Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

Notes:
Beijing headquartered Multilateral development bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank recently approved a $500 million loan to support India’s Covid-19 operations. The loan is co-financed by the World Bank.
AIIB also highlighted that building a resilient health system to effectively treat COVID-19 patients and preventing its spread is the immediate priority. Last month the bank doubled its initial COVID-19 Crisis Recovery Facility to 10 billion from 5 billion.

Notes:
West Bengal supplies about 95 per cent of the jute bags used across the country, mainly in packaging of food-grains. As the lock-down has stopped the production of jute bags in the state, the Food Corporation of India faces a shortage of bags.
Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan announced that the government has allowed packaging of food-grains in used gunny sacks and plastic bags during the ongoing procurement season. A task force has been constituted by the Ministry to assess the shortage of jute bags for packaging amid the lock-down.

Notes:
The Union Minister for Human Resource Development Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank recently launched the Central University of Odisha Helpline ‘Bharosa’, through a virtual platform in New Delhi.
The helpline has been launched with an aim of assisting the student community during the difficult time of COVID-19 pandemic. The Helpline Number 080 46 80 10 10, aims at redressing grievances and providing services to all the students of the University.

Notes:
The TVS group and the Sundaram Medical Foundation collaborated with IIT-Madras to develop an affordable and automated respiratory assist device called The Sundaram Ventago.
This device has been developed in collaboration with hospitals like Madras Medical College and Kauvery Hospital along with guidance from institutions like MIT-Boston. The device uses automated squeezing of a self-inflating bag or AMBU bag to provide respiratory support to patients.

Notes:
The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has formed a six-member committee to prepare a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for resuming the training of sportspersons across several disciplines, after the lock-down would be lifted.
The Secretary of Sports Authority of India (SAI) Rohit Bharadwaj will head the panel. It will also include preventive measures to be observed by all stakeholders, including trainees, coaches and staff. The recommendations will be sent to the Sports Ministry for approval.

Notes:
India’s first aerospace firm and a laboratory of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) has developed a portable non-invasive ventilator, ‘SwasthVayu’.
SwasthVayu is a microcontroller-based control system, that has a potential use to treat moderate or mid-stage patients. It can be used in wards, Make shift Hospitals, dispensaries and homes. The ventilator has been developed by NAL in record 36 days.

Notes:
New Development Bank (NDB) was established by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries in 2014. Its headquarters is Shangai and is headed by veteran Indian K V Kamath.
BRICS’ New Development Bank was seen in news recently, as it has provided $1 billion loan to India to fight COVID-19. The complete emergency funds have been disbursed by the development institution, to help India in containing the human and economic losses due to Covid-19.

Notes:
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a specialised agency of the United States has recently released a report titled ‘Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 (FRA 2020)’. The report examines the status of 236 countries in the period 1990-2020.
The report highlighted that the forest area has declined all across the world in the past three decades. The rate of forest loss in 2015-2020 declined to an estimated 10 million hectares, down from 12 million hectares in 2010-2015. The report also revealed that the world lost 178 mha of forest since 1990, which is the size of Libya.

Notes:
The World Health Organisation recently released its flagship annual report ‘Global Nutrition Report’. The report highlighted that India and 87 other countries are likely to miss the global nutrition targets by 2025.
It also revealed that India has the highest rates of domestic inequalities in malnutrition. India would miss targets for all four nutritional indicators including stunting among under-5 children, anaemia among women of reproductive age, childhood overweight and exclusive breastfeeding. It also said that 37.9% of children under 5 years are stunted and 20.8% are wasted.

Notes:
As a part of the economic stimulus package, the Government has revised the definition of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The revised guidelines introduced a new criterion called ‘Annual turnover’.
For micro enterprises, the classification covers up to Rs 1 crore in investment and Rs 5 crore in turnover. Earlier, it was investment of 25 lakh in manufacturing and 10 lakh in services. 10 Crore investment and 50 Crore turnover is the criteria for Small enterprises and 20 Crore investment and 100 Crore turnover is the criteria for Medium enterprises.