Test: March 2020 Weekly Current Affair - 4 - UPSC MCQ

The Insurance Regulation and Development Authority (IRDAI) instituted a 16-member committee headed by Pravin Kutumbe to strengthen its guidelines on corporate governance. The committee consists of a head, six members from the insurance regulator besides members from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) along with other industry participants. The committee must submit report to IRDAI in three months.

The United Nations (UN) released the 8th World Happiness Report 2020 to measure the happiness of people of 156 countries where India (3.573) ranks in 144th position & Finland (7.809) tops the 3rd time. This is the 1st time the report ranks cities around the world, where Delhi- India (4.011) is positioned in 180th position which is among 10 least happiest cities, Helsinki-Finland (7.828) tops the report were, Kabul -Afghanistan (3.236) is at the bottom place with 186th position.
Rank table (including top & bottom)

Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom (UK) have discovered a fossil of the world’s oldest known modern bird skull dating to about 66.8m – 66.7m years ago- means the birds lived alongside dinosaurs for around a million years before the latter died out. Scientists dubbed the creature as ‘Wonderchicken’, which is thought to be a common ancestor of modern chickens and ducks. The findings were published in the journal Nature.

The International Day of Forests (IDF) is observed annually on March 21 to raise awareness of the importance of all types of forests and of trees outside forests. Theme of the year 2020: “Forests and Biodiversity”. The UN (United Nations) General Assembly proclaimed March 21 as the International Day of Forests (IDF) in 2012 and the day has been observed since 2013.

A 30- day long capacity building program called “Tech for Tribal” has been launched by the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED), which works under Ministry of Tribal Affairs in association with IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Roorkee, IIM Indore, Kalinga Institute of Social Science, Bhubaneshwar (Odisha) and SRIJAN, Jaipur to provide entrepreneurship skills to the tribal people. The Programme is supported by MSME ministry.

The Gujarat Police is first in the country to be equipped with taser guns as a part of police weapons to ensure safety and security of the public. Earlier, the taser guns were used in agencies such as the UK Metropolitan Police, the Los Angeles Police Department and the New York Police Department.

Flying car-maker PAL-V (Personal Air Land Vehicle) of the Netherlands will set up a manufacturing plant in Gujarat. A Memorandum of Understandings (MoU) was signed in the presence of Gujarat Chief Minister (CM) Vijay Ramniklal Rupani between state industries Principal Secretary MK Das and Carl Maasbommel, Vice President of PAL-V’s international business development. The Dutch car company sets up the firm for the first time in India and has set a target of commencing production by 2021.

The Government of United Kingdom has become the 1st co-chair of the governing council of global climate initiative ‘‘Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI)’ led by India. The initiative was created by the Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi on September 23, 2019 during the UN (United Nations) Climate Summit in New York, US (United States). The secretariat of the Coalition will be in New Delhi.

In a bid to promote digital India initiative of the central Government, Karur Vysya Bank (KVB), a Scheduled Commercial Bank in India, has launched India’s 1st prepaid wallet card ‘Enkasu’ (My cash in Tamil) in Karur, Tamil Nadu (TN) under its Quit cash movement.

State Bank of India (SBI), an Indian multinational, public sector bank, became the 1st bank to launch COVID 19 emergency credit line (CECL) to provide funds to businesses affected by the infectious coronavirus.

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation’s biggest oil firm, began the supply of the world’s cleanest petrol and diesel across the country. All 28,000 petrol stations of IOC’s across the country are dispensing BS-VI (Bharat Stage- VI) ultra-low sulphur grade fuel to reduce the pollution from vehicles in the air.

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters named Hillel Furstenber from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and Gregory Margulis from Yale University, USA as winners of the Abel Prize 2020. They share the prize & the amount of Norwegian Krone (NOK) 7.5 Million (USD 8.3400).

The government set up a 21-member high-level technical committee of public health experts to guide the people in preventive & control activities of COVID-19. The committee is headed by NITI Aayog member V K Paul.

The Heritage Foundation published its 26th annual edition of Economic Freedom Index 2020 to measure the level of economic freedom in 186 countries. India (56.5) ranks in 120th position & Singapore (89.4) tops the index for the 1st time.
Rank Table

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras will organize India’s 1st Global Hyperloop Pod Competition named as ‘Indian Hyperloop Pod Competition’, to increase the awareness & enthusiasm about Hyperloop in India.

The National Task Force for the novel coronavirus constituted by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended the use of hydroxychloroquine for healthcare workers or persons staying with and caring for positive COVID-19 patients. This protocol has been approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI), Dr. V. G. Somani.

To boost credit disbursement in the targeted segment like agriculture, Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) and housing sector, RBI has extended the priority sector classification for bank loans to Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) for on-lending for Fiscal year 2020-21. As per the revised norms, on-lending by NBFCs for ‘term lending’ component under agriculture will be allowed up to Rs 10 lakh per borrower.

The National Institute of Virology (NIV) has given its nod to Pune (Maharashtra) based Mylab Discovery Solutions Pvt Ltd to make diagnostic test kits (also known as Mylab PathoDetect COVID-19 Qualitative PCR kit) for novel coronavirus (COVID-19). With this, it becomes the 1st Indian company to develop the first made-in-India test kit for the disease in a period of 6- weeks. Germany-based Altona Diagnostics has also received the approval.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan (61) took oath as Chief Minister (CM) of Madhya Pradesh (MP)for the 4th time. He will succeed Kamal Nath who was in power for 15 months.

World Tuberculosis Day is being observed on March 24 globally to raise awareness of Tuberculosis (TB) disease and the efforts made to eliminate the disease. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB. World TB Day is one of the 8 official global health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Theme of the year 2020: ‘It’s Time’.

Odisha Chief Minister (CM) Naveen Patnaik launched “Mo Jeeban (My Life) Programme” and urged people to take a pledge to stay indoors. The programme was launched due to the Coronavirus (COVID- 19) outbreak.

For quick set, up health infrastructure to deal with the pandemic, Centre has allocated 15,000 crores for the purchase of personal protection equipment for healthcare workers, increasing the number of beds, testing kits, setting up testing laboratories and quarantine centres, and training of professionals to combat the disease.

Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC): The existing threshold of default hiked to Rs1 crore from Rs 1 Lakh under section 4 of the IBC 2016 to protect MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises).

The US (United States) Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with CDC Foundation and Microsoft’s Azure healthcare bot service has introduced an AI (Artificial Intelligence) based bot named “Clara” [the coronavirus self-checker]. The bot is currently available in the US on the CDS website.

The state of Maharashtra has donated the highest number of organs which resulted beneficial for 449 patients. The state overtook Tamil Nadu and Telangana in the field of organ donation.