Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2018

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:
The Madhya Pradesh government will observe the 2018 Independence Day eve as Shahid Samman Divas to honour martyrs. The decision to this effect was taken at a cabinet meeting in Bhopal on July 30, 2018. According to official information, it will be a comprehensive program and spread across all the villages, blocks and districts of Madhya Pradesh, where rallies will be organized to mark the day. The martyrs will be paid homage and the relatives of the martyrs will also be honoured on the day. Ministers, members of Parliament and state legislative assembly and chief Minister himself will meet family members of martyrs on the occasion to express gratitude for supreme sacrifice done by their near and dear for the nation.

Notes:
The Meenakshi Amman temple is a historic Hindu temple located on the southern bank of the Vaigai River in the temple city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Recently, it is in news because the famous Goddess Meenakshi temple has got its first non-Brahmin as ‘archaka’ (priest), 12 years after the Tamil Nadu government passed an order for appointment of people from any caste as priests. The new priest, belonging to a backward caste, was among the 206 people who had undergone training conducted by the ancient temple administration. The temple has appointed the priest with conditions which included that he could be suspended if he violated the ‘Agama’ rules, a manual for worship of the deity, rituals and construction of temples.

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:
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 Andhra Pradesh Cabinet has recently approved an unemployment allowance scheme “Mukhyamantri Yuva Nestam” through which an allowance of Rs 1000 per month will be provided to unemployed youth in the state. Unemployed youths with a degree or diploma between the ages of 22 and 35 years are eligible to avail the benefit. The state government will set up a website for the scheme by the end of August, where a 15-day registration window will be open for potential beneficiaries of the scheme. The amount will be directly transferred into their bank account. The state government decided to implement this scheme to benefit as many as 12 lakh youths of the state. It has also been decided that 20,000 job vacancies, 9,000 teacher posts and other department vacancies will be filled.

Notes:
The Telangana government has signed pact with Tech Mahindra to establish the Blockchain district in Hyderabad, a first-of-its-kind Centre of Excellence for Blockchain. The MoU was signed during the 3-day International congress at HICC in Hyderabad. Initially it would be a virtual cluster, connecting with the stakeholders working in the emerging technology. It would have a physical building at a later phase. Tech Mahindra, as a founding member of the Blockchain district, will provide platform and technology assistance to all the incubators in the district. Eleven01 Foundation will develop an India-specific protocol that will define the standards for usage of Blockchain. Besides, the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) will make part of its protocol development research to the virtual cluster of Blockchain district.

Notes:
The group of computer scientists and a team of students from the IIT- Madras have developed the first of a family of six industry-standard microprocessors under Project Shakti. The initial batch of 300 chips, named ‘RISECREEK’, has been fabricated for free at the Intel facility in Oregon (US), which was used to run the Linux operating system. The design of microprocessors is open source. They optimize power use and compete with international units such as the Cortex A5 from Advanced RISC Machines (ARM). The entire team was lead by Dr. Neel Gala, who is an alumnus of IIT-Madras. The team had used a BlueSpec System Verilog language, which helped them capture the processor functionality. At a frequency of 350 MHz, RISECREEK can meet the demands of defence and strategic equipment such as NAVIC (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite) and Internet of Things (IoT) electronics.

Notes:
Rajinder Kumar Dhawan (81), the veteran Congress leader and a former Union minister, has passed away in New Delhi on August 6, 2018. As personal secretary and confidante to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Dhawan was a witness to Indira Gandhi assassination in 1984. During his years as Indira Gandhi’s personal secretary, from 1962 to 1984, Dhawan reportedly wielded immense clout, with some claiming that he controlled information and access to the then prime minister. During the Emergency years (1975-77), Dhawan was among Indira Gandhi’s inner circle of leaders. However, Indira’s son, Rajiv, after initially removing Dhawan from his post, cleared him of all charges. He continued to retain enormous clout in the Congress even after Rajiv Gandhi’s death and was subsequently elected twice to Rajya Sabha and was a member of the Congress Working Committee. He was Minister for Urban Development when P V Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister.