Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
In a major boost for the Indian Army, the Government of India (GoI) has recently cleared the procurement of 464 T-90 tanks from Russia in a deal worth over Rs 13,500 crore. Under the new deal, the T-90 tanks would be provided to the Armoured Corps of the force which will use them for deployment along the border with Pakistan. The contract will also include a Make-in-India element for integration at the Heavy Vehicles Factory in Avadi near Chennai. The T-90 would be equipped with thermal imaging night sights to allow the tank commander to strike enemy locations during night battles. The new inductions will also strengthen the Army’s fire-power along the land border stretch with Pakistan — from Jammu in the north till the western flank in Gujarat. The new deal would increase the number of T-90s in the Army to close to 2,000 along with the remaining T-72 and T-55s.

Notes:
Indian captain Virat Kohli has been named as the Leading Cricketer of the year for an unprecedented third year in a row by the 2019 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. Kohli was picked as one of the Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, along with Tammy Beaumont, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran and Rory Burns. The Indian skipper is only the third cricketer ever to have won the award more than three times after Don Bradman (10 times) and Jack Hobbs (8 times). India’s Smriti Mandhana has been named as the women’s Leading Cricketer in the World for 2018 while Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan was named the Leading Twenty20 Cricketer for the second consecutive year. Wisden has been listing out Cricketers of the Year since 1889 and it is considered as one of the more prestigious awards in the sport.

Notes:
The Nepal government has recently sent a 4-member team of experts to re-measure the height of Mount Everest. Chief Survey Officer Khim Lal Gautam and Survey Officer Rabin Karki will ascend Mount Everest. After reaching the summit, they will use a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that will send readings about its height to their two colleagues who will remain at base camp. The Survey Department in Kathmandu will be conducted four sets of surveys: Precise levelling, Trigonometric levelling, Gravity survey and GNSS survey. It is for the first time, Nepal has sent its own team to conduct a survey of the world’s highest mountain. The aim of the government is to measure the exact height of Mount Everest amid debates that there might have been a change in its height due to various reasons including the devastating earthquake of 2015. Survey of India had measured the height as 8848 meter in 1954 and it has been adopted as authentic height by the Government of Nepal till date.

Notes:
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.

Notes:
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has recently released a State of World Population 2019 report. The report stated that India’s population grew at an average annual rate of 1.2% between 2010 and 2019 to 1.36 billion, which is more than double the annual growth rate of China. According to the report, in India, total fertility rate per woman was 5.6 in 1969, dropping to 3.7 in 1994 and 2.3 in 2019. India also recorded an improvement in life expectancy at birth. The life expectancy at birth in 1969 was 47 years, growing to 60 years in 1994 and 69 years in 2019. As per India’s population composition in 2019, 27% of the population was in the age bracket of 0-14 years and 10-24 years each, 67% in the 15-64 age bracket and 6% was of the age 65 and above. The report noted that Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) in the country dropped from 488 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1994 to 174 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015.

Notes:
On 13th April 2019, the nation paid homage to the martyrs of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on the centenary of the incident. On this day in 1919, hundreds of innocent Indians were killed by troops under British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, during a peaceful meeting on Baisakhi at the park in Amritsar, Punjab. Here, the civilians had assembled for a peaceful protest to condemn the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. The massacre is one of the darkest chapters of India’s freedom struggle against the British occupation. The official death toll by the British government was put at 379, but Indian figures put the toll at closer to 1,000. Even after 100 years, the British government has only regretted the massacre but stopped short of apologizing for the killing of so many innocent people.

Notes:
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.

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:
Forbes has recently compiled a first-ever list of the World’s Best Bank 2019 in terms of customer services and technological advancements. The private lender, HDFC Bank, was ranked at the top of the Forbes list of Indian banks, followed by ICICI Bank, DBS, Kotak Mahindra Bank and IDFC Bank. However, India’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), did not even make it to top 10 of the list and was ranked 11th by the customers.Forbes had partnered with Statista, a market research company, to measure the best banks in 23 countries. Interestingly, this survey ignored any financial performances like P&L statements and balance sheets in favour of a customer’s opinion. The survey compiled data from around 40,000 customers around the world for their opinions on their banking relationships. The banks were rated on the basis of 5 key attributes – trust, digital services, financial advice and fees.

Notes:
Researchers at the IIT Roorkee have identified a new method to detect two of the worst forms of cancer in women – breast and ovarian cancer. The research published in the journal, ‘FASEB Bioadvances’ details the use of whole saliva as a body fluid for early detection of breast and ovarian cancers, as opposed to the traditional method of using blood samples. The research team, led by Professor Kiran Ambatipudi from the institute’s biotechnology department, identified certain proteins present in the saliva which act as potential biomarkers indicative of breast and ovarian cancer metastasis.