Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2018

Notes:
Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai will be honoured by Harvard University for her work promoting girls’ education. The award will be conferred with the 2018 Gleitsman Award at a ceremony on 6th December. Currently, Yousafzai is a student at Oxford University in England. The Gleitsman Award provides $125,000 for activism that has improved quality of life around the world. Yousafzai became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 when she was recognized for her global work supporting schooling for all children. As a teen in Pakistan, she survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban. She later founded the nonprofit Malala Fund to support her work.

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Yeshwant Deo (91), the veteran Marathi musician, has passed away recently in Dadar, Maharashtra on October 31, 2018. He had composed music for many films including Shabana Azmi-starrer “Saaz”. Born on 1st November 1926, Deo was a revered figure in the Marathi music circle and industry where he composed music for more than 40 Marathi films and plays. He worked in All India Radio (AIR) as a sitar player. A recipient of the Lata Mangeshkar award, Yeshwant was also known for his composition in Bhav Geet. He won several awards such as Maharashtra state award for music direction for the play Amrapali (1974). He also published books on devotional music.

Notes:
The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS) organized a seminar on Gandhian Thought and Swachhata in Wardha district of Maharashtra on October 29, 2018. It was part of 150th birth year celebrations of Father of the Nation. The seminar was centered on the Gandhian ideology on sanitation and the implementation of the same through the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). It addressed on topics such as appropriate technologies in rural sanitation, organic waste management, and preventive sanitation. The main focus of the seminar was the Gandhi ji’s concept of Swachh evam Swawalambhi Sankul. The SBM campaign is a massive people’s movement, which has shown significant progress with the rural sanitation coverage having increased from 39%, at the launch of the SBM in 2014, to over 95% today. With 8.7 crore toilets constructed, 5.15 lakh villages, 530 districts and 25 States and Union Territories have been declared ODF. The campaign was officially launched on 2nd October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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The Kingdom of Netherlands will be the Partner Country at the 25th DST – CII Technology Summit 2019. It was recently announced by Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Science & Technology, Earth Sciences, Environment,Forest and Climate Change. The Minister highlighted the successful bilateral research cooperation between India and Netherlands in sectors such as affordable medical devices, urban water systems, big data and Internet of Things (IoT). The Summit will be organised by Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in collaboration with the Netherlands government.

Notes:
Recently, the 19th meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) held under the Chairmanship of the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reviewed the current global and domestic economic situation and financial sector performance. Apart from liquidity in NBFCs (segmental liquidity position and in mutual fund space), the FSDC discussed on various economic issues ranging from oil prices, rupee, inflation to improving cyber security in the financial sector including “progress made towards setting up of a Computer Emergency Response Team in the Financial Sector (CERT-Fin) under a Statutory Framework”. The FSDC is an apex-level body to strengthen and institutionalise the mechanism of maintaining financial stability, financial sector development, inter-regulatory coordination along with monitoring macro-prudential regulation of economy.

Notes:
Satyajit Ray’s epic masterpiece ‘Pather Panchali’ has been included in BBC’s 100 best foreign language films list of the 21st century. Ray’s film, which was released in 1955 and the first in his ‘Apu’ trilogy, is the only Indian film that find its spot in the BBC list and is placed at number 15. The list is topped by Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”. It was culled out from a poll where over 200 critics from 43 countries picked their best foreign language film. Some of the notable films that featured in the BBC list are — Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon ‘, Wong Kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’, Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘The Mirror’, Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’, Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’ and Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’, among others. According to BBC, 27 of the highest-rated films were in French, followed by 12 in Mandarin, and 11 each in Italian and Japanese. The BBC said that only four of the 100 films have been directed by women. However, it said that 45% of the critics who took part in the poll were women.

Notes:
Ntozake Shange (70), the noted African-American Playwright, poet and author, has passed away in Maryland, United States on October 27, 2018. Her most acclaimed theatre piece is the 1975 Tony Award-nominated play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf”, which describe the racism, sexism, violence and rape experienced by seven black women. She also penned several novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo , Liliane, and Betsey Brown.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recently permitted banks to grant Partial Credit Enhancement (PCE), or a partial guarantee, to bonds issued by systematically important non-deposit taking Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC-ND-SIs) registered with the Reserve Bank of India and Housing Finance Companies (HFCs) registered with National Housing Bank. The move is aimed at enhancing the credit rating of the bonds and enabling these NBFCs to access funds from the bond market on better terms. PCE is expected to help NBFCs and HFCs raise money from insurance and provident or pension funds who invest only in highly-rated instruments. The proceeds from the bonds, whose tenor cannot be less than three years, backed by PCE from banks can only be utilised for refinancing the existing debt. The central bank has restricted the exposure of a bank through PCEs to bonds issued by each such NBFC or HFC to 1% of capital funds of the bank within the current single and group borrower exposure limits.

Notes:
Mary Kom, a five-time World Champion, has been named the Brand Ambassador of the 10th edition of theWomen’s World Boxing Championships (WWBC-2018). The World Championships is scheduled to be held at the IG Stadium’s K.D. Jhadav Hall in New Delhi from November 15 and 24. It will see close to 300 pugilists from 70 countries across 10 weight categories, the tournament’s highest-ever participation, including Olympic medalists, World and European Champions.

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On November 1, the Ministry of Railways has officially rolled out All-India Unreserved Mobile Ticketing facility (UTS on Mobile) with a view to promote three C’s- Cashless transactions (Digital payment), Contact less ticketing (no need to physically visit the point of sale) and Customer convenience and experience. Now, the facility of booking unreserved tickets, including season tickets and also platform tickets is available through the ‘UTSONMOBILE’ app available for Android, IOS and Windows phones. The booking of unreserved tickets on all non-suburban sections across all Zonal Railways has been made available from 1st November to enable seamless booking of unreserved tickets all over Indian Railways. The ‘UTS on Mobile’ application ‘in house’ has been developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS). CRIS was established in 1986 by the Ministry of Railways and its of headquarters CRIS is located in New Delhi.