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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Justice Naresh Harishchandra Patil has been sworn-in as the new Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court. Maharashtra Governor C Vidyasagar Rao administered the oath of office to Justice Patil at a brief ceremony held at Raj Bhavan. The Bombay High Court is one of the oldest High Courts of India and its principle seat is at Mumbai. Its jurisdiction covers the states of Maharashtra and Goa, and the Union Territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

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India has been ranked 77th in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index 2018 . With this, India has jumped 23 places from 2017 in which it was ranked at 100th. In its annual ‘Doing Business’ 2019 report, World Bank stated that India improved its rank on six out of the 10 parameters relating to starting and doing business in a country.The report also recognises India as one of the top 10 improvers in this year’s assessment, for the 2nd successive time. The Index ranks 190 countries across 10 indicators ranged across the lifecycle of a business from ‘starting a business’ to ‘resolving insolvency’. These parameters include ease of starting a business, construction permits, getting electricity, getting credit, paying taxes, trade across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. New Zealand tops the list, followed by Singapore, Denmark, and Hong Kong.

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19-times world champion Pankaj Advani has won the second leg of Asian Snooker Tour title by delivering a power-packed performance to outclass China’s Ju Reti 6-1 in the final at Jinan, China.With this, Advani has become the first Indian to win an Asian Snooker Tour event. The IBSF World Billiards and Snooker Championships is less than a fortnight away and the Indian star cueist is the defending champion in both sports. The new 10-red format of the Tour was well-received by all players as some fine performances were on display throughout the second leg. Pankaj Advani will now have to immediately switch to Billiards as Myanmar hosts the prestigious world championships from November 12 to 27.

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:
Simone Biles, an American artistic gymnast, has become the first ever gymnast to win 13 world championship gold medals with victory in the individual vault competition in Doha, Qatar on November 2, 2018. She broke the all-time record set by Belarusian male gymnast Vitaly Scherbo in 1996.

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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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India was partner country at Videocitta 2018 in the Rome Film Festival 2018, which was held from 18th to 28th October. The Indian delegation at the Film Festival was lead by Ashok Kumar Parmar, Joint Secretary of Ministry of I&B. The agenda of the Indian delegation was to showcase Indian films’ heritage, ease of film shooting in India, promoted film shooting locations in India, International Film Festival of India, Indian Cinema from different regions, Audio Visual Co-Production between India and Italy. This year, “Mare Pyare Prime Minister” was the India’s lone entry in Rome Film Festival. The film revolves around four children living in a Mumbai slum. One of them wants to build a toilet for his single mother and makes an appeal to the Prime Minister.

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The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has formed a new industry expert committee to develop and promote an augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) ecosystem in India. The committee is chaired by Namrita Mahindro, Senior General Manager of digital transformation in Mahindra Group and co-chaired by Satyajeet Singh, Head –Strategic Product Partnership, India and South Asia, Facebook. The committee is a step in IAMAI’s efforts to evangelise the nascent technology’s ability to drive economic growth, job creation, and skill development in the country. The agenda of the committee will include nurturing India’s AR/VR technology and talent ecosystem, in particular by driving Skill Development; engaging with business, industry and government to evangelize acceptance of the technology and helping drive training workshops to familarise potential users with technology and build use cases, in key sectors.

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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.