Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2018

Notes:
On December 1, President Ram Nath kovind inaugurated the 13th edition of International CII Agro Tech 2018 with theme ‘Technology in Agriculture: Increasing Farmer’s Income’. The 4-day International Agro Technology and Business Fair is being organised by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). In the fair, the partner country is Great Britain while focus countries are Canada and China. Here, Punjab and Haryana are the the host states for international agricultural expo. A total of 195 exhibitors, including 37 foreign exhibitors from eight countries, will participate in the expo. The event will not only provides deep insight into the India’s food & agriculture market but also acknowledges a meaningful business interaction with & to the overseas participants.

Notes:
India will host the G20 summit in 2022, when the country celebrates its 75th year of Independence. The announcement was made at the closing ceremony of the 2018 G-20 held in Argentina’s captial Buenos Aires.The G-20 is a grouping of the world’s 20 major economies. Its comprise Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the U.S. Collectively, the G-20 economies account for nearly 90% of the gross world product, 80% of world trade, two-thirds of the world population, and approximately half of the world land area. Spain is a permanent guest invitee. Earlier, Italy was to host the international forum in 2022.

Notes:
In February 2019, India’s first international indigenous film festival will take place in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The fest is an initiative of activist film collective Video Republic that has been campaigning for indigenous communities in the State. The three-stop event will kick off on February 19 and 20, moving on to Puri from February 21 to 23 to eventually culminate in an interaction with the adivasi communities at Niyamgiri. It will showcase films made by indigenous people or made by non-indigenous filmmakers in collaboration with the indigenous communities. The aim of the fest is to build a platform for indigenous communities from the world over to share, have a dialogue, collaborate and to use cinema as a mode of united assertion, resistance and activism against exploitative forces.

Notes:
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.

Notes:
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:
Ullas Narayan has created history by winning India’s first ever International medal in Ultra Running. He finished third at the 2018 International Association of Ultra Running (IAU) 24 Hour Asia & Oceania Championship in Taipei. A group bronze medal was also won by the Indian team which had Narayan (250 km), Sunil Sharma (202 km) and LL Meena (192 km). Ultra races involve running over extremely long distances which are far longer than the traditional races. These races take place over two modalities – either over a set distance like 50 km, 100 km and longer events or a set time (like 6 hr, 24 hr, and multi-day events).

Notes:
The Glasgow-based British artist Charlotte Prodger has won the prestigious £25,000 Turner Prize 2018 for her film work examining landscapes and gender identity. She has been hailed for her work ‘Bridgit’, which was shot using her phone, and for the multi-format film ‘Stoneymollan Trail’, exhibited at Bergen Kunsthall. Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie presented the award at a ceremony held at Tate Britain in London. The Turner Prize award, named after the 19th-century English painter J. M. W. Turner since 1984, is £40,000 with £25,000 going to the winner and £5,000 each for the other shortlisted artists. Beside Prodger , the other 2018 shortlisted artists were Forensic Architecture, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Luke Willis Thompson.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the India’s longest rail-road bridge – Bogibeel Bridge on December 25, which is also marked as the Good Governance Day (GGD). The 4.94 km long bridge connects the north and south banks of the Brahmaputra & falls in the eastern part of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. The bridge, which has been constructed by the Indian Railways, is 32m above the water level of the river and will provide connectivity to the northeast. Bogibeel is part of infrastructure projects planned by India to improve logistics along the border in Arunachal Pradesh. This includes the construction of a trans-Arunachal highway on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, and new road and rail links over the mighty river and its major tributaries such as the Dibang, Lohit, Subansiri and Kameng. India and China share a nearly 4,000 km border.

Notes:
The World Soil Day (WSD) is observed every year on December 5 to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and advocating for the sustainable management of soil resources. The 2018 theme is ‘Be the Solution to Soil Pollution’. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Soil holds 3 times as much carbon as the atmosphere and can help meet the challenges of a changing climate. It further stated that 815 million people are food insecure and 2 billion people are nutritionally insecure, but it can be mitigated through soil. 95% of food comes from soil and 33% of the global soils are already degraded. In wake of this cause, the Government of India (GoI) has launched nationwide Soil Health Card Scheme (SHCS) to take care of Soil Health for the first time in a uniform manner to evaluate the soil fertility across the country. Soil health card provides information to the farmers on fertility status of their soil and enables them to apply soil health card based recommended dosages of fertilizers including micro-nutrients, bio-fertilizers, manures as well as soil ameliorants. It is helpful in checking the declining fertility of agriculture land and improve the fertility of soils to increase productivity besides enhancing farmers income.

Notes:
Maulana Asrar-ul-Haque Qasmi (76), noted Islamic scholar and Congress Lok Sabha MP from Bihar’s Kishanganj constituency, has passed away on December 7, 2018. Qasmi won the Kishanganj seat in 2009 general elections by contesting on an Indian National Congress ticket after five consecutive failures. He retained his constituency in the 2014 general elections by defeating BJP’s Dilip Kumar Jaiswal. He was a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and also a founder member of the All India Milli Council.