Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2020

Notes:
World Health Day was first established in 1999 by the World Heart Federation (WHF) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO).
World Heart Day is annually observed on September 29 to raise public awareness about cardiovascular diseases and their prevention. The World Heart Federation asks people around the world to ‘Use Heart to Beat CVD’.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has extended the enhanced borrowing facility provided to banks by six more months.
The facility to borrow under MSF scheme to meet liquidity shortage till March 31, 2021. Earlier in the March, the RBI had increased the limit from 2 per cent to 3 per cent of their net demand and time liabilities.

Notes:
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) is celebrating the sixth anniversary of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U).
To commemorate the event, the Ministry is organising a webinar titled ‘Swachhata Ke 6 Saal, Bemisaal’. The Ministry said that 4,327 urban local bodies have been declared open defecation-free (ODF) so far.

Notes:
Indian Meteorological Department was established in 1875. As per a recent a recent release by the IMD, India received above normal monsoon during the 4-month long rainfall season of this year.
This year has recorded the second highest rainfall in the last 30 years. IMD has stated that the country received 109% rainfall during the Long Period Average, with 3 out of the 4 months receiving above normal precipitation.

Notes:
American Scientists Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice, and British scientist Michael Houghton were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.
The award has been presented for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Their work helped to explore a major source of blood-borne hepatitis, which couldn’t be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses.

Notes:
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is set to commission India’s largest HPC-AI supercomputer, ‘PARAM Siddhi – AI’.
The initiative has been led by Scientist and Program Director at CDAC Abhishek Das. The same has been approved by the Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad. The supercomputer will have 210 AI Petaflops and will be based on NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD reference architecture.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kozhikode is set to launch an e-learning hub and library as a pilot project for villagers in Mavoor.
The village is one among the five villages adopted by the institution under the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan. Under the scheme, academicians are engaged in solving the local problems of the society. IIM Kozhikode is a partner institute for the UBA programme.

Notes:
The Union Government has recently appointed economists Ashima Goyal, Jayanth R Varma and Shashanka Bhide as members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by the prime minister, approved the names. The new members will replace Chetan Ghate, Pami Dua and Ravindra Dholakia. The RBI had earlier postponed the last meeting of the MPC.

Notes:
India and Israel have agreed to advance bilateral cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus with special focus on technological cooperation.
During the telephonic conversation between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, the leaders agreed to hold a digital conference on innovation in the field of solar energy.

Notes:
According to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) revised trade forecast, the World merchandise trade is expected to fall by 9.2 percent in 2020.
However, the WTO also estimated that the world will record a 7.2 percent rise in the year 2021. Earlier in the month of April, WTO had predicted that the volume of world merchandise trade would decline between 13 percent and 32 percent for 2020.