Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2020

Notes:
The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF announced that around 2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines will be sent to developing countries next year.
UNICEF has partnered with 350 airlines and freight companies to deliver vaccines and 1 billion syringes to poor countries, as part of COVAX initiative. Under the initiative led by GAVI vaccine group and WHO among others aims to deter hoarding Covid-19 vaccines.

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The Asian Development Bank has approved a USD 50 million loan to improve resource planning and operational efficiencies in West Bengal.
This loan will be supplemented by a USD 350,000 technical assistance grant for other reforms including monitoring of IFMS (Integrated Financial Management System) reforms.

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Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad launched the UMANG’s international version in coordination with Ministry of External Affairs for select countries including USA, UK, Canada, Australia, UAE, Netherlands, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
An online conference was organized to mark the occasion of 3 years of UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) and a milestone of 2000 plus services. The app will help Indian international students, NRIs and Indian tourists to avail the services of the Government.

Notes:
Union Food Processing Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has recently inaugurated a mega food park (MFP) at Phagwara of Kapurthala district in the state of Punjab.
The Mega Food park has been built at a cost of Rs 107.83 crores and spread over 55 acres of land. It is expected to benefit over 25000 farmers and create employment opportunities for more than 5000 people. 37 MFPs have been sanctioned in our country as on date, and 20 of them are functioning.

Notes:
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Invest India has recently launched the SDG Investor Map for India.
UNDP highlighted 18 investment opportunities areas (IOAs), which are in 6 important SDG (sustainable development goals) enabling sectors including education, healthcare, agriculture among others. This is expected to bridge the SDG financing gap occurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Notes:
‘International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women’ is observed every year on November 25, led by the United Nations General Assembly.
This year, the theme for the International Day is “Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!”, to focus on bridging the funding gaps to serve the survivors of violence. UN observed that violence against women and girls has increased during the pandemic, terming it ‘Shadow Pandemic’.

Notes:
Veteran Congress leader and eight-time parliamentarian Ahmed Patel recently passed way due to Covid related complications, at the age of 71.
He had been the political adviser of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and is known for driving the party out of difficult situations. He was serving as the Congress treasurer. At a very young age, he was selected by the then PM Rajiv Gandhi to lead the Gujarat Congress.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched ‘Har Ghar Nal Yojana’ in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The scheme aims to provide piped water supply to over 4.1 million people in the two districts of Sonbhadra and Mirzapur.
The outlay of the project is Rs 5,555 crore. The scheme will also benefit over 3,000 villages to access piped water supply.

Notes:
University of Lucknow, a public University in Uttar Pradesh, became the third University in India to have a commemorative coin of Rs 100 issued on its centenary year.
Prior to this, only Mysore University and Banaras Hindu University had received the honour. Prime Minister attended the celebration of Centennial Foundation Day of the University virtually and released special stamp and Rs 100 coin

Notes:
The “Swasthya Sathi” scheme is a health insurance scheme of the state of West Bengal, which was launched in Dec 2016. It provides secondary and tertiary health care up to Rs.5 lakh per annum per family.
The Chief Minister of West Bengal has recently announced that the “Swasthya Sathi” scheme would cover entire population of the State.