerns.
The Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna has notified the US Congress that IBM is not offering its the general-purpose facial recognition or analysis software any more. It also firmly opposes the technology that is used for mass surveillance, racial profiling and violations of basic human rights.

Notes:
The Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) has sought special proposals from Amazon for selling masks and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits.
Since a huge market has been formed for masks across the world particularly among all fashion brands, several Indian players have started exporting non-medical and designer masks. The exporters are also exploring measures of getting international certifications needed to export to other countries.

Notes:
The Madhya Pradesh government has recently launched the Rozgar Setu portal that will provide employment to migrant labourers.
It was announced that all migrant workers who have returned to their home state have been registered on the portal. The portal also has the details of the employers who are looking for workers as they re-start economic activities. The state will also hold Rozgar melas in the next two months to employ these workers.

Notes:
The President of Asian Development Bank (ADB) Masatsugu Asakawa has launched a high-level panel of leading experts to help Southeast Asian economies tackle COVID-19 pandemic.
The panel is moderated by the ADB Vice-President Ahmed M. Saeed. Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan features in the list among the experts of finance, health and economy. The panel will focus on structural reforms, innovation in domestic resource mobilization among others.

Notes:
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international agreement between governments. India is also a signatory to CITES. It seeks to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.
The Environment ministry has issued rules for dealing with the import of exotic species and for assessing scale of possession within the country, as per the CITES agreement. Exotic live species are defined as plants and animals that are moved from their original habitat to a new one by human intervention.

Notes:
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has become the first construction sector organisation to go fully digital.
NHAI has launched ‘Data Lake and Project Management Software’, a cloud-based and artificial intelligence-powered big data analytics platform. With this launch, the entire project workflow of NHAI has been transformed to that based on online portal. The system will also predict the financial impacts of different alternatives.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Odisha Naveen Patnaik had earlier announced that the state would provide an incentive of Rs 2000 per migrant after successful completion of quarantine period.
Recently, the proposed incentives have been paid to 1,10,080 people, as per the Health and Family Welfare Department of the state. For this incentive disbursal, ₹19.03 crore have been spent from the Chief Minister Relief Fund.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Maharashtra Uddhav Thackeray and Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan launched an Integrated Flood Warning System called ‘IFLOWS-Mumbai’.
The warning system has been jointly developed by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). It would relay alerts of possible flood-prone areas at 6 to 72 hours in advance. After Chennai, Mumbai is only the second city to get such system.