Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
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.

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:
India and Sweden have recently launched the India-Sweden Collaborative Industrial Research and Development Programme on the occasion of the Sweden-India Innovation Partnership AI for All Summit in New Delhi. The programme will address a range of global challenges through technology and innovation. The Joint programme is co-funded by Indian Department of Science & Technology (DST) and Sweden’s Innovation Agency – Vinnova. The new programme brings together the world class excellence of Sweden and India to address challenges in the area of Smart Cities and Clean Technologies and Digitalization / Internet of Things (IoT). Vinnova will provide funding to Swedish side participants upto 2,500,000 Swedish Krona as grant. On the Indian side, conditional grant of upto 50% with a limit of INR 1.5 crores per project to Indian project partners to be provided. This Programme is technically and administratively managed by the Global Innovation & Technology Alliance (GITA) on behalf of DST in India and Vinnova in Sweden.

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:
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.

Notes:
India will be the Guest of Honour country at the 29th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (ADIBF 2019), which is scheduled to be held from April 24th to 30th. The fair aims to highlight the UAE’s rich heritage, showcasing its authenticity and modernity, as well as its cultural and literary output. India’s participation in the fair is expected to attract significant increase in the number of visitors with various events and activities which will be held throughout the entire duration of ADIBF. The Indian Pavilion will host Indian writers, authors and literary scholars who will serve as ambassadors for the literature and art of their country.

Notes:
Meena Kumari Maisnam from Manipur clinched gold in the 54 kg category at the 2019 Boxing World Cup in Cologne, Germany. Reigning youth world champion Sakshi (57 kg) and India Open champion Pwilao Basumatary (64 kg) lost their final bouts and finished with silver medals. Hence, India completed a haul of five medals from this prestigious European tournament following Pinki Rani (51kg) and Parveen (60kg)’s bronze medal wins on 13th April 2019.

Notes:
Ethiopian athletes Gelete Burka (women’s race) and Abrha Milaw (men’s race) won the 43rd edition of the Paris Marathon on 14th April 2019. They led a record 60,000 participants to the finish line through the French capital. Milaw won the men’s race with a time of 2 hours :07 minutes and :50 seconds. Burka was the fastest woman with 2 hours :22 minutes and :48 seconds. In the wheelchair race, Julien Casoli won for a third time. The fastest disabled racer put up a time of 1 hour:36 minutes and :57 seconds. The Paris marathon is one of the world’s most popular running events.

Notes:
Pradeep Choubey (70), the renowned Hindi poet, has passed away in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh on April 12, 2019. He was the younger brother of celebrated humorist, satirist and poet Shail Chaturvedi. Born on 26th August 1949 in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, Choubey shifted to Gwalior. He quit his job at Dena Bank to pursue his passion of poetry and travelled across the nation enthralling audiences with his punches, several of them targeted at the orthodox elements of society. Besides humour, he was famous for satirical comments on the system.

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.