Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
Telugu poet K Siva Reddy has been selected for the prestigious Saraswati Samman, 2018 for his collection of poetry titled Pakkaki Ottigilite (Turning Aside While Lying Down). It is the highest recognition in the field of Indian literature and carries a cash purse of Rs 15 lakh, apart from a citation and a plaque. Pakkaki Ottigilite, published in 2016, is an anthology of 104 poems in blank verse. It captures the responses of the poet over the years to social change, the evolution of his own self and his dynamic relationship with the world.The award, instituted by the KK Birla Foundation in 1991, is given annually for an outstanding literary work written in any Indian language and published during the last 10 years.

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Justice Vikram Nath, seniormost judge of the Allahabad High Court, has been appointed Chief Justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. He succeeded acting CJ Justice Chagari Praveen Kumar. A collegium of Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi and judges S A Bobde and N V Ramana recommended the name of Justice Nath as the chief justice of the AP High Court. The new high court for Andhra Pradesh was created on 1st January 2019, following the bifurcation of a combined high court for AP and Telangana, which had been operating from Hyderabad since June 2, 2014, when the two Telugu states got separated.

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Alice G. Vaidyan, the CMD of the General Insurance Corporation (GIC) of India, has been awarded the Freedom of the City of London in recognition of her work to promote insurance ties between India and the UK. The Freedom of the City of London dates back to the 13th century and has since developed into an honour bestowed upon individuals who make an impact in the financial hub of London, referred to as the City or the Square Mile. The Freedom of the City of London is a very special and ancient tradition.

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Google has introduced a new open platform called Anthos to run and manage apps from anywhere. It is based on the Cloud Services Platform and would let users run applications on existing on-premise hardware investments or in the Public Cloud. Anthos not only allows customers to deploy Google Cloud in their own data centres but also gives them the flexibility to build, run and manage their workloads within their data centre, on Google Cloud, or other cloud providers (Multi-Cloud), without making any changes. Anthos will also let users manage workloads running on third-party clouds like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

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To empower AGRI, MSME segment and small businesses, the State Bank of India (SBI) has signed the first co-origination loan agreement with PAISALO Digital Limited. It is the first agreement of its kind in the country that SBI has signed. This will introduce a platform for the last mile customer. Here, the loan ticket is designed at Rs 10,000 to Rs 2 lakh. The company expects to disburse 200,000 loan applications in FY20. The move is to enable the customers to reach with ease and use the platform for smooth loan disbursal and repayment easily. PAISALO Digital Ltd is a systemically important non-deposit taking NBFC registered with the Reserve Bank of India and has been in operations since 1992.

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The scientists at University of Edinburgh have discovered a new state of physical matter – which allows atoms to exist as both solid and liquid at the same time. Until now, atoms in physical matter were understood to exist typically in one of three states — solid, liquid or gas. An international team of physicists have found that some elements can take on the properties of both solid and liquid states, when subjected to extreme conditions. They used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simulate what would happen if potassium was subject to huge pressure — between about 200,000 and 400,000 times atmospheric pressure — and heat — between 400 to 800 Kelvin (260 to 980 degrees Fahrenheit). The study found that under these conditions potassium atoms entered what is known as a chain-melted state, where one of the two lattices — the “guest” part — dissolved into liquid, while the “host” part remained solid. They found that more than half a dozen other elements, including sodium and bismuth, were able to reach the state if they were put into the right environments.

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Mahendra Singh Dhoni has become the first-ever captain to register 100 wins in Indian Premier League (IPL) history after Chennai Super Kings (CSK) defeated Rajasthan Royals by 4 wickets at the Sawai Man Singh stadium in Jaipur on 11th April 2019. MS Dhoni is the most experienced captain in the Indian Premier League. He has led Chennai Super Kings in 152 matches. In 2016, Dhoni led Rising Pune Supergiant in 14 matches. Overall, MS Dhoni has played 182 matches in the IPL and scored 4172 runs at an average of 41.30 with 21 fifties (19 for CSK and 2 for RPS) and 121 dismissals as wicketkeeper.

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Journalists Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone (Myanmar) has been chosen for 2019 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Press Freedom Prize. Both laureates are serving 7-year prison sentences. At the time of their arrest in Yangon on 12 December 2017, they were working for the Reuters news agency, reporting on alleged human rights violations in Myanmar’s state of Rakhine. The prize will be awarded on 2 May as part of the celebration of 2019 World Press Freedom Day (3 May) which is taking place in Ethiopia. The Prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the defence or promotion of press freedom especially in the face of danger. It is named after Guillermo Cano Isaza, the Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia, on 17 December 1986. The $25,000 Prize is funded by the Guillermo Cano Isaza Foundation (Colombia), the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland), and The Namibia Media Trust.

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Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh has been sworn-in as the new prime minister of the State of Palestine by President Mahmoud Abbas at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The 18th Palestinian government since the establishment of the Palestinian Authrity in 1995 was sworn in according to a presidential decree issued by Abbas. The State of Palestine is a de jure sovereign state in Western Asia claiming the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as the designated capital, although its administrative center is currently located in Ramallah. It is recognized by 136 UN members and since 2012 has a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations – which implies recognition of statehood. It is a member of the Arab League, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, G77, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other international bodies.

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The International Day of Human Space Flight is observed every year on April 12 to mark the beginning of the space era for mankind, reaffirming the important contribution of space science and technology in achieving sustainable development goals and increasing the well-being of States and peoples, as well as ensuring the realization of their aspiration to maintain outer space for peaceful purposes. On 12th April 1961 the first human space flight was carried out by Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet citizen. This historic event opened the way for space exploration for the benefit of all humanity.