Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

Notes:
As per the recent reports, the Parliament of Iran has passed a bill to allow the Government to change the national currency from Rial to Toman.
Since 2017, the value of Iranian currency fell after heavy U.S. sanctions, which led to huge inflation and resultant street protests across the country. Now under the bill, the Government will slash four zeroes from the from its currency ‘Rial’. This bill should be approved by the clerical body before coming into effect.

Notes:
Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), a lab of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have entered into a partnership to commercialise the FNCAS9 Editor Linked Uniform Detection Assay, FELUDA test kit developed by IGIB.
Under the agreement, the licensing of KNOW-HOW for rapid and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 will also be undertaken. The FELUDA kit is affordable, easy to use and not dependant on the expensive Q-PCR machines. It uses Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) based technology and paper strip model of chemistry.

Notes:
The new Prime Minister of Iraq, Mustafa al-Kadhimi assumed office after the country’s parliament approved a new government. The parliament also approved 15 ministers in a vote of confidence and seven ministries including Foreign affairs and Oil were left empty.
There has been political crisis for more than six months in the country. The two previous nominees for the role of prime minister, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi and Adnan al-Zurfi failed to secure the required support from cabinet ministers.

Notes:
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has recently approved the abolition of 9,304 posts in the Military Engineering Service. MES is a government Defence infrastructure development agency.
As per the recommendations of the Committee of Experts, headed by Lieutenant General Shekatkar, and the proposal of the Engineer-in-Chief of MES, the posts in the basic and industrial workforce have been scrapped, which will improve the combat capability and trim the defence expenditure.

Notes:
NITI Aayog and the Department of Biotechnology have launched the Consortium for Affordable & Rapid Diagnostics (CARD) project.
The project aims to scale up India’s capacity to make coronavirus testing kits. The primary goal is to manufacture at least 10 million rapid antibody tests for Covid-19 by July. It also aims to expand RT-PCR test kits in India. The announcement has come after quality issues faced with Chinese-made antibody testing kits.

Notes:
According to the data released by the Registrar General of India in its Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin based on data collected for 2018, the infant mortality rate was found to be 32 per thousand of the population. The national birth rate and death rate stood at 20 and 6.2 respectively.
Madhya Pradesh has worst infant mortality rate in the country with 48 per thousand while Nagaland has the best IMR (4). Bihar continues to top the birth rate list with Andaman and Nicobar Islands at the bottom. Chhattisgarh has the highest death rate, while Delhi has the lowest.

Notes:
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the city corporation of Bengaluru has launched ‘Pranavayu programme’ to create awareness about self-examination of respiratory health for the city-dwellers.
The programme aims at educating people with low oxygen level in their blood to check themselves at an early stage. Under the programme, several advertisements are published in media about self-examination.

Notes:
The Indian Council of Medical Research, ICMR and National Centre for Disease Control proposed to launch a population-based sero-survey at district level.
This operation is to be done in collaboration with key stakeholders and State Health Departments. It involves testing the blood serum predominantly. All population groups including outpatient attendees, pregnant women and health care workers will be tested.

Notes:
The Union Finance Minister announced the details of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Yojana package launched by the Prime Minister.
One of the features was the global tenders being disallowed in government procurement up to Rs 200 crore. This would reduce unfair foreign competition for MSMEs and support the ‘Make in India’ initiative. She also announced Rs 3 lakh crore Emergency Working Capital Facility for Businesses, including MSMEs.

Notes:
The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), a statutory organization under the Ministry of MSME is the implementing agency of ‘Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP).
After the Prime Minister announced to support the local products, KVIC announced a set of guidelines to fast-track the implementation of projects under the flagship program PMEGP. The concerned agencies will have to scrutinize the applications and forward it to banks within 26 days. It was also instructed to bring down the time frame to 15 days.