Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2018

Notes:
The International Army Games 2018 are being held at 24 training grounds in seven countries namely Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Iran, Kazakhstan, China and Russia from July 28 to August 11. It is for the first time that Armenia and Iran are co-hosting events of the Army Games. Indian teams are taking part in two major competitions– Tank Biathlon event at Alabino ranges, Moscow region and Elbrus Ring competition in Caucasus mountains. The opening ceremony was attended by Indian Ambassador to Russia, Pankaj Saran along with Indian attaches attended the ceremony.

Notes:
Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), the marketers of the popular Amul brand of milk and dairy products, was awarded the ‘Marketer of the Year’ award by the International Advertising Association of India (IAAI). The award was received by RS Sodhi, the Managing Director (MD) of GCMMF, on behalf of the 36 lakh milk famers and producers of Gujarat. Amul is the brand worth Rs 41,000 crore and is the biggest cooperative owned by 36 lakh farmers of Gujarat. Amul is not only known for its cooperative structure and farmer’s faith, but is also known for its marketing and advertizing strategies.

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 Union Government has constituted a high level empowered committee to address the issues of stressed thermal power projects. The committee will be headed by Cabinet Secretary, Pradeep Kumar Sinha with representatives from the Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Coal and the lenders having major exposure to the power sector. The Committee would look into the various issues with a view to resolve them and maximize the efficiency of investment including changes required to be made in the fuel allocation policy, regulatory framework, mechanisms to facilitate sale of power, ensure timely payments, payment security mechanism, changes required in the provisioning norms/Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), Asset Restructuring Company (ARC) Regulations and any other measures proposed for revival of stressed assets so as to avoid such investments becoming NPA.

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh government will set up ‘iHub’ (the intelligent hub), a first-of-its kind global research centre for scientific learning with an initial investment of Rs 245 crore spread over five years. For this purpose, the state government has already collaborated with UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP). Some of the social and economic objectives of iHub will be to create 50,000 future-ready skilled manpower, reduced school dropouts and capture the EdTech market. The initial staff will be about 40 International researchers in disciplines such as neuro-science, education, psychology, digital instructional design, educational technology, Artificial Intelligence, data sciences, and gamingamong others. The centre will also issue “Global Certification” for digital educational content.

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 2018 BRICS Film Festival took place in Durban, South Africa, along with the International Durban Film Festival (DIFF) from 22-27th July. The last day of the festival was celebrated as India Country Day, followed by Awards and Closing Ceremony. The basic aim of film festival is to celebrate world-class film productions from the BRICS nations with the objective of inspiring more collaboration from these nations. The festival screened four Indian Films, ‘Newton’ and ‘Village Rockstars’ in the competition section, and Sandeep Pampally’s ‘Sinjar’ and Jayara’s ‘Bhanayakam’ in the non-competition section. “Newton”, directed by Amit Masurkar, bagged the best film award, while “Village Rockstars” (directed by Rima Das) won the Best Actress (Bhanita Das) and Special Jury Award in the BRICS Film Festival 2018.

Notes:
India has been ranked 96th in the United Nation’s E-Government Development Index (EGDI) 2018. The survey, released by UN every two years, noted that India has scored 100% in the first stage of the E-Participation sub-index, followed by 95.65% in the second stage and 90.91% in the third stage. The overall score of 0.9551 on the E-Participation sub-index has put India among top 15 countries in the list of 193 counties surveyed. In this category, India has emerged as sub-region leader. Denmark is the world leader, both on E-Government index and E-Participation sub-index.

Notes:
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched a desktop software ‘e-Aksharayan’ for converting any scanned or printed Indian language documents into a fully editable text format in Unicode encoding. The text can be also saved separately. The application is free of cost and supports editing in 7 Indian languages viz. Hindi, Bangla, Malayalam, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Kannada & Assamese.