Current Affairs July 24, 2019

In this post, GKToday presents Current Affairs of July 24, 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. Two-time Olympic gold medal winning Hockey Player Keshav Dutt and former India Football Captain Prasun Banerjee has been chosen for 2019 Mohun Bagan Ratna. This is the first time that the club is conferring the award on a sportsperson from a discipline other than football. Dutt (93) was part of the team that won gold in the 1948 (London) and 1952 (Helsinki) Olympics. Prasun was a prominent midfielder of his times. He played in three Asian Games in 1974, 1978 and 1982 and was part of an Asian All Star XI team. The Best Footballer for the 2018-19 will be given to Arijit Bagui. Mohun Bagan will also felicitate pacer Mohammed Shami, India's hat-trick hero of the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, while footballer Ashok Chatterjee will be given the Lifetime Achievement award. The Mariners will also give Life Memberships to Sourav Ganguly, ChuniGoswami, Dr Vece Paes, Prasenjit Chatterjee and Deb Shankar Halder. The awards will be given away on Mohun Bagan Day on July 29. July 29 is celebrated as the 'Mohun Bagan Day' because on this day in 1911, the Mariners became the first club to defeat a British club, East Yorkshire Regiment, and lift the IFA Shield.

2. Scientists in Bangladesh have developed a method to convert Jute fibre into low-cost bio-degradable cellulose sheets named 'Sonali' which can be used as wrapping material and carrying bag. The Eco-friendly jute poly bags made up of Sonali can be used in garments and food packaging work and they are not harmful for human health. The commercial production of these bags is likely to start by the year-end. The main challenge in the large scale adoption of Sonali sheet is the relatively high cost of production which is almost double that of polythene. However, production on a large scale is expected to bring down the cost.

3. Lt Gen. Manoj Mukund Naravane appointed next Vice Chief of Indian Army. He will succeed Lt Gen Devraj Anbu who is slated to retire on August 31. Lt Gen Naravane will be in contention for the Army chief’s post as he will be the senior-most commander when incumbent Gen Bipin Rawat retires on December 31. In his 37 years of service, Lt Gen Naravane has served in numerous command and staff appointments in peace, field and highly active counter insurgency environments. He has also commanded a Rashtriya Rifles Battalion in Jammu and Kashmir and an Infantry Brigade on the eastern front.

4. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has celebrated the 159th Income Tax Day i.e. Aaykar Diwas on 24th July 2019. The week preceding the Aaykar Diwas 2019 has been marked by various activities undertaken by the regional offices of the department across the country. The event will include release of departmental publications, e-journal, publicity kit for outreach programmes among other things. It was on 24th July 1860 that Income Tax was introduced for the first time in India by Sir James Wilson to compensate for the losses incurred by the British regime during the first war of independence against British Rule. This is why 24th July is observed as the Income Tax Day.

5. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee led West Bengal government has decided to bring legislation in the Assembly for ensuring the job security of Journalists in the State. The legislation aims at social security of Journalist. Besides, it will deal with the issues of retrenchment of Journalists and closure of TV channels and Newspapers publication houses.

6. In a move to help geriatric care, students of IIT Kharagpur have built an app which will inform the caregiver when the elderly person falls down with the exact location. The app named ‘CARE4U’ will connect the caregiver to the elderly person. The neural network-based fall detection algorithm in the app installed on the phone of the elderly can detect whether the elderly has fallen down. If there is a fall, it automatically calls the caregiver and emergency services with the location of the elderly person. CARE4U can also detect emotions and whenever the elderly opens the app, the phone takes his picture and a mood index is calculated. This detects whether the person is sad or not and automatically updates the caregiver with the time stamp. The caregiver can check what mood the senior citizen has been through in the day. To make this feature more effective the team has developed a cognitive intelligent chatbot for the elderly person to engage with.

7. The Government of India (GoM) has reconstituted the Group of Ministers (GoM), under the chairmanship of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, looking after the issues of how to prevent sexual harassment at workplace and strengthen legal frameworks. The other members of the reconstituted GoM are: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' and Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani. The GoM was set up to examine and give recommendations for strengthening the legal and institutional frameworks to deal with and prevent sexual harassment at workplace in October 2018.

8. Andhra Pradesh has become the first Indian State to reserve 75% jobs for local youths in all private industries. The state assembly has recently passed the Andhra Pradesh Employment of Local Candidates in Industries/Factories Act of 2019, which reserves 75% jobs in industrial units, factories, joint ventures and projects set up under public-private partnership mode. According to the new law, if a company does not find the necessary skills in locals, then it will need to train them in association with the state government. In this way, no company will be able to hide behind the excuse of not finding skilled local labourers. The act will ensure the employment of youth in the state but at the same time, the state will have to ramp up the training centres in order to make them skillful.

9. The students at the IIT Madras have developed a smart agricopter to eliminate manual spraying of pesticides in agricultural fields and help identify crop health by using a imaging camera. The innovation will allow spraying pesticides 10 times faster and with 100% precision at the same cost as manual spraying. The current version of Project Smart Agricopter is a hexacopter drone with the capacity to carry 15 liters of pesticide.

10. The Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) set up to look into the legality of cryptocurrencies and blockchain has recently submitted its report to the Finance Ministry and recommended that private cryptocurrencies be banned completely in India. It has also drafted a law, the ‘Banning of Cryptocurrency & Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2019’, which mandates a fine and imprisonment of up to 10 years for offences. The committee was formed under the Chairmanship of Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. The draft law says that anybody who mines, generates, holds, sells, deals in; transfers, disposes of or issues cryptocurrencies with will face a fine and/or jail time of between 1 and 10 years. The fine has been set at the either three times the loss or harm caused by a person, or three times the gain made by the person, whichever is higher.


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