1. Mission Anna Seva: Biggest free meal program
Reliance Foundation's mission Anna Seva' is the largest free meal programme by any corporate foundation globally.
It aims to provide over 3 cr meals to marginalised communities and frontline workers facing hardships during the lockdown.
Reliance Foundation has pledged free meals to build the country's first COVID19 hospital and is supplying PPD's and masks.
2. Fitch slashed India's GDP growth forecast
Fitch Solutions has cut India's economic growth forecast for the financial year 2020-21 to 1.8%.
For china, it revised downwards its 2020 real GDP forecast to 1.1% from 2.6 % previously.
Fitch solutions also anticipated a deeper contraction in fixed investments as businesses choose to cut back on capital expenditure.
3.ARI Pune developed "bug sniffer"
Researchers at the Aghakar Research Institute, Pune, have developed a sensitive and low-cost sensor to rapidly detect bacteria. The portable device can detect as low as ten bacterial cells from a sample size of one millilitre in just 30 minutes.
At present, they are working on a method for simultaneous separation and detection of Escherichia coli and salmonella Typhimurium.
4. ICICI Bank launched voice banking service
ICICI Bank has launched voice assistance based banking service for its customers. They can check balance, seek credit card details as well as ask other queries among others through this application.
It has integrated its AI-powered multi-channel chatbot iPal with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant through which its customers can undertake a host of banking services through voice commands.
5. World Creativity and Innovation Day
World Creativity and Innovation Day is observed on 21 April to encourage people to generate new ideas to make the world a better place to live in.
The main objective is to encourage people to use new ideas, make new decisions, and do creative thinking. The day was founded on 25 May 2001 in Toronto, Canada.
The founder of the day was Marci Segal.
6.RBI Increases WMA limit for state/UT
- With this move, states would get greater financial support to undertake COVID-19 containment and mitigation efforts.
- It should be noted that by Fiscal year-end (FYE) i.e. on March 31, 2020, the WMA limit for H1 FY21 was increased to Rs 1.20-lakh crore against Rs.75,000 crore.
7. Nirmala Sitharaman attends the 5th Annual Metting of Board of Gov and the New Development Bank
On April 20, 2020, Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman attended the 5th Annual Meeting of Board of Governors of New Development Bank (NDB) through video-conference in New Delhi.
The Chief Minister (CM) of Arunachal Pradesh (AR), Pema Khandu, inaugurated the revamped Hangpan Dada Bridge over River Subansiri at Daporijo in Upper Subansiri district, AR through video conferencing. The reconstruction work of this 430 feet multi-span bridge was done by Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) of Border Road Organization (BRO) within a month’s time (started 17th Mar 2020), Government of India under Project ARUNANK.
9. FCI allowed converting surplus rive to ethanol: Government
.The National Biofuel Coordination Committee (NBCC) meeting under the chairmanship of Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas has approved & allowed Food Corporation of India (FCI).
- To convert the available surplus rice to ethanol so as to utilize it in making alcohol-based hand-sanitizers & also for the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme.
10.Earth Day
Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
As we prepare to mark 50 years of Earth Day in 2020
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