Current Affairs July 09, 2019

In this post, GKToday presents Current Affairs of July 09, 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. In Madhya Pradesh, along with distribution and marketing of certified and high quality seeds to farmers, the Madhya Pradesh State Cooperative Seed Federation has decided to produce its own seeds under the brand name ‘Sah-Beej’. The decision has been taken in a Board of Directors’ meeting held under the chairmanship of the Minister for Cooperatives Govind Singh in Bhopal on 9th July 2019. A plan has been made to produce seeds from the next Rabi season. A large number of seed committees present in the state, which will be linked to the seed federation and these committees will help in the marketing of seeds.

2. Former India captain Rahul Dravid has been appointed as Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru. He will oversee all cricket related activities at NCA and will be involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA. He will also work closely with the National men's and women's Head coaches and coaches for India Developmental teams including India A, India Under 19, India Under 23 teams — to identify key training methods and the areas for development. Dravid will also be responsible for monitoring progress of the developmental teams and provide necessary inputs on the same to the senior men's and women's head coaches.

3. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in south-west Victoria has become the first in Australia to receive world heritage protection solely for its Aboriginal cultural importance. It has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list at a meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan on 6th July 2019. The site was created about 6,600 years ago by the Gunditjmara people and is considered one of the world’s oldest freshwater aquaculture systems. The site features the remnants of about 300 round stone huts that are the only remaining permanent houses built by an indigenous community in Australia – challenging the common perception that all Aboriginal people were nomadic.

4. The Asia's first Six Sigma Institute of Mountain Medicines and High Altitude Rescue will be set up at Rudraprayag in Uttarakhand. It comes after Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Singh Rawat approved the proposal for establishing the mega Rs 750 crore mountain institute in Rudraprayag district of state. The institute will create 1,200 employment, Specialised healthcare, advance education and Rescue Training in the Uttarakhand. The purpose of the institute is to develop all type of research in Allopathy, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Naturopathy and Yoga concerning High Altitude Mountains and to educate professionals in mountain medicines. The institute will also provide consultancy to the central and state government on key issues and help in promoting healthy lifestyle in mountains.

5. The board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has finalized a 3- year roadmap — named Utkarsh 2022 — to improve regulation and supervision of the central bank. This medium term strategy is in line with the global central banks’ plan to strengthen the regulatory and supervisory mechanism. This specifically includes central bank’s proactive role to avoid any other IL&FS debt default issue in future. The RBI board also approved the RBI’s budget for the July 2019—June 2020 period.

6. Lucrezia Terzi, a researcher at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCKCEN), has come up with a new way of predicting the monsoon at a science and technology conference organised in Vienna by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO). The new method measures how much Beryllium-7 (an isotope of the element Beryllium) is present in the air. The Be-7 is chosen because it is created only in the stratosphere, when cosmic rays hit and break the nuclei of nitrogen and oxygen. Due to the sun warming the oceans differently at different latitudes, and the spin of the earth, water-bearing air moves up and down in circular fashions, which is the basic cause of the monsoons. When air flows down from the stratosphere (upwards of 33,000 feet from the earth’s surface), it brings with it some Be-7. That makes the strong connection between the amount of Be-7 and the timing of monsoons.

7. As per the Finance Bill 2019, a new section — 15HAA — has been inserted in the SEBI Act to act against entities that tamper or destroy electronic databases or fail to furnish information when sought by the capital markets regulator. Now, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) can impose penalties of up to Rs 1 crore on brokers for certain violations. These new powers assume significance as the regulator is in the midst of probing the leak of sensitive data through WhatsApp and also recently passed fresh orders on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location matter, which had been challenged at the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT).

8. India’s first elephant rehabilitation centre will be set up by the Kerala Government in Kottoor, an ecotourism village near the state capital Thiruvananthapuram. The centre is expected to have an elephant museum, mahout training centre, super-specialty hospital, a retirement home and crematorium for the animals. It will also house orphaned, injured and older elephants. The centre will also have a training centre for mahouts along with a residential facility for them. It is being planned on the lines of the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Sri Lanka.

9. India’s first cow sanctuary - Kamdhenu Gau Abhyaranya – is located in the Agar Malwa district of Madhya Pradesh. It is in news recently because the Congress-led government has decided to privatized the cow sanctuary due to financial crises. Around 4,000 cows are living in the sanctuary which is spread across 472 hectares. The sanctuary was developed by the MP Gau Samvardhan Board at a cost of Rs 32 crore.

10. The new human atlas initiative – named Manav - has been launched by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Persistent Systems for holistic understanding of human body. The aim of the initiative is to create a unified database of molecular network of all the tissues in the human body and to derive a holistic picture of working of human body. The database would eventually help researchers in identifying gaps in current knowledge and help in future projects in diagnostics and disease biology. In this public-private venture, DBT and Persistent Systems will invest Rs 13 crore and Rs 7 crore respectively. The project will be executed by Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) and National Center for Cell Sciences (NCCS) based at Pune.

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