Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
The joint military exercise titled “Bold Kurukshetra-2019” was held between the Indian Army and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) at Babina Cantonment in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh from April 8 to 11. The purpose of the exercise was to develop military technology, enhance the maritime security and bolster the nations’ fight against terrorism.

Notes:
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.

Notes:
The report on ‘Political Leaders Position and Action on Air Quality in India 2014-2019’ has recently released by a Delhi-based environment body – Climate Trends. As per report, Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur has been ranked 1st on the WHO’s list of 15 most polluted cities. Faridabad (Haryana) stood at 2nd position, followed by Varanasi (UP), which is the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The report claimed that the situation in Varanasi is deteriorating as its MP has focused on beautification and infrastructure. The Air Quality index (AQI) in Varanasi reached an alarming 490 in 2017 and 384 — very poor category — in December 2018. The report also noted that MPs of Lucknow and Kanpur — Home Minister Rajnath Singh and senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi respectively — have mostly been silent on the issue of air pollution in their respective constituencies. Gaya and Patna in Bihar are 4th and 5th on the list, while Delhi is 6th and Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow is 7th. Cities of Agra, Muzaffarpur, Srinagar, Gurugram, Jaipur, Patiala and Jodhpur are also on the WHO list of most polluted cities.

Notes:
Professor Najma Akhtar has become the first-ever woman Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMI) for a period of five years or until she attains the age of 70 years, She is also the first lady vice chancellor of any central university in Delhi. Ms. Akhtar has four decades of academic scholarship in educational leadership. She is known for spearheading international educational administrators’ course for senior officials from 130 countries for more than 15 years at National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) in New Delhi.

Notes:
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.

Notes:
Gargi Kaul, a 1984-batch officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA&AS), has been appointed as new Secretary of Defence Finance.

Notes:
In a major attempt to build resilience against the impact of climate change, the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) and the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of ISRO have joined together to map, validate and protect smaller wetlands in the coastal region aimed at restoring them through coastal livelihood programmes. Both the organizations will develop a mobile app and a centralised web portal with a complete database of wetlands that are smaller than 2.25 hectares in the country. Such smaller wetlands cover an area of more than five lakh hectares across the country, while Kerala having as many as 2,592 smaller wetlands. As per the MoU, the two scientific institutes aim to identify and demarcate wetlands and restore the degraded wetlands through suitable livelihood options like coastal aquaculture. The app will be used for real-time monitoring of the wetlands and giving advisories to stakeholders and coastal people. The collaborative move is part of a national framework for fisheries and wetlands recently developed by the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project of CMFRI.

Notes:
The 4th Resilient Cities Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Congress 2019 is a platform for discussing the opportunities and mechanisms of executing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which is started in New Delhi on April 15, 2019. The three-day event is being hosted by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation in association with UN (ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability). This event is being organised in India for the first time and 31 countries are taking part in this programme that was inaugurated by the vice president. The RCAP Congress 2019 is offering cities and regions from Asia-Pacific a variety of innovative solutions that build resilience to climate change at the sub-national level.

Notes:
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel in collaboration with FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) launched a women safety app – My Circle – to help women in case they face any problem or a panic situation. The application is carrier agnostic which would work on phones with any telecom service network, both Airtel and non-Airtel. The app enables women to send SOS alerts to any five of their family or friends in 13 languages including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Bangla, Urdu, Assamese, Oriya, and Gujarati. A woman in distress can send an SOS alert by pressing the SOS prompt on the app. It can also be activated by voice command through Siri on iOS. It will instantly send an SOS alert along with the user’s location over SMS to the five contacts selected by the user and advise them to immediately reach out or respond to the emergency situation. The free-to-download app is now available on Google Play store (Android) and will be available on App Store (iOS) shortly.

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.