Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2021

Notes:
Every year on the March 25th, “International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members” is observed by the United Nations.
It is marked every year on the anniversary of abduction of a former journalist – Alec Collett. He was working for the UN – Relief and Works Agency in Palestine when he was abducted by armed gunman in 1985.

Notes:
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has proposed retaliatory trade actions against India and some other countries for imposing Equalisation levy on e-commerce companies.
In June 2020, the US initiated an investigation under Section 301 of the US Trade Act, 1974 against the taxation on the digital services or the Equalisation levy by India, Italy, Turkey, UK, Spain and Austria.

Notes:
Mount Merapi is an active volcano located in the Central Java province of Indonesia. Being the most active volcano in Indonesia, it has erupted constantly since 1548.
Recently, the volcano was observed releasing ash high into the air and sending streams of lava and debris along its slopes. As per media reports, clouds of hot ash were blown 200 meters or 656 feet above the surface.

Notes:
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released its new assessment recently. It highlighted the pressures faced by the two species of elephants in Africa due to poaching for ivory and human encroachment.
It announced that the Savanna elephant was “endangered” and the much smaller, lighter forest elephant was “critically endangered”.

Notes:
The United Kingdom is set to launch HEAL-COVID (Helping to Alleviate the Longer-term consequences of COVID-19), a national drug trial.
The trials would test the selection of safe, existing drugs already available in the market on patients across the country, in order to find effective treatments. The trial aims to find drugs to reduce deaths and hospital readmissions among patients.

Notes:
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) released a report titled Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2021.
As per the report, India is estimated to record an economic growth of 7% in 2021-22. It also highlighted that maintaining low borrowing costs while controlling non-performing loans would be a challenge.

Notes:
The system of E Way Bill was introduced in India under the GST regime on 01.04.2018. It was launched by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
Recently, the E Way Bill has system has reached a new milestone of generating 7.12 crore bills, in the month of March 2021. This number is the highest since the last 3 years.

Notes:
The Department of Economic Affairs, Union Finance Ministry decides the small saving schemes such as the PPF, NSC and Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana.
The Government announces interest rates for small saving schemes at the end of every quarter. Recently after announcing steep cuts in the rates, the Finance Minister rolled back the changes to previous rates for the next quarter.

Notes:
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari announced that India holds the world record for fastest road construction.
India has entered Guinness World Records by building a 2.5 km 4-lane concrete road within 24 hours. It also built 25-km bitumen Solapur-Bijapur road within 24 hours. A record construction of 37 km per day was achieved in financial year 2020-21.

Notes:
India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) announced that it has signed a loan agreement of up to USD 1 billion with Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). JBIC is wholly owned by the Government of Japan.
This loan intends to promote smooth flow of funds for the business operations of Japanese automobile manufacturers in India. SBI had signed a similar deal with JBIC in October last year. The beneficiaries include suppliers, dealers and the end users.