Current Affairs Quiz-September, 2020

Notes:
As per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the CEO of the leading space company SpaceX, Elon Musk is now the third-richest person in the world.
The 49-year old billionaire has surpassed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk’s net worth raised to USD115.4 billion while that of Zuckerberg is USD 110.8 billion. The first and the second positions were featured by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos respectively.

Notes:
India’s leading private sector lender ICICI Bank has launched a virtual property exhibition called ‘Home Utsav’. Real estate projects promoted by renowned developers across important cities of the country would be showcased in the exhibition.
The Bank has also offered special concession in interest rates, processing fee along with facility of digital sanction of loans to its customers who are buying properties through the exhibition.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet has recently approved the new comprehensive Civil Services reforms programme named “Mission Karmayogi”.
The programme aims to create a ‘citizen centric civil service’, which focusses on behavioural change. It will be delivered by setting up an Integrated Government Online Training- iGOT Karmayogi Platform. A Public Human Resources Council under the Prime Minister, will monitor the programme.

Notes:
The Government of India has blocked 118 Mobile Apps which are considered to be prejudicial to Sovereignty and Integrity of the nation and the Defence security of the country.
The move has been made by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology by using the powers vested under Section 69A of Information Technology (IT) Act. This includes apps like PUBG and Wechat.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban affairs has released a set of guidelines for the restarting Metro services under the Unlock 4 measures.
Metro trains will resume services in a phased manner across the country from September 7, except in Maharashtra. The state will decide on when to restart the services. As per the guidelines, the stations coming under containment zones will remain closed.

Notes:
The Government of India has appointed Kshatrapati Shivaji as the chief Statistician of India from September 1, 2020.
The 1986-batch IAS officer will take charge as the Secretary in Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). The Government has not appointed a full-time Chief statistician yet while Kshatrapati Shivaji will continue to head the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.

Notes:
Researchers of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have developed a method to detect corona virus infection using mass spectrometer.
In this method, the virus detection can be done with sensitivity of 90 % and specificity of 100 %. The time taken from sample to result is 30 minutes. IGIB is an institute under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Ltd (APIIC) has entered into a MoU with CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology for setting up of Bulk Drug Park in the state.
As per the MoU, CSIR-IICT will act as a knowledge partner and provide technical assistance to prepare a proposal to be submitted by the Andhra Pradesh Government to the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, for seeking financial assistance.

Notes:
In the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking (WUR) 2021, a total of 63 universities from India qualified for the ranking, whereas none could make it to the top 300.
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has been placed in the “Rank: 301 – 350” category and is the only Indian institution to be listed in the top 350 institutions. China’s Tsinghua University becomes the first-ever Asian university to make the overall top 20.

Notes:
The current President of the European Union, Germany has launched its Indo-Pacific strategy with India.
The strategy launched by the Germany’s Foreign Ministry suggested dialogue with institutions such as Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), and Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), in the fields of maritime safety and disaster risk management.