Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2018

Notes:
The World Day against Trafficking in Persons is observed every year on July 30 to raise awareness of the situation of victims of human trafficking and for the promotion and protection of their rights. The 2018 theme “Responding to the trafficking of children and young people” highlights the fact that almost a 3rd of trafficking victims are children. The theme draws attention to the issues faced by trafficked children and to possible action initiatives linked to safeguarding and ensuring justice for child victims.

Notes:
Pradip Choudhury, who formed the central defensive pair with Subroto Bhattacharya when Mohun Bagan took on Pele’s Cosmos team in 1977, has been conferred the Mohun Bagan Ratna 2018 at the annual day of the 129-year-old club on July 29. On the occasion of Mohun Bagan Day 2018, Shilton Paul was given the Best Footballer for the Year award and Sudip Chatterjee was handed the Best Cricketer of the Year honour. Sourav Das was the Best Youth Footballer . Rahim Ali received a special award for his performance for Indian team in the FIFA under-17 World Cup 2017. The day is celebrated to commemorate the Mariners’ victory over East Yorkshire Regiment 2-1 in the IFA Shield final on July 29, 1911.

Notes:
Prabhat Koli (19) from Maharashtra, who crossed the English Channel when he was 16, has become the first Asian to swim the choppy water from Jersey (an Island in the UK) to France in cold weather. The long-distance sea swimmer covered 25km in 6 hours and 54 minutes. He started off from La Coupe Point of Jersey, behind St Catherine’s backwater and touched the shore of St Germain Plage on the Normandy coast of France. As part of his seven seas challenge, Prabhat is now training to cross the North Channel in Ireland in first week of August.

Notes:
The Chhattisgarh government has launched a smartphone distribution scheme ‘Mobile Tihar’ under the Sanchar Kranti Yojna (SKY). The scheme is for distribution of smartphones to women and students, covering over 50 Lakh beneficiaries. As part of the scheme, 556 new mobile towers will be installed across the state. ‘Mobile Tihar’ was launched by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh, along with National Award-winning actress Kangana Ranaut on July 31.

Notes:
The first cow sanctuary in Rajasthan will be situated in Napasar, Bikaner to dedicate the entire area for cows, much on the lines of a wildlife sanctuary. It will provide shelter for 10,000 bovines spread over an area of more than 220 hectares in Bikaner district. The facilities in the sanctuary will include hospitals and Sewan grass as fodder for the animals. The state government has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a private trust in this regard. The cow sanctuary will be the latest in a string of initiatives announced by the BJP government in the state for the protection of bovines since it came to power in 2013. The state already has a ministry dedicated to the welfare of cows and last year it had announced a 10% surcharge on stamp duty towards cow protection.

Notes:
The United States has recently granted Strategic Trade Authorization-1 (STA-1) status to India that will ease export of high-tech items. The designation authorises the export, re-export and transfer (in-country) of specified items on the Commerce Control List (CCL) to destinations posing a low risk of unauthorised or impermissible uses. Currently, there are 36 countries on STA-1 list, almost all from the Nato and ANZUS alliance. India is the only South Asian country to be on the list. Other Asian countries designated as STA-1 are Japan and South Korea. Till recently India was designated as STA-2 countries along with seven others. According to the Department of Commerce, items that are eligible for export to STA1 destinations or nationals include items that are subject to control for: national security (NS), chemical or biological weapons (CB), nuclear nonproliferation (NP), regional stability (RS), crime control (CC) and significant items (SI).

Notes:
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) hiked policy repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.50% in its third bi-monthly monetary policy review of 2018-19. Repo rate is the rate at which the RBI lends money to commercial banks in the event of any shortfall of funds. Reverse repo rate, the rate at which the Reserve Bank borrows money from commercial banks within the country, was adjusted to 6.25%. Accordingly, the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate too stand adjusted at 6.75%. This time too, RBI has maintained neutral stance with an objective of achieving the medium-term target for headline inflation of 4 per cent while supporting growth.

Notes:
Akshay Venkatesh, a renowned Indian-Australian mathematician, has won the 2018 Fields Medal for his profound contributions to an exceptionally broad range of subjects in mathematics. Venkatesh is one of four winners of mathematics’ top honour known as the Nobel prize for math. The Fields medals are awarded every four years to the most promising mathematicians under the age of 40. Each winner receives a 15,000 Canadian-dollar cash prize. The other three winners are: Caucher Birkar, a Cambridge University professor of Iranian Kurdish origin; Germany’s Peter Scholze, who teaches at the University of Bonn and Alessio Figalli, an Italian mathematician at ETH Zurich.

Notes:
Dr Bhishma Narain Singh (85), the former Union Minister and Congress leader, has passed away in Noida on August 1, 2018. Dr Singh held various portfolios during the Congress rule led by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He was also the Governor of Assam and Tamil Nadu.

Notes:
The Telangana government will setup a state of the art “B-Hub” for biotech and biopharma sector in Genome Valley, Hyderabad. It’s a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, aimed at providing much-needed support to the biopharma research and development activities, featuring a scale-up manufacturing facility along with a turnkey incubator, lab space module at GLP grade spreading over a built-up area of 40,000 sq.ft. This end-to-end biopharma scale-up manufacturing facility will give domestic companies the required impetus here on par with Korea, China and France who have taken lead in biopharma innovation. The estimated project cost of B-Hub is Rs 60 crore and the facility is to be set up through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in Genome Valley, which is the India’s first organised cluster for life sciences R&D and clean manufacturing activities.