Current Affairs July 25, 2019

In this post, GKToday presents Current Affairs of July 25, 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. Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and London Mayor, has officially took over the charge as new British Prime Minister after Theresa May handed in her resignation to the Queen at Buckingham Palace. He promised to leave the European Union (EU) on 31st October 2019 under a "new deal, a better deal" with the 28-member economic bloc. Mr Johnson is expected to use the opportunity to increase the number of women in full cabinet positions and boost the representation of ethnic minorities.

2. Priti Patel, a prominent member of the Back Boris campaign for the Conservative Party leadership, has become the Britain's first Indian-origin home secretary as part of new Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top team. She succeeded Pakistani-origin Sajid Javid, who moves to the Treasury department as the first ethnic minority Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Javid, a former banker from a modest background, was a contender for the premiership but endorsed Johnson when he failed to get enough support from fellow Conservative MPs. Mr Johnson has also named Brexit hardliner Dominic Raab as the country's Foreign Secretary.

3. The Western Railway (WR) has opened the first-of-its-kind printing press heritage gallery of the Indian Railways at Mahalaxmi in Mumbai. With this, the Western Railway Mahalaxmi General Stores Depot (GSD) has become the first in Indian Railways to portray a heritage gallery of the printing and allied machines used in the Western Railway Printing Press since 1948, which are still in working condition. The GSD Mahalaxmi is spread over 12,171 sq meter area, which is a British-era single-storey building made with black stone having interiors made with wood, has its own beauty and uniqueness. The press came into existence in 1912 under the Greater Indian Peninsular Railway (GIP) Bombay, as the railway needed stationery and tickets to run the operations.

4. Ajay Kumar Bhalla, the1984-batch Assam Meghalaya cadre IAS officer , has been appointed Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) with immediate effect. He will take over as Home Secretary from incumbent Rajive Gauba. Mr. Bhalla will have a fixed two-year tenure as Union Home Secretary till August 2021. Excerpts of the major reshuffle in the senior bureaucracy: Subhash Chandra Garg has been shifted to the Power Ministry as Secretary, while Gujarat cadre IAS officer Atanu Chakraborty has been made new Economic Affairs Secretary. Anshu Prakash has been appointed new Secretary of Telecommunications. This is the first reshuffle in the top bureaucracy after the parliamentary polls that saw return of the Narendra Modi government with thumping majority. The reshuffle includes IAS officers of 1984, 1985 and 1986 batches.

5. India has improved its rank by five places to stand at 52nd in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2019 of the world's most innovative economies and maintained its position as the top exporter of IT services. The list continues to be topped by Switzerland while Israel finds its place in the top ten for the first time. The latest GII ranking shows that India has constantly been maintaining its leadership position as the most innovative country in Central and South Asia region every year since 2011. The GII ranks 129 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications. The rankings are published annually by Cornell University, INSEAD and the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and GII Knowledge Partners.

6. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has assigned deputy governor B.P. Kanungo to run the monetary policy portfolio after the resignation of fellow deputy governor Viral Acharya. Kanungo would become the 6th member of the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee, which will next convene on 5-7 August. He will also retain his currency management portfolio. Now, all the other three deputy governors -- N S Vishwanathan, B P Kanungo and M K Jain -- have been made responsible for 12 departments each.

7. In a first, the Goa government has decided to ply ‘water taxis’ in its inland waterways between Panaji and Old Goa. The announcement was made while tabling the performance budget of the River Navigation department (RND) for the financial year 2019-2020. The department also plans to upgrade existing ferry ramps and jetties and provide better facilities on all the ferry routes. The RND has a fleet of 34 ferry boats which cater to different inland routes, connecting islands to the mainstream areas. The Central government’s Sagarmala project has also funded reconstruction of 9 jetties in Goa. A flagship programme of the Ministry of Shipping, the Sagarmala project aims to promote port-led development by exploiting India’s 7,500 km long coastline, 14,500 km of potentially navigable waterways and its strategic location on international maritime trade routes.

8. Ehsan Mania, the current Chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), has been appointed chief of the ICC’s influential Finance & Commercial Affairs (F&CA). The move may not be music to Indian board’s (BCCI) ears. The fear within the Indian cricket circles is that it could pit India against Pakistan in the corridors of the game’s administration in the near future. F&CA is one of the ICC’s most important committees & is responsible for designing budgets for ICC events and distributing money to its member countries.

9. Dejan Papic from Canada has been appointed the new national coach of the Indian table tennis team. He accepted the one-year contract that was offered to him by the Sports Authority of India (SAI). He will be paid USD 7000 per month and his contract will be up for renewal after the Tokyo Olympics. The Indian team has been playing without a coach since the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. Without a coach, the team suffered a lot of defeats in several important tournaments. However, in the recently concluded 2019 Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship, India won the gold medal in all categories.

10. In India, the National Broadcasting day (NBD) is celebrated every year on 23rd of July because on this day, in 1927, the radio broadcasting was started. The first ever radio broadcast in the country went on the air from the Bombay Station under a private company - the Indian Broadcasting Company (IBC). It was started by the British Viceroy of India Lord Irwin. Since 1927, radio has been an important part in people's life in India. On 8th of June 1936, the Indian State Broadcasting Service became All India Radio (AIR). The AIR has been serving to inform, educate and entertain the masses since it's inception, truly living up to its motto - Bahujan Hitaya Bahujan Sukhaya. The AIR is one of the largest public broadcasting organizations in the world. It has 414 stations in 23 languages and broadcasts in 179 dialects.


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