Current Affairs April 23, 2019
In this post, GKToday presents Current Affairs of April 23, 2019 in Short Notes form for preparation of IBPS, Banking, CLAT, SSC, Railway, UPSC, IAS/PCS, UPPSC, BPSC, MPPSC, RPSC, TNPSC, MPSC, KPSC and all other competitive examinations of India.
1. A site containing the 220-million-year-old fossilized remains of nearly a dozen dinosaurs has been discovered in western Argentina. According to Argentinian paleontologist Ricardo Martinez of the University of San Juan, there are almost ten different individuals, with practically no sediment. The discovery is doubly important because there are at least 7 or 8 individuals of dicynodonts, the ancestors of mammals, the size of an ox. There were also remains of archosaurs, reptiles that could be the ancestors of great crocodiles. The find was discovered in September 2018 in San Juan province, about 1,100 kilometres west of Buenos Aires. The site is between one and two metres in diameter and about the same depth, leading scientists to speculate it was a former drinking hole at a time of great drought, and the creatures died of weakness at the spot. Argentina has been a rich source of fossils from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras over the years - of most creatures not found in the northern hemisphere.
2. Jaideep Sarkar, a 1987-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, has been appointed as India's next High Commissioner to South Africa. He is currently serving as India's ambassador in Bhutan and is expected to take up the assignment shortly. He served in Indian Missions in Tokyo, Seoul and Bangladesh as well. The Union government also appointed Suhel Ajaz Khan as next Ambassador to Lebanon.
3. A book containing English translation of the 100-year-old classic Punjabi poem about Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 'Khooni Vaisakhi' has been released in Abu Dhabi. India's Ambassador to the UAE Navdeep Singh Suri has commended the launch of a book containing English translation of the Punjabi poem. The poem was translated by Mr Suri whose grandfather, revolutionary poet and novelist Nanak Singh, a Jallianwala Bagh survivor, wrote it after witnessing first-hand the events of April 13, 1919. On this ill-fated day, British troops fired upon crowds of protesters peacefully demonstrating against the Rowlatt Act of the British Raj, leading to the loss of well over a thousand lives. The book was also released in New Delhi on 13th April 2019, marking 100 years since the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place in Amritsar.
4. A global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, ACI Worldwide has recently announced that Canara Bank has successfully rolled out major new functionality to support EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) card acquiring across its ATM network and Aadhaar Authentication and leverage ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution to achieve market firsts. With this, Canara Bank has become the first public sector bank in India to meet RBI’s EMV mandate. The EMV shift is aimed at reducing lost and stolen card fraud and making counterfeit card fraud more difficult. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had set a deadline of December 31, 2018 for the switch, mandating use of an embedded chip to replace the traditional magnetic stripe card. ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution is based on the Universal Payments (UP) Framework and built on open service-oriented architecture for robust payments orchestration. It supports core payment processing with 24x7 secure payment capabilities.
5. The World Liver Day (WLD) is observed every year on 19th of April to build awareness and understanding how important liver is for our body. The liver is a complex and one of the biggest organs in the body and plays a very important role. Survival without a liver is impossible. All the food that you ingest goes through your liver. The liver plays an important role in the digestion of the food you eat. The organ is located in the upper right part of the abdomen separated from chest cavity by the diaphragm. It measures about 100grams in weight and 15 cm in length. The organ is responsible for the synthesis of various proteins, coagulation factors, cholesterol, triglycerides and bile including glycogenesis. It is also responsible for detoxifications of drugs, alcohol and control of infections.
6. Saudi Arabia will host the 15th edition of G20 summit in its capital Riyadh, which is scheduled to be held on November 21-22, 2020. This would be the first G20 summit to be hosted by an Arab country. The summit’s agenda will include financial, economic and social issues including energy, the environment, climate, the digital economy, trade, agriculture, healthcare, education and labour. The G20 consists of Germany, the US, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, France, South Africa, South Korea, India, the UK, Italy, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the European Union.
7. India has slipped two places to rank 140th among 180 nations in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), report released by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), an international NGO based in Paris. The report notes that attacks against journalists by supporters of the ruling BJP increased in the run-up to the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.The index is topped by Norway, followed by Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. In its 2019 index, RSF finds that hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence, contributing to an increase in fear around the world. In reference to India, it found an alarming rate of coordinated hate campaigns waged on social networks against journalists who dare to speak or write about subjects that annoy Hindutva. The critics are branded as ‘anti-national’ in the current discourse that is shaping up. The Reporters Without Borders is a non-profit organisation that works to document and combat attacks on journalists around the world.
8. India and France will conduct their largest ever naval exercise 'Varuna-2019' off Goa coast and Karwar with an objective of expanding their strategic partnership in the Indian Ocean region (IOR). The exercise will be conducted early May 2019 and will witness the participation of aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines and fighters. India will deploy its aircraft carrier - INS Vikramaditya with its MiG-29K fighters and French side would be represented by its aircraft carrier FNS Charles de Gaulle with its Rafale-M naval jets.
9. Two Indian Navy warships - the stealth guided missile destroyer INS Kolkata and tanker INS Shakti - will participate in the International Fleet Review (IFR) as part of 70TH Anniversary celebrations of PLA (Navy) at Qingdao, China on 23 April, 2019. IFR is a parade of naval ships, aircraft and submarines, and is organised by nations to promote goodwill, strengthen cooperation and showcase their organisational capabilities. IFR also serves as an ideal platform for world’s navies to showcase their prowess and indigenous ship designing and ship building capabilities in a global/ international arena.
10. The Royal Society of London has announced a list of 51 eminent scientists elected to its fellowship in the year 2019. Among these is Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who is now with the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad. With this feat, Dr. Kang has become the India's first female scientist to be elected to the Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). She is known for her inter-disciplinary research studying the transmission, development and prevention of enteric infections and their sequelae in children in India. She has built national rotavirus and typhoid surveillance networks and conducted phase 1-3 trials of vaccines, which has supported two WHO pre-qualified vaccines.
