Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

Notes:
Ministry of Human and Resource Development has developed an e-Governance platform, SAMARTH- Enterprises Resource Planning (ERP).
The platform has been developed under National Mission of Education in Information and Communication Technology Scheme (NMEICT). SAMARTH is an open source automation engine for Universities and Higher Educational Institutions. It has been launched at National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, to automate the processes of the Institute.

Notes:
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare recently released the 3rd Advance Estimates of production of major crops for 2019-20.
As per the estimates, the total food-grain production in the country is estimated at record 295.67 million tonnes in the 2019-20 crop year. This projected production is higher by 10.46 million tonnes from previous year. The total production of Rice and Wheat during 2019-20 is estimated at around 118 million tonnes and 107 million tonnes respectively.

Notes:
In the economic stimulus package, the Finance Minister proposed an ‘Agriculture Infrastructure Fund’, which will be created immediately with an outlay of Rs. 1 lakh crore.
The fund aims to address the lack of adequate cold chain and Post-Harvest Management infrastructure. Financial assistance will be provided for funding Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate and aggregation points including Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS), Farmers Producer Organisations (FPO), Agriculture entrepreneurs, Start-ups, etc.

Notes:
The National Real Estate Development Council was established in 1998 under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. It is a major association of real estate developers.
Recently, National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) has appointed Rajesh Goel as Director General (DG) of the association. Prior to this appointment, Rajesh Goel superannuated as the CMD of Hindustan Prefab Ltd.

Notes:
The Social-media giant Facebook has recently acquired the popular GIF-making and sharing website GIPHY. Facebook is also planning to integrate its GIF library Instagram, its photo-sharing app.
GIPHY, one of the most popular GIF-making and sharing sites on the internet, allows users to create, share and remix GIFs. Several platforms including Apple, Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit use Giphy’s API for providing GIFs.

Notes:
As a part of the economic stimulus package, the Union Finance Minister proposed that the Electricity distribution companies (Discoms) in the Union Territories (UTs) would be privatised.
As of now, Delhi is the only Union Territory which has private power Discoms namely Reliance Infrastructure’s BSES and Tata Power Delhi Distribution. Earlier, the draft amendments to the Electricity Act, 2003 were announced, which included the proposal of private participation in electricity distribution.

Notes:
The Union Finance Minister launched a scheme named ‘PM e Vidya’, as a part of the Stimulus package, in order to promote digital education in the country.
This comprehensive program will include DIKSHA (one nation-one digital platform), through which quality e-content will be provided to all school children; a dedicated educational channel for each class from 1 to 12; Community Radio and CBSE’s Shiksha Vani podcast. It also includes study material for the differently abled developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY).

Notes:
This year’s World Health Assembly, the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, the 73rd edition was recently held virtually. The assembly is usually held in Geneva and attended by representatives of the United Nation’s 194 member states.
India along with other 122 countries, supported the key conference paper, which proposes for a review of the world’s response to Covid-19. The draft called for a global approach to identify the zoonotic source of the virus and its path of introduction to the human population. China committed to provide USD 2 billion over two years to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Notes:
About 88 Nobel laureates across the world including the Indian Nobel prize winner Kailash Satyarthi united and called for governments to spend USD 1 trillion for marginalised children, during the lock-down imposed due to Covid-19.
Other notable personalities who signed this agreement were Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Human rights activist Desmond Tutu, among others. The assistance would cancel two years of debt repayments from low-income countries and fund 2 years of the global gap to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Notes:
The Director-General of World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has recently announced that WHO will initiate an independent review on its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The WHO Chief while speaking at the World Health Assembly, announced about the facilitation of the independent review at the earliest. More than 120 countries including India supported the resolution drafted by the European Union calling for a review.