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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The world’s largest airport terminal “under one roof” has officially been opened in Istanbul on October 29, which marks the Republic Day of Turkey. It is dubbed as phase-1A of the project – Istanbul New Airport – will have a capacity to handle 90 million passenger per year. The first phase has costed 7.5 billion Euro. The airport has been envisioned to have a total capacity of up to 200 million passengers, once all four phases are completed in the next 10 years. The new terminal once fully functional by December-end will allow passengers to use its five pier blocks as well as 77 boarding gates and 143 aero-bridges. The new airport is located near the Black Sea coast on the Europe side of Istanbul. It features two runways, while 114 narrow body aircraft can dock with the terminal building at the same time. This new airport is also slated to become Turkish Airlines’ new hub.

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On October 31, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the ‘Statue of Unity’ in Narmada district of Gujarat on the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Sardar Patel – who served as the first Home Minister of independent India – is credited with uniting all 562 princely states in pre-independent India to build the Republic of India. That is why it is called the ‘Statue Of Unity’. It is the world’s tallest statue, with a height of 182m. It located around 3.5 km downstream from the Sardar Sarovar Dam, on islet Sadhu Bet on the bed of the river Narmada. The statue was designed by 93-year-old acclaimed sculptor Ram V. Sutar, who is Padma Bhushan awardee. It is built by Larsen & Toubro Ltd at a cost of Rs. 2,989 crore. The Statue of Unity is made up of 70,000 tonnes of cement, 18,500 tonnes of reinforcement steel, 6,000 tonnes of structural steel and 1,700 metric tonnes of bronze, which was used for the outer cladding of the structure. The viewing gallery at the height of 135 metres can accommodate up to 200 people at a time.

Notes:
On November 1, the Union Cabinet has approved a proposal to rename the Jharsuguda airport of Odisha after eminent freedom fighter Veer Surendra Sai. Renaming of the Jharsuguda airport in his name will fulfill long-pending demand of the Odisha Government, which reflects the sentiments of the local public of the respective area. It will also be a befitting tribute to the contribution of the revered personality associated with the State. Veer Surendra Sai, who was born on 22nd January 1809 in Sambalpur district of the State, had sacrificed his life fighting against British East India company. He and his associates resisted the British and successfully protected most parts of Western Odisha region for some time from the British rule. Many of them were hanged by the British & a few died in the Cellular Jail in the Andamans. Surendra Sai died in Asirgarh Jail on 23rd May 1884.

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Recently, the first-ever India-US Dialogue On Intellectual Property (IP) was launched in New Delhi to deepen bilateral strategic cooperation on IP policy. The dialogue was launched by US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) and FICCI in partnership with the US-India Business Council. It will be convened annually, alternating between New Delhi and Washington DC. The dialogue aims to identify solutions, and also share technical knowledge and expertise. The US-India Business Council, which was formed in 1975, is a business advocacy organisation comprised of 350 top-tier US and Indian companies advancing US-India commercial ties.

Notes:
The 2nd edition of the India International Cherry Blossom (IICB) festival in Shillong, which is is scheduled to be held from November 14 and 17. It is the world’s only autumn cherry blossom festival. The fest will celebrate the unique mass flowering of autumn Himalayan cherry blossoms with several cultural events in the Meghalaya capital. The visitors can enjoy fashion shows, rock concerts, beauty pageants and also compete in an amateur golf tournament. Alongside, there will be stalls showcasing the food, arts and crafts of the region, and several cultural events and a food pavilion of Japan in partnership with the Embassy of Japan in India. It is expected that the fest will attract more than one lakh visitors from across the world.

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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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The first Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health was held at World Health Organisation (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva on October 30, 2018. The 2-day conference was organized by WHO in collaboration with UN Environment, World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Secretariat of the UNFCCC, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (CCAC) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The theme of the conference was: “Improving Air Quality, Combating Climate Change- Saving Lives”. Some 92% of people worldwide breathe unhealthy air, resulting in about 6.5 million deaths annually. In it, household air pollution is a leading killer in poor rural and urban homes. Thus, the event responds to a World Health Assembly mandate to combat one of the world’s most significant causes of premature death. At the conclusion of the Conference, participants agreed an aspirational goal of reducing the number of deaths from air pollution by two thirds by 2030.

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HSBC Holdings Plc has executed India’s first trade financial transaction using blockchain for a deal involving an export by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to US-based Tricon Energy. The blockchain-enabled letter of credit (LC) reduces transaction timeline from 7-10 days to less than a day. The Letter of Credit (LC) was issued by ING Bank for Tricon Energy USA (importer) with HSBC India as the advisory and negotiation bank for RIL. The blockchain platform was integrated with the electronic bill of lading (eBL) platform to issue and manage an electronic bill of lading. This allows a digital transfer of the title of goods from the seller to the buyer in the underlying trade. It is claimed that the blockchain solution is a major improvement for any organisation involved in buying and selling goods internationally, as it brings together all parties onto one platform. It is a distributed database that maintains a continuously-growing list of ordered records called blocks and is deemed to be very transparent as all the stakeholders can view progress real time.