Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

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 National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has developed an online dashboard on the existing NDMA-GIS portal named ‘National Migrant Information System (NMIS)’.
The objective of launching this portal is to capture the information about movement of migrants and to enable them to transit across the states in a better manner. As per the communication from the Home Ministry, the portal equipped with a central repository will help in faster communication between the states.

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:
As a part of the economic stimulus package, the Union Finance Minister launched an initiative called ‘Manodarpan’, which aims to provide psychosocial support to students, teachers and families, at the backdrop of the global pandemic, the time when students, teachers and their families need support for their mental well-being.
The initiative is proposed to be launched through a website, a toll-free helpline through a national directory of counsellors. In another step, top 100 universities are allowed to start online courses and online component in conventional Universities and programmes will also be raised from present 20% to 40%.

Notes:
The President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and his political rival Abdullah Abdullah have recently signed a power-sharing agreement.
This political step has been finalised two months after both the leaders declared themselves the winner of the presidential election held last September. As per the spokesperson, the political deal seeks Ghani to remain the Afghan President and Abdullah to lead the country’s National Reconciliation High Council.

Notes:
The super-cyclone that has recently developed in the Bay of Bengal named ‘Amphan’, is claimed to be only the second super-cyclone faced by India in several decades.
According to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), as the cyclone developed into a severe cyclonic storm, massive evacuation of 1.1 million people, who are likely to be hit by the cyclone, would be carried out. Heavy rain and high-velocity winds are expected across coastal Odisha, West Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

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:
Every year, May 18 is celebrated to acknowledge and thank the medical community and scientists who have been working to find a safe AIDS vaccine. It also creates awareness about urgent need for a vaccine, safe practices, discouraging sharing of needles and early testing of people at risk.
AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome) is one of the most serious health conditions of the globe, which has affected nearly 2.1 million people in India. The disease is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which affects the T lymphocytes in the body.

Notes:
The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced the results of garbage-free star rating for the cities.
The top ‘five-star garbage-free’ tag was given to six cities including Chhattisgarh’s Ambikapur, Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, Gujarat’s Rajkot and Surat, Karnataka’s Mysore and Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai. As many as 141 cities were rated based on their garbage management. 65 cities were given three-star while 70 were given one-star.

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.