World Heritage Day:
Every year, 18th April is celebrated Worldwide as World Heritage Day to create awareness about Heritage among communities. In 1982, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) announced, 18 April as the “World Heritage Day”, approved by the General Assembly of UNESCO in 1983. The theme of World Heritage Day 2020 is“Shared Culture’, ‘Shared heritage’ and ‘Shared responsibility”. India ranks sixth in the largest number of heritage sites in the world. There are a total of 38 heritage sites in India. To be selected in the list, a World Heritage Site must be an already classified landmark, unique in some respect as a geographically and historically identifiable place having special cultural or physical significance.
KISAN RATH MOBILE APP:
Union Agriculture Ministry has launched a mobile app called Kisan Rath Mobile App to facilitate the transportation of foodgrains and perishables during the lockdown.
- The app is developed by the National Informatics Centre to facilitate farmers and traders in searching for transport vehicles for the movement of Agriculture and Horticulture produce.
- The App will also facilitate traders in the transportation of perishable commodities by Refrigerated vehicles.
Ways and Means Advances (WMAs):
Ways and means advances (WMA) is a mechanism used by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under its credit policy to provide to States, banking with it, to help them tide over temporary mismatches in the cash flow of their receipts and payments. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gives temporary (short-term) loan facilities to the central and state governments, it is called Ways and Means Advances (WMA). The Ways and Means Advances scheme was introduced in 1997, to meet mismatches in the receipts and payments of the government. These are given at the repo rate, which is 4.40 percent.
Targeted Long Term Repo Operation (TLTRO):
The LTRO is a tool under which the central bank provides one-year to three-year money to banks at the prevailing repo rate, accepting government securities with matching or higher tenure as the collateral. This helps banks get funds for a longer duration as compared to the short-term (up to 28 days) liquidity provided by the RBI through other tools such as liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) and marginal standing facility (MSF).
It is called ‘Targeted’ LTRO as in this case, the central bank wants banks opting for funds under this option to be specifically invested in investment-grade corporate debt
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said it has received Rs 1.13 lakh crore worth of bids in the targeted long term repo operation (TLTRO) conducted for an amount of Rs 25,000 crore with a three-year tenor.
The RBI received 18 bids in the auction. The total bids that were received amounted to Rs 1.13 lakh crore, implying a bid to cover ratio — the number of bids received relative to the notified amount — of 4.5.
B814 Virus:
The first human coronavirus was discovered in 1965 by scientists DJ Tyrell and ML Bynoe, years after the disease was found in animals. They isolated a virus from the nasal washings of a male child who had symptoms and signs of a common cold. The washing was found to be able to induce common colds in volunteers challenged intranasally. The virus termed B814. It could be cultivated in human embryo tracheal organ tissue but not in cell lines used at that time for growing other known etiologic agents of the common cold.