Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

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 evacuation exercise of India, considered to be one of the largest, has been named the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’, will engage about 64 flights to bring home Indian nationals stranded abroad.
Several countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, UK, Singapore and the US will be covered. In the first week of repatriation, the Gulf countries will be focussed. The highest number of flights to bring back people, were allotted for the states of Kerala (15), Tamil Nadu (11) and Delhi (11).

Notes:
According to the ‘Digital in India’ report recently released by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), there were more Internet users in rural areas when compared to those in urban areas for the first time.
As of last November, out of the total 504 million active internet users, there were 227 million active internet users in rural areas while there were 205 million in urban areas. But the time spent on internet is higher among the urban people. The report also highlighted that there was an increase of 21% in female internet users, higher than that of male users (9%).

Notes:
Recently, the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) designed and produced by the Indian Navy has been certified for mass production and clinical usage.
The PPE has been developed by the team of Innovation Cell, Institute of Naval Medicine, Mumbai and the Naval Dockyard Mumbai. INMAS (Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences) Delhi, an authorised DRDO organization has tested and certified the PPE. The benchmarks of testing are set by the ICMR and the Health Ministry.

Notes:
Monaco-headquartered International Association of Athletics Federations leads the celebration of World Athletics Day in the month of May. The first World Athletics Day was celebrated in 1996.
Every year, the date is decided by IAAF and this year it was celebrated on May 7. IAAF was founded at Stockholm, Sweden in the year 1912. The Athletics Day is celebrated to educate the people about the significance of sports and to encourage athletics as the foundational sport in educational institutions.

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:
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh recently inaugurated the strategically important Ghatiabagar-Lipulekh motor road.
The road connects the last Indian post on the Indo-China border in Uttarakhand’s Vyas valley. The construction of the road commenced in 2008 and was scheduled to be completed in 2013, but it was delayed due to the tough terrain. The Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra from Lipulekh pass is more convenient for pilgrims, after the road has been commissioned.

Notes:
The Sunderbans delta, which is spread over India and Bangladesh, is the only mangrove forest in the world inhabited by tigers.
According to the latest estimation conducted by the West Bengal Forest Department, the count of tigers has increased by 8 in 2019-20 to 96, from 88 in the previous year. The increase was significant as this is the biggest annual jump ever reported from the Sundarbans, which is a world heritage site and a Ramsar site.

Notes:
The Government of India has recently issued a set of guidelines to be followed for data processing of Aarogya Setu app users.
As per the new rules, the storage of data beyond 180 days is prohibited and users can seek deletion of their data from the government’s records within 30 days of request. The new norms allow collection of only demographic, contact, self-assessment and location data of infected persons and their contacts. Any violation of these directions may lead to penalties under the Disaster Management Act, 2005.

Notes:
The national public health institute of the United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has committed $3.6 million to assist India’s response to the COVID19 pandemic.
This initial tranche of funding will help India to strengthen and support the efforts of India to increase laboratory capacity for SARS-COV-2 testing. The CDC India program will also provide technical assistance for India’s response for the ongoing crisis emergency.