Current Affairs Today 18th April 2020| Current Affairs News

CURRENT AFFAIRS: DAYS

International Day For Monuments and Sites

• The International Day for Monuments and Sites also known as World Heritage Day is an international observance held on 18 April each year around the world with different types of activities, including visits to monuments and heritage sites, conferences, round tables and newspaper articles.
• The International Day for Monuments and Sites was proposed by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) on 18 April 1982 and approved by the General Assembly of UNESCO in 1983.
• Theme 2020- Shared Cultures, Shared Heritage, Shared Responsibility

CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL

Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman attends the Plenary Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) of the IMF through video-conference

• Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman attended through video-conference the Plenary Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the Ministerial-level committee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF.
• The discussions at the meeting were based on IMF Managing Director’s Global Policy Agenda titled, “Exceptional Times – Exceptional Action”. The members of the IMFC updated the committee on the actions and measures taken by member countries to combat COVID-19, and also remarked on IMF’s crisis-response package to address global liquidity and members’ financing needs.
• Sitharaman, in her intervention at the meeting, outlined various measures taken in India to respond to the health crisis as well as to mitigate its impact.
• The Finance Minister informed the IMFC about India’s role as a responsible member of the global community by providing critical medicines to other nations. She also mentioned about Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s initiative of creating a COVID-19 Emergency Fund for the SAARC region at the SAARC Leaders’ video-meeting.

About Finance Ministry:

• Union Minister: Nirmala Sitharaman,
• Deputy Minister: Anurag Thakur, Minister of State for Finance
• Ajay Bhushan Pandey ,IAS, Finance Secretary & Revenue Secretary

About International Monetary Fund (IMF):

• Headquarters: Washington, D.C. U.S.
• Managing Director : Kristalina Georgieva
• Chief Economist : Gita Gopinath

NIRDPR and UNICEF training community leaders online to combat COVID-19

• More than 33 lakh community leaders are being trained through online programmes to practise social behaviours required to control the transmission of COVID-19 cases in villages, the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR) stated.
• The programme is being conducted in collaboration with UNICEF Hyderabad Field Office, it stated in a release.
• NIRDPRs Communication Resource Unit (CRU) and UNICEF are working closely with the governments of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in preparedness and responses to contain the pandemic, the NIRDPR stated.
• The online training programme was initiated along the lines of a detailed Risk Communication Plan to build capacities of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), Self-help Groups (SHG), National Service Scheme (NSS) officials, volunteers and Community Radio Stations (CRS) on the role they can play, in preventing the spread of COVID-19, in their groups and village communities.
• The Communication Resource Unit (CRU) of NIRDPR and UNICEF, Hyderabad field office developed and shared relevant materials such as Handouts, Posters, FAQs and Audio-visual documents with all trainees in order to be circulated in their respective rural communities.

About UNICEF:

• The United Nations Children’s Fund is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide.
• Headquarters: New York, United States
• Head: Henrietta H. Fore

CURRENT AFFAIRS: STATES

New pit viper in Arunachal Pradesh named after Harry Potter character

• The new species, Trimeresurus salazar is the fifth variety of reptile to have been discovered in Arunachal Pradesh in a little more than a year.
• A group of researchers who recorded this serpent has named it Salazar’s pit viper. The name was inspired by Salazar Slytherin, the co-founder of J.K. Rowlings’ fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
• Pit vipers are venomous snakes distinguished by their heat-sensing pit organs between the eye and the nostril.
• The discovery by Zeeshan A. Ayaz Mirza of Bengaluru’s National Centre for Biological Sciences, Harshal S. Bhosale of Bombay Natural History Society and four others was published in the Zoosystematics and Evolution.

About Arunachal Pradesh

• Capital- Itanagar
• Chief Minister- Pema Khandu
• Governor- B D Mishra

CURRENT AFFAIRS: ACQUISITIONS AND MERGERS

TVS Motor Company acquires Norton Motorcycles for Rs 153 crore

• TVS Motor Company has acquired Britain’s Norton Motorcycles for GBP16 million (Rs 153.12 crore). One of the most iconic British motorcycle brands of all time, Norton Motorcycles manufactures popular products like V4 RR, Dominator, Commando 961 Cafe Racer MK II and Commando 961 Sport MK II.
• Norton Motorcycles was founded by James Lansdowne Norton in 1898 in Birmingham, England. TVS Motor Company is one of the largest two-wheeler manufacturers of India.
• While Rothschild and Co were the financial advisors of TVS Motor Company for the acquisition, the legal advice for the transaction was provided to the two-wheeler manufacturer by Khaitan & Co, and Slaughter and May.

About TVS company :

• Headquarters: Chennai
• CEO: K. N. Radhakrishnan
• Founder: T. V. Sundaram Iyengar

CURRENT AFFAIRS: APPS AND PORTALS

‘Kisan Rath’ app to help farmers transport their farm produce

• Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar launched a farmer-friendly mobile application Kisan Rath to facilitate farmers and traders in searching vehicles for primary and secondary transportation of agriculture and horticulture produce.
• Primary transportation would include movement from farm to grain markets, FPO collection centre and warehouses, etc. Secondary transportation will include movement from grain markets to intra-state and inter-state mandis, processing units, railway station, warehouses, and wholesalers, etc.
• This app facilitates farmers and traders in identifying the right mode of transportation for the movement of farm produce ranging from food grain like cereal, coarse cereal, pulses, etc., fruits and vegetables, oilseeds, spices, fiber crops, flowers, bamboo, log and minor forest produce, coconuts, etc.
• This app also facilitates traders in the transportation of perishable commodities by refrigerated vehicles. The consignors — farmer, FPOs, buyer/trader — place a requirement for the transportation on this app, which is disseminated to transport aggregators in the market, who in turn interface with various truckers and fleet owners for obtaining a competitive quote against the requirement and passes back the quote and trucker details to the consignor.
• This mobile app will be made available in eight languages in the Android version initially and is ready for pan-India use

About Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister

• Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare and Minister of Rural Development- Narendra Singh Tomar
• Constituency- Morena, Madhya Pradesh.

Chhattisgarh Govt Launches Website For Home Delivery Of Fruits, Vegetables Amid Lockdown

• Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel inaugurated the online delivery website ‘Cghaat’ to provide home delivery of fruits and vegetables during the extended lockdown phase.
• The website ‘cghaat.in’, has been developed by Chhattisgarh government’s agency Chips. The fruit and vegetable vendors interested in providing services through this portal can register online and start providing home delivery against online orders placed as soon as they receive Collector’s permission. This service is available free of charge to vendors.
• Customers interested in purchasing from the portal can also register free of charge and choose the vendor of their choice. Apart from fruits and vegetables, other essential items such as milk, groceries, forest-produce, etc would also be delivered soon through the portal.
• The service has first been made available in Raipur city, but will soon be extended to other big cities in the state. The portal will come in to help people in maintaining physical distancing and will reduce the crowding at the shops.
• Recently Chhattisgarh’s janjgir-champa district police created app ‘rakhsa sarv’ to keep an eye on home quarantined people

Recent News

• Noida Authority Starts ‘Apurti Suvidha’ App To Provide Doorstep Delivery Of Essential Items.

About Chattisgarh

• Capital- Raipur
• Chief Minister- Bhupesh Baghel
• Governor- Anusuiya Uikey

CURRENT AFFAIRS: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

IIT -Ropar designs ‘WardBot’ to deliver food, medicines to Covid -19 patients

• A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Ropar in Punjab’s Rupnagar district has come up with a design of an autonomous ‘WardBot’ which can deliver medicines and food to COVID-19 patients in isolation wards without human intervention.
• WardBot, fitted with sensors, can work on a known path and can carry food items and medicines for delivery at different beds to patients in a ward.
• The design of an autonomous WardBot is such that it can be instructed to receive and deliver food and medicines and necessary equipment from one room to the other from the remotely located control room.
• The control room can instruct multiple bots to accomplish tasks simultaneously on different floors.
• WardBot can serve as a support structure to the healthcare sector at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on minimising human interaction with the coronavirus patients.

Recent News

• IIT Gandhinagar- Project ‘Isaac’
• IIT–Bombay-AyuSynk
• IIT Guwahatidevelops robots to deliver food
• IIT Roorkee– ‘Prana-Vayu’.
• IIT–Bombay- “CORONTINE”
• IIT Kanpurto develop prototype of portable ventilator to support medical infrastructure.

DRDO introduces products which can enhance ops at public places during pandemic

• Defence Research and Development Organisation, DRDO in its continuous quest to contribute towards fight against COVID-19, has been developing several solutions from its existing arsenal of technologies and experience.
• DRDO has introduced two products which can enhance the operations at public places during the pandemic. One is Automatic Mist based Sanitiser Dispensing Unit and UV Sanitisation Box and Hand-held UV device.
• Centre for Fire Explosive and Environment Safety, CFEES , Delhi, using its expertise in mist technology for fire suppression, has developed Automatic Mist based sanitiser dispensing uni
• It is a contactless sanitiser dispenser which sprays alcohol based hand rub sanitiser solution for sanitisation of hands while entering the buildings or office complexes. It is based on water mist aerator technology, which was developed for water conservation.
• Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences, DIPAS and Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences, INMAS, DRDO laboratories in Delhi have designed and developed Ultraviolet C Light based sanitisation box and hand held UV-C (ultraviolet light with wavelength 254 nanometres) device.
• The UV-C box is designed for disinfecting personal belongings like mobile phone, tablets, purse, currency and cover of office files. COVID-19 virus will be deactivated by using UVC lamps in one minute placed equi-distantly in a box with UV dose of 100 mJ/cm2. The UV lamps used in the sanitisation box also emits 185 nm which produces ozone and is able to take care of the unexposed area on the surfaces of the objects placed in the box.
• The hand held device having eight watt UV-C lamp disinfects office and house hold objects like chairs, files, postal delivered items and food packets with an exposure of 45 second. This measure can reduce the transmission of Coronavirus in office and public environment which is required to work in all conditions.

About Defence Research and Development Organisation:

• Headquarters -New Delhi
• Founded- 1958

Chairman- Dr G. Satheesh Reddy

NASA to launch astronauts to space station from US soil for the first time in a decade

• The rocket and the spacecraft it is carrying are due to take off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre on 27 May, taking two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
• Both the rocket and spacecraft were developed by private company SpaceX.
• Nasa has been using Russian rockets for manned flights since its space shuttle was retired in 2011.
• If successful, SpaceX – headed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk – will become the first private firm to send Nasa astronauts into space.
• The Falcon Nine rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft will take off from the space centre’s historic Pad 39A, the same one used for the Apollo and shuttle missions.
• It will take astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley approximately 24 hours to reach the ISS.
• One American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are currently aboard the ISS.

About NASA:

• Headquarters: Washington, D.C., United States
• Administered by: Jim Bridenstine

CURRENT AFFAIRS: BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Shuttling to the Top: The Story of P.V. Sindhu by Krishnaswamy V

• Shuttling to the Top: The Story of P.V. Sindhu is the fascinating story of the junior player who went on to be the first Indian to win an Olympic silver medal for badminton.
• Authored byKrishnaswamy V was published by HarperCollins in Amazon digital platform along with other two books, amid the lockdown due to Coronavirus.

About the Author

• Krishnaswamy is a sports journalist who has covered seven Olympic Games and numerous international championships in badminton. He is also the author of Sachin: A Hundred Hundreds Now, published by HarperCollins.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: SPORTS

Laver Cup Postponed Until 2021 Due To French Open Clash

• The fourth edition of the Laver Cuphas been postponed from September 2020 to 2021 because of scheduling conflicts with other tennis events in a year disrupted by COVID-19, organizers.
• The Europe v World men’s team tournament had been scheduled for Boston from September 25-27, but those dates clash with the new dates selected by the French Tennis Federation for the postponed French Open, now scheduled for September 20-October 4.
• The tournament will now be held September 24-26, 2021, also in
• Men’s and women’s tennis has been put on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic, with both the ATP and WTA shut down until July 13 at the earliest.
• Wimbledon has been cancelled, while the French Open’s new scheduled slot puts the clay-court Grand Slam just a week after the US Open — normally the final Grand Slam of the year — is due to be played at Flushing Meadows in New York.

Cups related to lawn tennis

• French open
• Wimbledon
• Australian cup
• Us open
• Davis cup
• Thant cup

Sharath Kamal becomes highest-ranked Indian table tennis player

• Ace paddler Achanta Sharath Kamal surpassed compatriot Gnanasekaran Sathiyan to become the highest-ranked Indian men table tennis player after he grabbed 31st position in the latest senior men’s rankings released by International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).
• Riding on the title winning performance at the Oman Open last month, Sharath has taken a leap of seven spots to claim the 31st position.
• Young rising paddler Mudit Dani also made notable progress in the rankings as he broke into the Top-200 for the first time in his career.
• After good performance in the recent events, Dani took a jump of nine places to claim the 200th position while Harmeet Desai (72), Anthony Amalraj (100) and Manav Thakkar (139) are the other Indian paddlers who have positioned themselves in the first 200.
• Meanwhile, in the senior women’s rankings, Manika Batra is at the 63rd spot while Sutirtha Mukharjee at 95th, breaking into the top 100.
• The ITTF rankings will now be frozen until the start of events. ITTF has already suspended all its events until June 30 due to the COVID-19 pandemic

About International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).

• Headquarters: Lausanne, Switzerland
• President: Thomas Weikert
• CEO: Steve Dainton

CURRENT AFFAIRS: OBITUARY

Chilean author Luis Sepulveda passes away

• Best-selling Chilean writer Luis Sepulveda has passed away at a hospital in northern Spain some six weeks after testing positive for coronavirus. He was 70.
• Best known for his 1992 novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories and 1996’s The Story of a Seagull and The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly.

Maharashtra Freedom Fighter RV Bhuskute passes away

• Freedom fighter R V Bhuskute, who had participated in the Quit India Movement, has passed away of prolonged illness. He was 94
• Bhuskute has also written several books on land laws.
• Apart from being a freedom fighter, he worked for the release and rehabilitation of bonded labourers in tribal areas of Maharashtra.

Former Minister Saharai Oram passes away at 78  

• Former Cabinet minister and five-time MLA Saharai Oram passed away after prolonged illness.
• Oram was first elected to the Odisha Assembly from Champua constituency in 1971 as an Utkal Congress candidate. A close associate of late Chief Minister Biju Patnaik, he was elected from Champua as a Janata Party candidate in 1977, in 1980 as Janata-S candidate, 1990 as Janata Dal candidate and in 2000 as an Independent.

DAILY CA 17 TH APR

• World Voice Day- 16th april
• World Haemophilia Day- 17th april
• Centre releases 7,300 crore rupees to States & UTs under MGNREGS
• Govt-appointed panel proposes institutional framework for valuers, moots National Institute of Valuers
• IMF approves over USD 1.3 billion emergency financing to Pakistan
• China earmarks $10 million from its ADB Trust Fund to address COVID-19 challenges in developing Asia
• RBI cuts reverse repo rate from 4 per cent to 3.75 per cent
• Economic growth may fall to 1 per cent this fiscal due to coronavirus: SBI report
• FICCI Calls For Interest-Free, Collateral-Free Loans To Support Msmes Amid COVID-19 Lockdown
• Beijing-based AIIB mulls $500 mn funding for healthcare system in India
• Rohit Sharma becomes CricKingdom’s brand ambassador
• Viswanathan Anand Joins WWF India As Ambassador For Environment Education
• BSNL CMD PK Purwar takes additional charge of MTNL
• Indian-American Ro Khanna appointed to White House COVID-19 advisory council
• Mascot for Hangzhou 2022 Asian Para Games unveiled
• World’s most famous cycling race Tour de France postponed in wake of Corona virus pandemic
• SAI, AIFF join hands to launch online coaching programme during lockdown
• World Rugby announces USD 100 million relief fund amid coronavirus crisis
• Actor Ranjit Chowdhry passes away

DAILY CA 18 TH APR

• International Day For Monuments and Sites- 18th april
• Nirmala Sitharaman attends the Plenary Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) of the IMF through video-conference
• NIRDPR and UNICEF training community leaders online to combat COVID-19
• New pit viper in Arunachal Pradesh named after Harry Potter character
• TVS Motor Company acquires Norton Motorcycles for Rs 153 crore
• ‘Kisan Rath’ app to help farmers transport their farm produce
• Chhattisgarh Govt Launches Website For Home Delivery Of Fruits, Vegetables Amid Lockdown
• IIT -Ropar designs ‘WardBot’ to deliver food, medicines to Covid -19 patients

• DRDO introduces products which can enhance ops at public places during pandemic
• NASA to launch astronauts to space station from US soil for the first time in a decade
• Shuttling to the Top: The Story of P.V. Sindhu by Krishnaswamy V
• Laver Cup Postponed Until 2021 Due To French Open Clash
• Sharath Kamal becomes highest-ranked Indian table tennis player
• Chilean author Luis Sepulveda passes away
• Maharashtra Freedom Fighter RV Bhuskute passes away
• Former Minister Saharai Oram passes away at 78