Current Affairs Quiz - June, 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:
Multinational professional services network Deloitte is partnering with Google cloud to help Indian firms in leveraging digital technology.
The firms have extended their global alliance to India to enable the Indian enterprises modernize cloud technology adoption. It will also provide solutions in field such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Contact Center AI.

Notes:
Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has partnered with the Common Service Centre (CSC) to enable the pensioners submit Digital Jeevan Pramaan (Life Certificate).
As per the statement of the Labour Ministry, around 65 lakh pensioners can submit their life certificate through over 3.65 lakh CSCs. Every year, the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) pensioners need to submit their life certificates to continue to draw pension, as the life certificate will remain valid for one year from date of submission.

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:
Research institute of Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has announced that the Amazon rainforest witnessed deforestation of 829 sq km in May 2020.
This is the highest monthly level of deforestation observed in the forest since 2015. The institute also announced that deforestation increased by 91 sq km compared to the same period last year. The Prime Minister of Brazil is advocating for farming and mining in protected areas to improve economy.

Notes:
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed a sanitising chamber named ‘GermiKlean’ to disinfect uniforms of security forces.
GermiKlean is a dry heat treatment chamber which can sanitise 25 pairs of uniforms within 15 minutes. DRDO has also designed a sanitisation tunnel and a sanitisation mat for foot sanitisation of security forces. Delhi Police had earlier submitted their requirement for sanitising their uniforms, canes and helmets.

Notes:
The Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Anil Baijal has constituted an Expert Advisory Committee to advise Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) related to COVID-19 management in Delhi.
The committee would advise on the challenges being faced in Delhi, suggest measures to develop medical infrastructure and to integrate measures of multiple agencies for effective curbing of Covid-19. The committee has Director General of ICMR and Director of AIIMS are among the members of the committee.

Notes:
A team of researchers at IIT- Kharagpur has developed a system based on artificial intelligence to track social distancing.
The cyber-physical system monitors social distancing in public places, by detecting the gap between individuals. It plays an alert sound, whenever social distancing norms mandated by the Health Ministry is violated. This is also a low-cost device, which can even be used in remote places.

Notes:
The Union Government has launched a new healthcare supply chain portal called ‘Aarogyapath’. The portal has been launched by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
The objective of the portal is to provide real-time availability of critical healthcare supplies for manufacturers, suppliers and customers. As per the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, the public platform can help customers in knowing about critical healthcare supplies.

Notes:
As per the revised clinical management protocols released by the Union Health Ministry, Anosmia (called as Loss of smell) and Ageusia (called Loss of taste) has been added to the official list of COVID-19 symptoms.
These symptoms are being continuously reported by the coronavirus-infected patients before the beginning of respiratory symptoms. Health Ministry also approved use of Remdesivir to treat Covid-19 in moderate stage of criticality and use of HCQ (hydroxychloroquine) to treat Covid-19 in early stages.