Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2020

Notes:
Hima Das, the country’s first track athlete to win a global title, has been nominated for the prestigious ‘Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna’ by the state government of Assam.
Hima Das is a 20-year-old athlete from Dhing village in Assam and is one of the youngest nominees for the country’s highest sporting honour this year. The sprinter will compete with javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, wrestler Vinesh Phogat, Table Tennis ace Manika Batra, women’s hockey captain Rani Rampal and cricketer Rohit Sharma.

Notes:
Delhi is set to have the world’s largest coronavirus facility with over 200 halls and 10,000 beds, as per the official announcement.
The Delhi government has started converting a South Delhi-based Spiritual Centre into the world’s largest Covid-19 care facility. As a sudden rise in the Covid-19 cases is seen in Delhi, this decision has been taken. The complex is expected to be fully ready by June 30 for treatment of the patients.

Notes:
The National Centre of Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) has found that the Arctic Ocean has seen the largest decline in the last 41 years due to global warming.
This has led to localised increase in evaporation, air humidity, cloud cover and rainfall. NCPOR noted that this decline in Arctic Sea ice was -13 per cent in July 2019 while it was -4.7 per cent per decade in the last 40 years. The study also noted that if this trend continues, there would be no ice left in the Arctic sea by 2050.

Notes:
Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro announced that his book titled ‘Klara and the Sun’ will be released in March 2021. He is a British novelist born in Japan.
The theme of the book is ‘what does it mean to love’. This is the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His previous literary works have earned several prestigious awards including the Booker Prize. He has also won the highest honorary awards from France and Japan.

Notes:
The Government of India has proposed to appoint two transaction advisors for assisting the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) in preparing the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation of India.
In the Union Budget 2020, Finance Minister proposed that the government will sell a part of its holding in LIC through an initial public offering. This IPO is expected to be the largest ever in the country and the advisors are asked to submit their bids till July 13.

Notes:
World Sickle Cell Day is observed globally on 19 June every year. This year is the 40th year of observance of the day by the Sickle Cell Society.
The UN General Assembly recognised sickle cell disease as a public health problem and one of the world’s foremost genetic diseases. If someone has the Sickle Cell disease, the red blood cells become hard and look like a sickle. It restricts the movement of oxygen carried by the red blood cells.

Notes:
Recently, a team of astronomers at NASA and European Space Agency ESA have discovered a neutron star called ‘Swift J1818.0-1607’.
The neutron star has been estimated to be about 240 years old. It was first discovered in March 2020, when it released a massive burst of X-rays. Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars. According to NASA, Swift J1818.0-1607 contains twice the mass of our Sun in a volume of more than one trillion times smaller.

Notes:
The Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani is the world’s ninth richest billionaire on the Forbes Real-time Billionaires List.
With a net worth of $64.6 billion, he is ahead of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The market capitalisation of Reliance Industries (RIL) crossed the Rs 11-trillion mark recently. The company also announced itself net debt free while it had net debt of Rs 1.61 trillion in March 2020. In the same month, Ambani was ranked 21st on Forbes’ annual billionaire list.

Notes:
Mount Merapi is the most volatile volcano located in the country of Indonesia. It was seen in news, as the mountain spewed ash and hot gas to about 6 kilometers into the sky.
The mountain has a height of 2,968-meter and it is one of the most active of 500 Indonesian volcanoes. It has been generating dark hot clouds since last year. The last major eruption of the mountain happened in 2010, which killed 353 people.

Notes:
Major technology company Microsoft has recently announced to shut its video game streaming service Mixer.
Microsoft partnered with Facebook to enable the users of Mixer to transit to Facebook Gaming. If the user is voluntary to switch over to Gaming service of Facebook, it has been made easy. Earlier, Apple rejected Facebook Gaming app on the iOS App Store. However, Microsoft is working on their new project ‘xCloud’.