Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2020

Notes:
Recently, the Geographical Indication (GI) tag has been provided to Jharkhand’s Sohrai Khovar painting and Telangana’s Telia Rumal handloom cloth.
The painting is a traditional art that is created by tribal women with locally available soils of different colours. It is predominantly done in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand. Telia Rumal cloth has intricate handmade work with cotton loom, with designs in red, black and white colours. Thanjavur Netti (pith) works that uses Aeschynomene aspera plant and Arumbavur Wood Carving also got G.I tag from Tamil Nadu.

Notes:
As per the recent analysis of World Economic Forum, the CO2 emissions of India have dropped for the first time in over 40 years.
WEF highlighted that the fall in emissions is due to the economic slowdown and growth in the renewable energy sector. Emissions dipped by around 1% in the fiscal year 2019-20. In the month of March, the emissions fell by 15% and it is expected to have fallen 30% in April 2020. As the pandemic has cut the electricity demand, coal consumption also flatlined.

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:
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:
In its effort to boost the economy and provide work to migrants returning from other states to home villages, the Central government allocated an additional Rs 40,000 crore to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for 2020-21.
In the Union Budget 2020-21, the total allocation made for MGNREGS was Rs 61500 Crore. Hence with this additional fund, the total allocation of this scheme for the present year becomes Rs 1.015 trillion. Out of the total fund, Rs 11,500 crore has to be spent on clearing pending dues from the previous year.

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:
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:
As per the recent announcement by the National Health Authority (NHA), the number of people who have benefitted under the Ayushman Bharat Scheme has crossed the one crore-mark.
The flagship health insurance programme named Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (AB-PMJAY) was launched on September 23, 2018 in Ranchi. The scheme which is implemented by NHA, aims to provide Rs 5 lakh secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation cover to up to 10 Crore poor and vulnerable families.

Notes:
Veteran Marathi writer Ratnakar Matkari recently passed away after being diagnosed with COVID-19, at the age of 81.
He was considered as a versatile writer of Marathi literature. He had written more than 90 plays including more than 20 children plays. He was famous for his thriller stories, essays and his theatre autobiography Maaze Rangaprayog. His iconic literary work was ‘Gahire Paani’. He was a recipient of the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Sahitya Akademi awards.

Notes:
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan is set to take charge as the chairman of the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board.
Harsh Vardhan would succeed the current chairman of WHO Executive Board, Dr Hiroki Nakatani of Japan. The Executive Board of WHO comprises 34 executives related to the field of health, each representing a member country. The Chairman’s post is held by rotation among the regional groups.