Weekly CA Quiz: October 2020 1st week

Public sector Indian Bank has unveiled its IB-eNote facility, aimed at providing a paperless working environment and to improve the turnaround time considerably.
Indian Bank also unveiled ‘Ind Guru’, an e-learning platform for its employees that offers technology-enabled solutions aimed at capacity building.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, has released the names of 14 scientists who have been awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2020.
Two Professors, one from IIT Kharagpur, Dr Abhijit Mukherjee and Dr Bushra Ateeq from IIT Kanpur are among the recipients of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize.

ISRO is scheduled to launch its Venus mission in 2025 and France will participate in it.
The VIRAL (Venus Infrared Atmospheric Gases Linker) instrument is co-developed with the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos and the LATMOS atmospheres.

The RBI has excluded six public sector banks, including OBC and Allahabad Bank, from the Second Schedule of the RBI Act following their merger with other banks.
The six banks are Syndicate Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), United Bank of India, Andhra Bank, Corporation Bank, and Allahabad Bank.

Fast Patrol Vessel (FPV) ICGS ‘Kanaklata Barua’ of the Indian Coast Guard was commissioned at the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) Ltd in Kolkata, West Bengal .
ICGS Kanaklata Barua is one of the five FPVs built by GRSE, the Defence Public Sector Undertaking, for the Indian Coast Guard.

India successfully test fired a new version of the surface-to-surface supersonic cruise missile BrahMos having a range of around 400 km from an integrated test range at Balasore in Odisha.

The International Day of Older Persons is observed on October 1 each year. It is a United Nations designated day to focus on the well-being of the elderly people.
The theme of International Day For Older Persons 2020 is “Leave No One Behind”.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to extend the interim relaxation in WMA (Ways and Means Advances) limits and OD (overdraft) regulations for States/ Union Territories (UTs) for another six months till March 31, 2021.

Small Savings Schemes with Interest Rates for Oct-Dec Quarter
Senior Citizen Savings Scheme (SCSS)- 7.4 percent.
Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana Scheme (SSYS)- 7.6 percent.
Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP)- 6.9 percent.
Public Provident Fund (PPF) – 7.1 percent.
National Savings Certificates (NSC)- 6.8 percent.
Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (MIS)- 6.6 percent.

Twitter Inc appointed Rinki Sethi, a former information security executive at IBM, as its chief information security officer.

The Reserve Bank of India deferred implementation of provisions made under Basel III capital due to uncertainty related to Covid crisis.
As per the guidelines, banks in India were required to maintain NSFR of 100% from 1 April 2020. The RBI has now deferred it for a second time to 1 April 2021.

The New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS countries has approved loan for Mumbai metro and for the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project.
$241 million loan for the Mumbai metro rail-II project will be used for implementing a metro rail line 6 with a length of 14.47 km in Mumbai
A loan of $500 million has been approved for the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut RRTS project.

India will build a 100-bedded cancer hospital and a 22,000-seater cricket stadium in Hulhumale, Maldives, under the USD 800 million Line of Credit (LoC) that was extended to the country last year.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) set the ways and means advances (WMAs) limit at Rs 1.25 lakh crore for the central government for the second half of the fiscal year (October 2020 to March 2021).

India has set up a screening panel to vet all Chinese foreign investment proposals and those considered “non-controversial” could be approved.
More than 100 proposals involving foreign direct investment (FDI) from China are pending.
The screening panel is headed by the home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla and has the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) secretary as a member.

Dhanlaxmi Bank said that the RBI has approved a three-member interim committee of directors, to run the private sector bank after the shareholders voted out its MD and CEO Sunil Gurbaxani.
The committee of directors (CoD) will be constituted with G Subramonia Iyer as chairman and G Rajagopalan Nair and P K Vijayakumar as its members.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the strategically important Atal Tunnel in Himachal Pradesh’s Rohtang.
Built by the Border Roads Organisation, the tunnel will reduce the distance between Manali and Leh by 46 km and the travel time by four to five hours.

On the occasion of World Postcard Day, the Chief Postmaster General, Odisha Circle, has released a picture postcard named “Jau Kandhei” on the theme of ‘Traditional Toys of India’.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched a portal ‘Kritagyata’ an online pension submission and tracking system.
With the help of the portal, the retired government employee, besides submitting pension related papers on line will get opportunity to check the status of his pension. The portal has been created in line with the ‘Bhabhisya’ portal of Government of India.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched the Pathashree Abhijan, a road repair scheme, where more than 7,000 stretches of roads comprising 12,000 kilometers across the state will be repaired.

The 2nd edition of Indian and Bangladesh Navy Bilateral Exercise Bongosagar is commenced in the Northern Bay of Bengal.

In a bid to promote a sustainable and healthy lifestyle in rural areas, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) announced a special refinance facility to support the government”s Water, Sanitisation, and Hygiene (WASH) programme.
An amount of Rs 800 crore has been earmarked for this purpose for the financial year 2020-21.

Indian Bank has introduced a Kisan credit card loan scheme for fishermen in Tamil Nadu.
The features of the scheme include the availability of revolving credit up to ₹2 lakh, 7 per cent interest rate, interest subvention of 3 per cent for those who repay the loan within a period of one year.

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Arjun Munda virtually launched India’s largest handicraft and organic products marketplace, Tribes India E-Marketplace (market.tribesindia.com) on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti.

Rajya Sabha MP and Aam Aadmi Party ( AAP) leader Sanjay Singh has been chosen for ‘Gandhi’ Award instituted by the Mahatma Gandhi National Foundation.
He was instrumental in India’s diplomatic intervention to remove Mahatma Gandhi’s images on beer bottles of a private company in Israel, Mr Jose, who brought the matter into the public domain.

Veteran social activist Pushpa Bhave also known as the Iron Lady of Mumbai died following a prolonged illness. She was 81.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus,” the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced in Stockholm, Sweden.
The trio’s work helped explain a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that couldn’t be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses.

World Space Week is celebrated on October 4-10, to commemorate the launch of earth’s first human-made satellite, Sputnik I, on October 4, 1957, and the signing of the Outer Space Treaty on October 10, 1967.
2020 World Space Week is dedicated to satellites and their broad benefits under the theme “Satellites improve life.”

World Teachers’ Day, also known as International Teachers Day, is an international day held annually on October 5 every year to celebrate the works of teachers, researchers and professors across the world.
The theme for World Teachers’ Day 2020 is “Teachers: Leading in Crisis, Reimagining the Future”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a five-day global virtual summit on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE 2020) summit organized by the Government of India in partnership with Industry and Academia.
The RAISE 2020 summit aims to highlight India’s vision and the potential roadmap of using AI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Vaishvik Bhartiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) Summit, organised for the overseas and resident Indian Researchers and Academicians.
The objective of the summit is to bring Indian-origin luminaries in academic institutes and research organisations across the world and resident counterparts on a single platform to debate upon collaboration mechanisms to strengthen academic and science and technology (S&T) base in India for global development.

The government announced the launch of an ambitious information technology project ‘Sunidhi’ to digitise all provident fund and pension related activities of the Coal Mines Provident Fund Organisation (CMPFO).

Ravi Santhanam, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), HDFC Bank has been recognised in the Forbes list of ’The World’s Most Influential CMOs’.
Ranked at Number 39, he is the only CMO of an Indian company to be featured in the illustrious list which includes marketing heads of Apple, BMW, Lego, Adobe, Microsoft, P&G among others.

State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) launched a financial inclusion and literacy initiative ‘Gram Sampark Abhiyan’ to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
The campaign is centred on four key themes -digital, credit, social security and financial literacy that will encapsulate various activities and prescribes the cherished theme of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

A Belarusian pro-democracy campaigner, an imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer, a US civil rights attorney, and a Nicaraguan activist won a top Swedish honour sometimes called “the alternative Nobel Prize.
Ales Bialiatski of Belarus and his NGO Viasna, Nasrin Sotoudeh of Iran, Bryan Stevenson of the United States and indigenous rights and environmental activist Lottie Cunningham Wren of Nicaragua share the Right Livelihood Award.

India’s Visnu Shivaraj Pandian won the 10m air rifle event at the fifth edition of the International Online Shooting Championship.

Former Odisha Minister and veteran Biju Janata Dal MLA Pradeep Maharathy passed away, weeks after he tested positive for COVID-19. He was 66.

IIT Kharagpur researchers have launched a telemedicine system ‘iMediX’ to help patients receive assistance from doctors without having to go to hospitals or clinics.

Indian Olympic quota winner Yashaswini Singh Deswal won the 10m air pistol event in the fifth edition of the International Online Shooting Championship (IOSC).

Every year National Wildlife Week is celebrated in India between October 2nd and October 8th across the globe.
The theme of National Wildlife Week 2020 is RoaR (Roar and Revive) – Exploring Human-Animal Relationships.

The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) has bestowed a lifetime achievement award to Indian business icon Ratan Tata at a closed-door meeting, owing to ongoing pandemic.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh released a coffee table book – ‘Discovering the Heritage of Assam’- with a foreword by Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan.
The book has been written by Padampani Bora, who is by profession an officer of the Indian Revenue Service (2009 batch).

Former Union Minister Rasheed Masood, who was suffering complications following his recovery from Covid-19, passed away at the age 73.
Masood was the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare with independent charge in the National Front government led by VP Singh in 1990.

World Habitat Day is observed on every first Monday of October to raise awareness amongst people globally about the state of towns and cities. This year World Habitat Day celebrated on October 5.
“Housing For All – A Better Urban Future” is the theme for World Habitat Day 2020.

The famous red-hot cherry pepper of Sikkim, which is known as Dalle Khursani, has earned the geographical indication (GI) tag from the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal launched a mega anti-air pollution campaign “Yudh Pradushan ke Virudh”, saying polluted air can be life threatening in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has entered into an MoU with Swiggy, one of the leading food delivery platforms, to onboard street food vendors on its e-commerce platform under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNibhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) Scheme.

BOB Financial Solutions Ltd (BFSL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of Baroda (BoB), and the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), have launched an exclusive co-branded credit card for Company Secretaries (CS).
The BoB-ICSI Diamond credit card will bring exclusive benefits and conveniences to Company Secretaries, who are influencers and opinion leaders in their own right, and are contributing in building a modern and Atmanirbhar (self-reliant) India.

External Affairs Minister (EAM) of India Dr S Jaishankar participated in the meeting of Foreign Ministers of Quad group countries-Japan, the United States, Australia and India in Tokyo, Japan.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant launched DISHTAVO (Digital Integrated System for Holistic Teaching And Virtual Orientations), an online learning platform involving YouTube channel, which is first of its kind initiative in the country.
DISHTAVO is a comprehensive and holistic program to create e-content in the form of video lectures of syllabus pertaining to the colleges affiliated to the Goa University.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will be commissioning India’s largest HPC-AI supercomputer ‘PARAM Siddhi – AI’ with NVIDIA.
This initiative will place India among the top countries in global AI supercomputing research and innovation.

The Gujarat Chief Minister released the sanction letters to two farmer producer organisations (FPOs) for a NABARD-supported Organic Spices Seed Park for saunf (fennel seed) in the Banaskantha district and jeera (cumin seed) in Patan for promotion of organic seed value chain of the spices.

ICICI Bank and Visa has partnered to launch a debit card facility for the customers who avail Loans Against Securities (LAS) from the bank.
Thus ICICI Bank has become the first bank in India to launch this facility after RBI allowed banks to issue electronics cards to customers who avail OD (Overdraft) facility.

The 2020 Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Roger Penrose for black hole discovery and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering “a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.”
The three laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole.

The central government appoints Dinesh Kumar Khara as chairman of State Bank of India (SBI) for a period of three years with effect from the date of his taking over charge of the post on or after October 7, 2020 or until further orders, whichever is earlier
He replaces Rajnish Kumar, who completed his three-year term.