Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
South Korea has won the 2019 Sultan Azlan Shah Hockey tournament. In the final, they defeated five time champion India in a penalty shootout 4-2 at Ipoh in Malaysia on April 1. Till the stipulated time both the teams had a score of 1 goal each. Even India was leading with one goal till half time. Simaranjit Singh hit a goal for India. Jang Jong Hyun scored the goal for South Korea. Hosts Malaysia defeated Canada 4-2 and secured the 3rd place. Asian games Gold medalist Japan stood at 5th place, defeating Poland 6-1.

Notes:
The 13th edition of Earth Hour 2019 was observed on March 30 with theme “#Connect2Earth” to encourage people across the world to turn off non-essential electric lights for one hour from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. It calls for greater awareness and more sparing use of resources, especially fossil fuels that produce carbon gases and lead to global warming. On this day, the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature-India made an appeal to citizens to join the Earth Hour 2019 to inspire millions across the country to shift to more sustainable practices and minimize negative impacts on the planet.

Notes:
The Hongkou district of Shanghai has recently claimed to have the world’s first district with 5G coverage and a broadband gigabit network. It conducted trial runs of the 5G network, backed by telecom services provider China Mobile. Shanghai also aims to build over 10,000 5G base stations by the end of this year and the number of 5G base stations could cross 30,000 in 2021. 5G is the next generation of cellular technology with download speed 10 to 100 times faster than the 4G LTE networks.

Notes:
The Government of India (GoI) has constituted a tribunal to adjudicate if there exists sufficient cause to ban the Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir (JeL) and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front-Yasin Malik (JKLF-Y) faction. The tribunal will be headed by Justice Chander Shekhar of the Delhi High Court. The decision has been taken by the Union Home Ministry exercising the powers conferred under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967. The JeI and the JKLF-Y were declared as unlawful associations on February 28 and March 22 respectively.

Notes:
J Mahendra (79), the veteran filmmaker, screenwriter and actor, has passed away in Chenai, Tamil Nadu on 2nd April 2019. He was known for infusing realism in Tamil cinema and for giving superstar Rajinikanth his career breakthrough with “Mullum Malarum”. He started his journey in the movies as a screenplay writer and made his directorial debut with 1978 film “Mullum Malarum”. The director’s popularity peaked with his movies “Uthiri Pookkal” (1979) and “Nenjathai Killathey” (1980). In the past few years, Mahendran had switched to acting. He played pivotal parts in “Kamaraj” (2004), “Petta” opposite Rajinikanth and Vijay’s “Theri”. He was last seen in Tamil film “Boomerang”, which released on March 8. Mahendran was also the founding member of Blue Ocean Film and Television Academy here.

Notes:
IIT Kharagpur has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy (PGBA) to develop research and training module for the trainees of the Hyderabad-based sports facility. The thrust area of the collaboration is to promote health and wellbeing of sportspersons and coaches for enhancing the quality of performance and resilience. Players and coaches from PGBA will benefit from these programs. Further, the coaches will also be trained on how to use that knowledge while training players. Under the collaboration, IIT-KGP will also set up a sports academy in collaboration with Gopichand. The academy would promote collaborative research related to happiness in sports in general and badminton in particular, and science and technology in sports training. The scope would also include joint monitoring and use of materials used in general and badminton in particular by IIT Kharagpur and PGBA. A sum of Rs10 crore has been allocated to develop modern sports facilities at IIT-Kgp.

Notes:
The World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) is observed every year to raise public awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Autism is a brain disorder that typically affects a person’s ability to communicate with others. It generally begins in childhood and last through adulthood. The day highlights the need to help and improve the quality of life of those with autism so that they can lead full and meaningful lives as an integral part of society. The 2019 theme “Assistive Technologies, Active Participation” , underscores the importance of affordable assistive technologies to support people with autism to live independent lives and, indeed, to exercise their basic human rights.

Notes:
Researchers led by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan has put a theory speculated by the late Stephen Hawking to its most rigorous test to date, and their results have ruled out the possibility that primordial black holes smaller than a tenth of a millimeter make up most of dark matter. They used the gravitational lensing effect to look for primordial black holes between Earth and the Andromeda galaxy. However, gravitational lensing effects are very rare events because it requires a star in the Andromeda galaxy, a primordial black hole acting as the gravitational lens, and an observer on Earth to be exactly in line with one another. In order to maximise the chances of capturing an event, the researchers used the Hyper Suprime-Cam digital camera on the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, which can capture the whole image of the Andromeda galaxy in one shot. Taking into account how fast primordial black holes are expected to move in interstellar space, the team took multiple images to be able to catch the flicker of a star as it brightens for a period of a few minutes to hours due to gravitational lensing. The team’s results showed primordial black holes can contribute no more than 0.1% of all dark matter mass. Therefore, it is unlikely the theory is true.

Notes:
India has recently signed an agreement with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development Consultancy Service (NABCONS) for setting up India-Africa Institute of Agriculture and Rural Development (IAIARD) in Malawi. The agreement is a part of India’s efforts to enhance capacity in the areas of agro-financing and entrepreneurship development for African countries. IAIARD will be a Pan-African Institute wherein trainees not only from Malawi but also from other African countries, will receive training to develop their human resources and build their capacity. The entire expenditure on faculty from India, the travel, logistics and training course expenses for students from other African countries will be borne by the Government of India (GoI) for an initial period of 3 years. This institute will be the first of its kind developed in an African country by India. This will further strengthen the bilateral relations with Malawi and India’s relations with African Union.

Notes:
Prof. Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist and professor of global health at Harvard Medical School, has won the prestigious 2019 John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award. Mr. Patel has led research generating knowledge on the burden and determinants of mental health problems in low and middle-income countries and pioneered approaches which utilise community resources for the prevention and treatment of mental health problems in India with global impact. Laureates receive a $100,000 cash honorarium and will be formally presented with their awards on October 24, 2019 at the annual Canada Gairdner Awards Gala in Toronto.