Top Best Current Affairs 18 May 2020

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development(NABARD) has sanctioned Rs 1,500 crores for Punjab to ensure continuous credit flow to farmers, through state cooperative banks, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of the total amount Rs 1,000 crores is sanctioned to Punjab State Cooperative Bank and Rs 500 crores to Punjab Gramin Bank.

A Group of Ministers(GoM) panel headed by Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot on employment and skill development has drafted a set of proposals that includes land pooling to corporatise agriculture, opening up Employees' Provident Fund(EPF) and Employees State Insurance Corporation(ESIC) for the unorganised sector, merging the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ,2005(MNREGA). with skill development programmes to create a wage subsidy programme.

The Research team of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) headed by Prof.T.Govindaraju developed the Silk Fibroin (SF) formulated using biocompatible additives and an injectable SF hydrogel (iSFH) to ease the insulin delivery for diabetic patients.

University of Hyderabad (UoH) and CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research)-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), have tied up with Vins Bioproducts Limited, an antisera manufacturing company incubated at UoH's BioNEST incubation centre, to develop antibody- based immunotherapy for immediate treatment for Covid-19 pandemic.

The Andhra Pradesh (AP) state government has formed a 5-member high-powered committee led by Neerabh Kumar Prasad (special chief secretary of environment, forests, science and technology) to probe into the causes behind the leakage of styrene gas from the LG Polymers India Ltd located at RR Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam. The panel required to submit its final report within one month.

In accordance with a report "India's Utility-Scale Solar Parks-A Global Success Story" by Kashish Shah, a researcher analyst at US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), the installation of utility-scale solar parks or ultra-mega power plant (UMPP)in India has started the India's energy sector transition. This approach has attracted global investment.

The book titled as "Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City" authored by Chinese literary writer Fang Fang is a compilation of online diary entries and social media posts that document 60 days of lockdown during COVID-19, captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information & is a remarkable record of the extraordinary time.

Lt. General PS Rajeshwar PVSM, AVSM, VSM, ADC, Commanding-in-Chief of Andaman & Nicobar Command, has commissioned the 103rd Landing Craft Utility (LCU) MK IV class vessel 'INLCU L 57' (Yard no: 2098) into the Indian Navy at Port Blair in a low-profile ceremony. It was the 7th in the series of 8 such vessels being indigenously made by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited (GRSE) for the Navy.