Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2018

Notes:
The 37th Senior National Rowing Championship has started in the Army Rowing Node in Pune, Maharashtra on December 17. Around 500 rowers and coaches from various rowing associations acrossthe country will take part in the Championship which will run up to 22nd ofthis month. The Rowers for the World Championships-2019 will be selected from this event. The World Championship -2019 is the first qualifying Championship for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Notes:
Government think-tank NITI Aayog organised the 3rd edition of the Women Transforming India Awards 2018 in collaboration with United Nations, and launched the upgraded portal of the Women Entrepreneurship Platform on December 16. The awards were instituted to recognise and celebrate stories of exemplary women from across India. This year’s theme is ‘Women and Entrepreneurship’ and 15 winners have been chosen through an extensive six-month long process to identify fascinating and inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs. The event will include panel discussions. The panellists include entrepreneurs, investors and experts such as Debjani Ghosh, Shivani Wazir Pasrich, Geeta Chandran, Radhika Ghai and Sania Mirza.

Notes:
Uday Shankar, currently chairman of Star India and president of 21st Century Fox Asia-Pacific (only Asia), has been elected as vice president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) for the year 2018-19 at the 91st AGM of the apex industry body. Shankar is the first Indian media and entertainment executive to assume the leadership position in a national industry chamber like FICCI. He has recently been appointed Chairman of Star and Disney India and President of Asia Pacific unit of The Walt Disney Company. The appointment is part of Disney’s integration planning for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox and strategic alignment of its consolidated international business units.

Notes:
Gujarat has emerged as the top performer among States and Union Territories (UT) in the first-ever ranking of the Start-up Ecosystem across the country. The ranking was released by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP). Gujarat, with 100 percentile, has performed better than all other states in all the 7 areas including start up policy, incubation support, seeding innovation and scaling innovation. Meanwhile, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha and Rajasthan, with a score of more than 85 percentile, have been adjudged the top performers. Other States, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana were identified as “leaders”.

Notes:
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has officially adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The document is the first-ever negotiated global framework on a common approach to international migration in all its dimensions. It is meant to address issues that concern the world’s 258 million people on the move and countries of origin, transit and destination. The non-binding agreement was adopted by the General Assembly with 152 votes in favour in Marrakesh, Morocco on 10th December 2018. India voted in favour of the resolution while, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Poland, and US voted against it. The document reaffirms the foundational principles of global community, including national sovereignty and universal human rights. Though non-legally binding, the Compact is the outcome of a long negotiation process and provides a strong platform for cooperation on migration, drawing on best practices and international law.

Notes:
The book “A Rural Manifesto – Realising India’s Future through her Villages” has been authored by BJP MP Varun Gandhi. In it, he suggested solutions to address the concerns of rural India. The book seeks to open a national conversation on rural distress & highlighted the potential solutions in development policy with a focus on making the rural economy resilient. In this heartfelt and timely book, covering facets of the Indian rural economy, Feroze Varun Gandhi shines a bright light on the travails of the marginal farmer and asks searching questions on why the rural economy remains in doldrums, six decades after Independence.

Notes:
The first-ever meeting of the newly constituted India-China High-Level Mechanism on Cultural and People-to-People Exchanges was held in New Delhi on December 21, 2018. The new mechanism aims to build synergies in people-to-people ties. The meeting was co-chaired by the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. In it, India and China identified 10 areas for boosting people-to-people cooperation in keeping with the ‘Wuhan spirit’ put in place by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping after their informal summit at Wuhan in April 2018. These are as follows: cultural exchanges, films and television co-production, media, sports, youth affairs, tourism, exchanges between states and cities, traditional medicine, yoga, and academics.

Notes:
Ten monuments have been adopted under the ‘Adopt A Heritage: Apni Dharohar, Apni Pehchaan’ scheme, which is a collaborative effort by Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Culture and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), and State/UTs Governments . The project primarily focuses on providing basic amenities that include cleanliness, public conveniences, safe drinking water, ease of access for tourists, signages, illumination, Wi-fi etc. No fund is given by Ministry of Tourism. The 10 sites include Red Fort (Delhi) and Gandikota Fort (Andhra Pradesh) adopted by Dalmia Bharat Limited; area surrounding Gangotri Temple, Trail to Gaumukh in Uttarakhand and Mt Stok Kangri Trek (Ladakh) adopted by Adventure Tour Operators Association of India; Jantar Mantar (Delhi) by Apeejay Park Hotels; Surajkund in Haryana by Bliss Resorts; and Qutub Minar (Delhi), Ajanta Caves (Maharashtra), Leh Palace of Leh (Jammu & Kashmir) and Hampi (Hazara Rama Temple) of Karnataka adopted by Yatra Online.

Notes:
On 20th December, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh launched the iGOT (Integrated Government Online Training Programme) for government employees. The iGOT will augment the existing training mechanism with online module-based training coupled with certification. The programme, developed by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Ministry of Personnel, will make training inputs available to a government servant on-site and on flexitime basis. The initiative aims at “competent civil services for good governance”. Dr. Singh also launched Right to Information (RTI) Portal on Judgments/Orders of Supreme Court, High Courts and CIC that will provide a learning environment for all stakeholders under which a repository on the landmark cases on the RTI will be available at one place. He also launched a hybrid course on administrative laws developed by the DoPT in collaboration with premier law institute National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru.

Notes:
The Ministry of Aviation along with the Airport Authority of India (AAI) has launched an official mobile app “GAS-2019” for the Global Aviation Summit (GAS) for 2019, which is scheduled to be held in Mumbai in January 2019. The app enables users to interact with the co-delegates and speakers besides providing a platform for networking through personal and group chats. The summit is being hosted by the civil aviation ministry along with the AAI and industry lobby FICCI.