NEWS 21/03/2020. NEWS FOR 23-MAR (MONDAY) 1. Parliament passed the Direct Tax Vivad Se Viswas Bill, 2020. The bill aims to reduce the number of litigations that are associated with direct tax payments. The Direct Tax Vivad Se Viswas concept was introduced by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman during the Union Budget 2020-21. 2. The WHO has said that Europe is now the epicenter for the global coronavirus pandemic. 3. Union Cabinet has approved a proposal for the construction of 780 km of green highways at a cost of 7,660 crore rupees. It will improve the connectivity between the rural & the urban areas. 4. The Mohan Bagan Athletic Club and the Athletico the Kolkata football club have won the two major championships of Indian Football which are I-Leauge and ISL respectively. 5. Indian mountaineer Bhawna Dehariya has successfully scaled Mount Kosciuszko, the highest mountain peak in Australia. 6. India has signed an MoU with Nepal for the construction of new schools in the country. Under this MoU, India is to provide 107.01 million Nepali rupees to Nepal. 7. The President of India Ramnath Kovind has nominated the former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi to Rajya Sabha. 8. ISRO has designed NAVIC messaging system and receiver. The system will be used to broadcast emergency warning messages in cases such as tsunami, cyclone & high waves. 9. The United States of America began the first human trial for evaluating COVID-19 vaccine. The US National Institute of Health will enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers between age 18 and 55 for a period of 6 weeks in order to test the vaccine. 10. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development recently released a report on the effect of COVID-19 on global economy. The report says that the slow down in manufacturing sector of China due to the virus, will affect 50 billion USD trade all over the world hitting global value chains greatly. < < Back