Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

Notes:
Ecowrap is the research report of India’s largest lender State Bank of India. Recently, SBI released its latest Ecowrap report.
It has revised the baseline fiscal deficit to 7.9 per cent of the revised GDP in FY21, which is more than double to its previous estimate. The report had earlier estimated the fiscal deficit as 3.5 % of GDP. The reason for the revision is due to the lower revenues and higher expenditure against the backdrop of Covid-19 pandemic.

Notes:
A patent was filed by the Defence Ministry in association with the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) for the low cost personal protective equipment (PPE) developed by the Indian Navy.
The Defence Ministry has successfully patented PPEs, which would fast-track mass production of PPEs. The equipment developed by the Navy is made of a special fabric which provides high quality and high breathability, unlike other PPEs available in the market. A pilot batch of PPEs has already been produced at Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.

Notes:
According to the Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In), the national technology arm to prevent cyber-attacks, android users who use mobile banking in mobile phones might be vulnerable to a new malware called ‘EventBot’.
The authorities also announced that the new malware steals personal and sensitive information of the users. It also warned that the Trojan virus may project itself as a genuine application such as MS Word and enter into the victim’s device. To combat the malware, CERT-in has advised users not to download applications from untrusted sources.

Notes:
The Commander-in-Chief A&N Command recently commissioned INLCU L57 into the Indian Navy at Port Blair. INLCU L57 is the seventh Landing Craft Utility (LCU) MK-IV class to be inducted into the Indian Navy.
The ship has been indigenously designed and built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata. The amphibious vessels are based at the Andaman and Nicobar Command and is to be deployed for transporting and deploying tanks and equipment, search and rescue, disaster relief operations.

Notes:
The nation-wide electronic agriculture trading portal, e-NAM has recently reached milestone of 1000 mandis (markets) across 18 states and three union territories.
e-NAM was launched in 2016, with the objective of connecting the existing mandis on a common online market platform for agricultural produce in the country. With the recent addition of 38 mandis, it has reached the milestone of 1000 mandis, for which May 15 was fixed as the deadline. Amid the lock-down, trade through e-NAM reduces human intervention in the process.

Notes:
The Government has recently accepted and implemented three important recommendations of Committee of Experts (CoE) under the Chairmanship of Lt General D B Shekatkar (Retd).
The three recommendations are related to border Infrastructure, which focusses on speeding up road construction. Another recommendation was to outsource the road construction projects that were beyond the optimal capacity of BRO. Engineering Procurement Contract (EPC) mode is to be adopted for execution of works costing above Rs 100 crore.

Notes:
The Cabinet of Nepal has recently approved their new political map including Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura under its territory.
Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali announced that the official map of Nepal will be released by the Ministry of Land Management soon. The announcement has been made amid a border dispute between India and Nepal. Both the countries claim Kalapani as an integral part of their territory.

Notes:
Three Baltic countries in the northern Europe: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania initiated the re-connection measure named as ‘travel bubble’.
The European Union countries started this to make their economies back to form, after the post-Covid lock downs. They are also less- populated and comparatively less affected by Covid-19. The travel bubble would allow members of the group to renew trade ties with each other and restart travel and tourism sector.

Notes:
India recently observed the 46th anniversary of its first nuclear test in Rajasthan’s Pokhran, conducted on May 18.
The peaceful first nuclear was codenamed the ‘Smiling Buddha’, which proclaimed India as a nuclear power. As the test was conducted on the Buddha Poornima of that year, the event was codenamed after Buddha. Indira Gandhi was the Prime of Minister of India during the tests and it was the first confirmed nuclear test by a country that was not a permanent member of the UNSC.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath recently launched “Uttar Pradesh Start-up Fund” by partnering with the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).
The state had earlier signed a MoU with SIDBI to speed-up the formation of start-ups in the state. He also handed over the first instalment of Rs 15 crore to SIDBI. The migrant workers will be provided jobs based on their skills and youths of the states will be encouraged to form start-ups.