Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
Harsheel Dani from India has clinched the 2019 Dutch International badminton title at Hague in Netherlands. In the final, he defeated Mads Christophersen of Denmark by 15-21, 21-12, 21-13.

Notes:
In Mumbai, EsselWorld launched India’s first foreign interactive and exotic world park at the Essel World Bird Park in Gorai. The rain forest themed park is spread across 1.5 acres and is home to over 500 birds belonging to 60 different exotic species. Hence, this is the first bird park in India to host three different varieties of birds – aquatic, terrestrial and free flying birds – across terrains, ranging from rainforests, deserts, rocky decks and lakes, all located within EsselWorld in Gorai. It is equipped with small ponds for aquatic birds, dense cover of trees for birds to incubate their eggs and a water stream that offers drinking water to birds. It also houses a special bird’s kitchen and healthcare centre. Some of the key attractions in the park are Ostriches, African grey parrots, Blue gold macaws, Toucans, Black swan and Rainbow lorikeet among others.

Notes:
UN cultural experts have recently offered to help in rebuilding the iconic structure of the famed Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The cathedral is a universal symbol and the centre of France and its devastation has left people across nations shocked. UNESCO World Heritage Centre Director Mechtild Rossler said that the Cathedral is part of the World Heritage site officially known as “Paris, Banks of the Seine”, inscribed on the World Heritage List, in 1991’. The Notre Dame represents a historically, architecturally, and spiritually, outstanding universal heritage. It is also a monument of literary heritage. The cathedral, where construction began in the 1160s extending for more than a century, is considered to be the finest example of the French Gothic style of architecture, with its groundbreaking use of rib vaults and buttresses, stained glass rosettes and sculpted ornaments.

Notes:
A book containing English translation of the 100-year-old classic Punjabi poem about Jallianwala Bagh massacre, ‘Khooni Vaisakhi’ has been released in Abu Dhabi. India’s Ambassador to the UAE Navdeep Singh Suri has commended the launch of a book containing English translation of the Punjabi poem. The poem was translated by Mr Suri whose grandfather, revolutionary poet and novelist Nanak Singh, a Jallianwala Bagh survivor, wrote it after witnessing first-hand the events of April 13, 1919. On this ill-fated day, British troops fired upon crowds of protesters peacefully demonstrating against the Rowlatt Act of the British Raj, leading to the loss of well over a thousand lives. The book was also released in New Delhi on 13th April 2019, marking 100 years since the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place in Amritsar.

Notes:
A global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, ACI Worldwide has recently announced that Canara Bank has successfully rolled out major new functionality to support EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) card acquiring across its ATM network and Aadhaar Authentication and leverage ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution to achieve market firsts. With this, Canara Bank has become the first public sector bank in India to meet RBI’s EMV mandate. The EMV shift is aimed at reducing lost and stolen card fraud and making counterfeit card fraud more difficult. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had set a deadline of December 31, 2018 for the switch, mandating use of an embedded chip to replace the traditional magnetic stripe card. ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution is based on the Universal Payments (UP) Framework and built on open service-oriented architecture for robust payments orchestration. It supports core payment processing with 24×7 secure payment capabilities.

Notes:
Russia has recently dismissed the findings of the long-awaited report by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller and said that it failed to present any evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections. The report titled “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” details extensive contacts between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives who, it said, sought to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. It is the product of a 22-month investigation by Robert Mueller. He was appointed to probe Russian interference in the 2016 elections and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The 448-page report did not find evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia.

Notes:
On April 17, Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) has partnered with M1Xchange Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) platform for MSME bill discounting. TReDS is a digital platform to support Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to get their bills financed at a competitive rate through an auction where multiple registered financiers can participate. In addition to TReDS platform of Receivables Exchange of India Ltd (RXIL) & Invoicemart (A.TREDS Ltd), the bank has now on-boarded as financier on the TReDS platform of M1Xchange of Mynd Solutions. Mynd Solutions is a technology management firm which runs the TReDS platform of M1Xchange. The main purpose of TReDS platform is to facilitate smooth flow of liquidity in the system and make finance available at a competitive rate. The cost of funds will be reduced for MSMEs as banks will be bidding based on the risk rating of a corporate.

Notes:
Jerrie Cobb (88), NASA’s first female astronaut candidate, has passed away in Florida on March 18, 2019. In 1961, Cobb became the first woman to pass astronaut testing. Altogether, 13 women passed the arduous physical testing and became known as the Mercury 13. But NASA already had its Mercury 7 astronauts, all test pilots and men. None of the Mercury 13 ever reached space, despite Cobb’s testimony in 1962 before a Congressional panel. She wrote in her 1997 autobiography “Jerrie Cobb, Solo Pilot’, “My country, my culture, was not ready to allow a woman to fly in space”. Cobb also served for decades as a humanitarian aid pilot in the Amazon jungle.

Notes:
The Indian Navy has launched guided missile destroyer INS Imphal at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders in Mumbai on April 20. It’s the third state-of-the-art warship built as part of Project 15B, in which ships are built to carry and operate two multiple role helicopters. INS Imphal has a length of 163m and 17.4m at the beam and a displacement of 7.300 tonnes, which are propelled by four gas turbines to achieve speeds in excess of 30 knots. Under Project 15B, the Navy had launched first ship ‘INS Vishakhapatnam’ in April 2015, while the second ship ‘INS Mormugao’ was launched in September 2016.

Notes:
The first edition of Naval Commanders’ Conference – 2019 is scheduled to begin in New Delhi from April 23. The 3-day conference is the apex forum within the Service for interaction between the Naval Commanders. The Chief of the Naval Staff, with the Commanders-in-Chief, will review major operational, logistics, training and administrative activities undertaken during the previous six months and deliberate upon the course to be steered in the ensuing six months. The Conference assumes greater significance in the backdrop of Pulwama associated events that have brought country’s defence under sharper focus and will provide the higher naval leadership a forum to discuss the emerging challenges in the maritime domain. The conference also serves as a platform for institutionalised interaction of Naval Commanders with senior Government Officials.