Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
A strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services, TCS iON, has partnered with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to provide its training partners access to digital skilling tools.
The access to digital skilling tools is provided using TCS iON Digital Glass Room facility. This partnership aims to strengthen the online content aggregation platform of NSDC, eSkill India.
TCS iON Digital Glass Room is a web-based digital education platform which enables educators to upload their own lessons.

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:
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:
India’s Permanent Mission to the UN has recently developed a special Yoga Module, to mark International Yoga Day 2020.
The International Yoga Day is celebrated on June 21, every year across the world. To commemorate this year’s Yoga Day, the Permanent Mission of India to the UN has created a special yoga module, ‘Yoga for Health – Yoga at Home’, along with yoga teachers and therapists. The module has yoga exercises, breathing and meditation practices to improve physical and mental health.

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 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.

Notes:
US space agency NASA has selected Kathy Lueders as its first female head of human spaceflight mission.
NASA has successfully sent two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In its next mission, it aims to land humans on the Moon by 2024. Kathy Lueders, who is currently the Commercial Crew Program Manager, has been named NASA’s next associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate.

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:
One of the world’s largest consumer-focused private equity firms L Catterton will buy a 0.39% stake for Rs 1894.50 crore in Jio Platforms.
Another global investment firm TPG will also buy a 0.93% stake in Jio for Rs 4,546.80 crore in the digital unit of Reliance Industries Limited. Since April 22, Jio Platforms has raised Rs 104,326.95 crore from leading global investors including Facebook, Silver Lake among others.

Notes:
As per the recent notification from the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the annual rate of inflation based on monthly Wholesale Price Index (WPI) contracted to 3.21% in the month of May 2020.
It means that the annual rate of inflation is -3.21% in May 2020. The government had suspended the release of wholesale price index (WPI) data in April, due to the nationwide lockdown. Hence the provisional figures of May are compared with final figures of March.