Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2018

Notes:
Slovenia has become the first NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) nation to appoint a female Chief of Armed Forces after Major General Alenka Ermenc took the post of Head of its Army. The country has approximately 7.500 soldiers, including active and reserve forces. Slovenia, which originally was part of Yugoslavia, joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. NATO is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states and 28 EU nations.

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India will chair the Kimberley Process (KP), a global initiative to remove conflict diamonds from the global supply chain, from 1st January 2019. KP is a joint initiative of different countries, industry and civil societies to control flow of conflict diamonds, which are used by rebel movements to finance wars against legitimate governments in the world. India is the founding member of Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) and is actively involved in KP activities to ensure that almost 99% of the diamond trade in the world is conflict free.

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The United States has signed trade pact with Canada and Mexico to replace the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They signed an authorization for the deal on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit 2018. The new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) has 34 chapters & is meant to govern more than $1tn worth of trade between the three countries. The pact has been tweaked to include changes for automakers, labor and environmental standards, intellectual property protections, and some digital trade provisions. It will give the US greater access to Canada’s dairy market and allows extra imports of Canadian cars. Now, the deal requires ratification by all three countries’ legislatures before taking effect.

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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will be Chief Guest at the Republic Day of India 2019, which also marks the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The celebrations are held every year at Rajpath before the President of India. The Republic Day honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect on 26th January 1950 with a democratic government system. & replaced the Government of India Act (1935) as the governing document of India. The day was chosen as the Republic day because it was on this day in 1930 when Declaration of Indian Independence (Purna Swaraj) was proclaimed by the Indian National Congress (INC) as opposed to the Dominion status offered by British Regime.

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The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide a $85 million loan to improve skill development eco-system in Odisha and establish an advanced skill training centre at Bhubaneswar. The project will help over 1.5 lakh people learn skills in priority sectors, including manufacturing, construction and services for formal employment. The World Skill Centre (WSC) at Bhubaneswar will deliver 8 training courses for 13,000 full-time students, provide training for 5,000 teachers, and train 1,000 assessors. It will improve the overall eco-system of skill development in Odisha by providing integrated services through an entrepreneurship incubation centre, a career counselling and placement centre, a curriculum design and development centre, and education technology deployment centre.

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The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has launched a new mass media campaign “Heart Attack Rewind” to eliminate industrially produced trans fat in the food supply by 2022 before WHO deadline. The campaign is the 30 second Public Service Announcement (PSA), which will warn citizens about the health hazards of consuming trans fats and offer strategies to avoid them through healthier alternatives. Edible oil industries took a pledge to reduce the levels of salt, sugar, saturated fat and trans fat content by 2% by 2022. As per records, trans fat intake leads to more than five lakh deaths from cardiovascular diseases every year, globally. Trans fat is made by adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to solidify them and increase the shelf life of food. Trans fat is largely present in vanaspati, margarine, and bakery shortenings, and can be found in baked and fried foods.

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On 3rd December 2018, the 80th Session of the Policy Commission of the World Customs Organization (WCO) was held in Mumbai, Maharashtra . The Session is being organized by the WCO and hosted by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), India. The Indian delegation was headed by CBIC Chairman, S Ramesh. The custom heads of more than 30 countries participated in the 3-day long discussion on various matters related to customs. Some of the important topics discussed during the meeting include trade facilitation, controlling illicit financial flow, performance measurement, challenges of small island economies, etc. The WCO is the only global organization which defines global standards and procedures for customs clearances at the border and their implementation. It is headquartered at Brussels, Belgium.

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Pawan Singh has become the first Indian to be elected one of seven member’s of the Judges Committee of the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF). He also holds the post of the Joint Secretary General of the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) and was a former coach of the Indian shooting team.Recently, Raninder Singh, President of NRAI had become the first Indian to be elected Vice President of ISSF. While, India’s Olympic and world champion shooter Abhinav Bindra has been bestowed with the prestigious ISSF’s highest shooting honour ‘Blue Cross’at the General Assembly in Munich for his outstanding services as the chairman of the International Shooting Sport Federation’s Athletes Committee. The Blue Cross is the highest laurel for shooters given by the ISSF.

Notes:
On December 4, ISRO’s heaviest and most advanced high throughput communication satellite ‘GSAT-11’ was successfully launched by an European Ariane-5 vehicle (Flight VA246) rocket from Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in French Guiana. Initially, the satellite is placed in the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and will be raised to the Geostationary Orbit (36,000 km above the equator) through phase-wise orbit-raising manoeuvres in the days ahead, using its on-board propulsion systems. GSAT-11 will be positioned at 74-degree east longitude in the geostationary orbit.The mission of the 5,854-kg giant ‘bird’ is to provide high data rate connectivity to users of Indian mainland and islands through 32 user beams in Ku-band and 8 hub beams in Ka-band. It will boost the broadband connectivity to rural and inaccessible Gram Panchayats under BharatNet Project which is part of the Digital India initiative. The satellite is capable of providing high bandwidth connectivity with speeds of up to 16 gigabytes per second. GSAT-11’ s co-passenger is South Korea’s GEO-KOMPSAT-2A, a meteorology satellite.

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Asian Games gold medalist Swapna Barman has become the brand ambassador for State Bank of India (SBI)’s unified integrated app ‘YONO (You Only Need One)’. Through YONO, users are capable to access a variety of financial and other services such as taxi bookings, online shopping, or medical bill payments. It is the first digital banking platform that offers customised products and offers from over 60 e-commerce players. This is also the first to offer online purchase and view of insurance policies without redirecting customers to the respective service providers. It can be accessed through mobile phones and on the web. Hails from West Bengal, Barman clinched gold in the women’s heptathlon with 6026 points at the 18th Asian Games 2018 in Jakarta. With this, she created history by becoming the first Indian heptathlete to win an Asian Games gold.