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 Hump-backed Mahseer, also known as ‘Tor remadevii’ in scientific terms, is a critically endangered species as per the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This iconic and highly-valued freshwater fish, termed as the ‘tiger of the water’, inhabits the Cauvery river basin, including Kerala’s Pambar, Kabini and Bhavani rivers. The fish earns its megafauna status by reaching up to a measurement of 1.5m and a weight of 55 kg. Its endangered title also accompanies five other species, including two wild orchids, the Arabian scad, and two wild coffee species exclusive to a few locales in the Western Ghats.

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:
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:
The State of the Global Air 2019 report has recently released by the Boston-based Health Effects Institute (HEI). The report revealed that 1.2 million Indians lost their lives due to exposure to unsafe air in 2017. Now, in India, air pollution is the third-highest cause of death among all health risks, ranking just above smoking. This is a combined effect of outdoor fine particles PM2.5, ozone and household (indoor) air pollution. In 2017, exposure to PM 2.5 pollution was found to be the third leading risk factor globally for Type 2 diabetes-related deaths and disability after high blood sugar and excessive body weight. Due to this combined exposure South Asians including Indians are dying early — their life expectancy has reduced by over 2.6 years. In India, early deaths are linked to respiratory diseases, heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and diabetes that are influenced by air pollution.

Notes:
On April 5, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the National Cardiology Conference 2019 at Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of medical sciences in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The 3-day conference will be organized by Dept of Cardiology in which leading national and international experts from Europe, USA, Japan, Singapore South Korea, Indonesia and Australia will deliberate on the latest topics of Interventional cardiology and cutting edge technology. The conference being held for the first time in Uttar Pradesh offers an opportunity to showcase newer innovations in Cardiology that can help deliver cost-effective cardiology care to patients.

Notes:
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has said that its Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully blasted the surface of an asteroid Ryugu to make a crater on its surface. The move will pave the way for the collection of underground samples for possible clues to the origin of the solar system. For this, the Hayabusa2 dropped a “small carry-on impactor” made of copper onto the asteroid and the spacecraft safely evacuated and remained intact. Now, JAXA is analyzing data to examine if or how the impactor made a crater. The copper explosive is the size of a baseball weighing 2 kg. If successful, it would be the first time for a spacecraft to take such materials. The asteroid, named Ryugu after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale, is about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth. Earlier, Hayabusa2 successfully touched down on a tiny flat surface on the boulder-rich asteroid in February 2019, when the spacecraft also collected some surface dust and small debris.

Notes:
The Guwahati Railway Station has become the first station in India to obtain the ISO 14001: 2015 certification for implementation of environment management system by carrying out directives issued by the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The station also has amenities such as High-class reserve (VIP) lounge, waiting rooms, AC and non-AC retiring rooms, food courts and sanitation facilities. The certification will be reviewed in 2020 by NF Railway, which mandates stricter environmental norms regarding waste disposal among others to be adhered to Railway Station. ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) is responsible for establishing standard in different areas of activities. There are many types of ISO certification and ISO-14001 is for environment management system as per international norms and was upgraded last in 2015. Hence the certificate is called ISO 14001:2015.

Notes:
Praful Patel, the president of All India Football Federation (AIFF), has become the first Indian to be elected as a member of the FIFA Executive Council. He got 38 out of 46 votes. Mr Patel was one of the eight candidates vying for the spot in the election which was held during the 29th Asian Football Confederations Congress in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. The membership in the council will be for four years, from 2019 to 2023.