Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2018

Notes:
The Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporaton (KMC) has recently launched India’s first Flood Forecasting and Early Warning System (FFEWS) for Kolkata City to help city officials and citizens act decisively to minimize damage before and during disasters. India’s first comprehensive city-level ‘FFEWS’ will reduce economic loss and impacts on livelihood and improve flood awareness and safety at community level. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded the design and implementation of the FFEWS through a $1 million technical assistance to KMC from its Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund under the Urban Financing Partnership Facility.

Notes:
Thampi Kannanthanam (64), the noted Malayalam film director, has recently passed away in Kochi, Kerala on October 2, 2018. He was most active during the period 1980-90. His most notable directorial films include Rajavinte Makan, Vazhiyorakazchakal, Bhoomiyile Rajakkanmar, Indrajaalam, Naadody, Chukkan, and Maanthrikam. He had also directed a Hindi film ‘Hadd’ starring Jackie Shroff and Ayesha Jhulka. Kannanthanam had also penned the scripts for movies like Janmantharam and Freedom.

Notes:
The Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention (MGISC) has recently concluded in New Delhi on October 2. The purpose of the 4–day event was to share sanitation success stories and lessons from the participating countries. In it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the convention. MGISC is organised by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation to mark the beginning of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi. The convention also coincides with the fourth anniversary of the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission. 53 Ministers of Sanitation from around the world and more than 160 international representatives from 68 countries participated in the convention. The international conference brings together Sanitation Ministers and other leaders in WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) from around the world.

Notes:
American scientist Arthur Ashkin, French engineer Gerard Mourou and Canadian professor Donna Strickland have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in the field of laser physics. Dr. Ashkin has been awarded the Prize “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems. Dr. Mourou and Dr. Strickland have been awarded “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”. With this, Dr. Strickland has become the third female laureate to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, after Maria Goeppert-Mayer and Marie Curie.

Notes:
The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, Prakash Javadekar has recently announced the “Swachh Campus rankings 2018” under different categories. In it, Haryana’s Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) has been declared the cleanest government varsity by the HRD Ministry, followed by Guru Nanak Dev University in Punjab’s Amritsar. The rankings were decided on the basis of a survey under the ‘Swachhta Hi Sewa’ campaign. The Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in the national capital has been ranked third among the government institutions followed by Algappa University in Tamil Nadu’s Karaikudi and Acharya Nagarjuna University in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur. The universities were assessed for toilets adequacy and maintenance, garbage clearance system, hostel kitchen hygiene and sophistication of equipment, water purity, storage, distribution facility, campus greenery and rainwater harvesting, use of solar systems and villages or neighbourhood adoption for hygiene.

Notes:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 with one half to Frances H. Arnold “for the directed evolution of enzymes” and the other half jointly to George P. Smith and British scientist Sir Gregory P. Winter “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies”. Dr. Arnold and Dr. Smith are American scientists. Now, Dr. Arnold is only the fifth woman to be awarded the prize for chemistry. The methods developed by the laureates have been put to work to create new enzymes and antibodies used in promoting a greener chemicals industry, mitigating disease and saving lives. The prize highlights the narrowing of the gap between biology and some fields of chemistry as chemists turn to nature for inspiration.

Notes:
Barham Ahmed Salih, the veteran Kurdistan politician, has been elected as the new President of Iraq on 2nd October 2018. He received 219 votes and defeated Fuad Hussein, who secured 22 votes. Salih is a former prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government and a former deputy prime minister of the Iraqi federal government. The new president will have 15 days to task the nominee of the largest parliamentary bloc with forming a new government. However, President Saleh has named veteran Shia Islamist politician Adel Abdul Mahdi as prime minister-designate & ended months of deadlock. Now, Mr. Mahdi will have to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq following the four-year battle against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which left tens of thousands of homes and business destroyed and displaced more than three million people. Under a de facto power-sharing deal agreed in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Iraq’s presidency is held by a Kurd, while the prime minister is Shia and the speaker of parliament is Sunni.

Notes:
The 31st All India Railways Chess tournament 2018 has started at Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu on October 3. The 4-day tournament has formally inaugurated by General Manager of Southern Railway, SM Kulshreshta. The event is being conducted in Swiss League Format at both team and individual levels. Around 87 players including five grandmasters and 18 international masters from 14 Zonal Railways and seven Production Units from across Indian Railways are participating in the event. The successful players from this tournament will represent Indian Railways in the National Chess Championship to be held in November 2018.

Notes:
On the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the world’s largest dome at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT)’s World Peace University (MIT-WPU) campus at Loni Kalbhor, Pune. The dome is 160 ft in diameter and 263 ft tall. It is larger in area than the dome at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City (which is 136 ft. in diameter and 448 ft. in height). The prayer hall can accommodate about 3,500 people and is embellished with more than 50 statues of saints, philosophers, scientists and statesmen from India and the world. Each of the statues, created by the noted artist ‘Ram V. Sutar’, is 4m in tall and weighs up to two tonnes. The dome will be home to teachings of saints, spiritual leaders, philosophers and scientists from around the world as it will profess humanity and world peace. It will house India’s first library called Saint Dnyaneshwara World Peace Library which will have books sourced from over 100 countries across the globe.

Notes:
Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu has recently released the policy on the biometric-based digital processing of passengers at airports called “Digi Yatra” to make hassle-free air travel for passengers. Digi Yatra is about Facial Recognition based passenger processing which is a common standard being adopted the world over. It will facilitate paperless travel and avoid identity check at multiple points. In the first phase in February 2019, Hyderabad and Bengaluru international airports will have the system on a pilot basis. In the second phase, in April 2019, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) will roll out the programme initially at Kolkata, Varanasi, Pune and Vijayawada airports later on, all airports will adopt the system. Under the Digi Yatra, passenger can get a Digi Yatra ID by sharing minimum details like Name, e-mail ID, Mobile number and details of one approved Identity proof where Aadhar ID is not mandatory. This DigiYatra ID will be shared by passengers while booking ticket. Airlines will share the passenger data and DigiYatraID with the departure airport