Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
The ‘QS Best Student Cities Ranking’ has been compiled by global education consultancy QS Quacquarelli Symonds. London has been named as the world’s best city for students for the second consecutive year, followed by Tokyo and Melbourne. According to the rankings, India’s best student city is Bengaluru (81st), followed by Mumbai (85th), Delhi at 113 and Chennai at 115, out of a total of 120 cities in the list. The ranking highlighted each city’s performance across six categories – the number of top-ranked universities; the proportion of a city’s population made up of students; quality of life on offer; job opportunities available after graduation; affordability; and the feedback of the students themselves.

Notes:
The World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is observed every year on July 30 to raise awareness of the situation of victims of human trafficking and for the promotion and protection of their rights. Human trafficking is a global problem and no country is immune to it. Millions of victims fall into the hands of traffickers, lured by fake promises and deceit. Hence, the 2019 theme “Human Trafficking: call your government to action” is focusing on highlighting the importance of Government action in the interest of victims of trafficking. But the call to action is not only to Governments, we encourage everyone to take action to prevent this heinous crime.

Notes:
Actor-filmmaker Andy Serkis has won the IBC 2019 International Honour for Excellence and will be given the honour at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) awards ceremony on September 15 in Amsterdam. Serkis is best known for his mastery in motion capture techniques courtesy films like “The Lord of the Rings” and “Planet of the Apes” trilogy.

Notes:
Union Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Steel, Dharmendra Pradhan has recently launched Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC) in New Delhi to encourage the spirit of innovation at the community level. The aim of the initiative is to encourage the spirit of innovation through solution-driven design thinking to serve society. The ACIC is a new initiative of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) to support community innovation drive in the country. It will provide a platform in many of the rural, tribal areas and Tier-II and -III cities and unserved regions to have access to latest technologies for innovation and to ideate and create prototypes for innovation.

Notes:
In Shooting, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar from Madhya Pradesh clinched a yellow metal in Men’s Rifle 3 Positions (3P) at 12th Sardar Sajjan Singh Sethi Memorial Masters competition in New Delhi. In the finals, Aishwary posted a comfortable victory with a score of 459.9 and a classy 10.7 in the end. Meanwhile, multiple International Shooting Sport Federation medallist and India’s most accomplished 3P shooter Sanjeev Rajput, had to be satisfied with a silver, finishing with a score of 455.5, a clear 4.4 behind Aishwary. India international Parul Kumar settled for the bronze.

Notes:
The book “Tools and Weapons: The Promise and The Peril of the Digital Age” has been co-authored by Microsoft President Brad Smith & Carol Ann Browne, and will release on September 11. The book will provide a behind-the-scene look at the multinational technology company and tell some of the biggest stories to hit the tech industry in the past decade. The book comes at a time when the company finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These include privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of AI, big tech’s relationship to inequality and the challenges for democracy, far and near.

Notes:
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has released a study titled “Economic Valuation of Tiger Reserves in India: A Value+ Approach”. The study is authored by the Centre for Ecological Services Management at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (Bhopal). It estimates the economic valuation of Bandipur Tiger Reserve and 9 other tiger reserves in the country. The purpose behind the report is to enhance tiger conservation by highlighting the holistic economic benefits of protected areas. The researchers used an array of methods to determine the economic, scientific, educational, cultural and recreational services of tiger parks. The reserves surveyed are Melghat Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra), Nagarjunasagar Srisailam (Andhra Pradesh), Anamalai (Tamil Nadu), Bandipur (Karnataka), Dudhwa (Uttar Pradesh), Pakke (Arunachal Pradesh), Palamau (Jharkhand), Panna (Madhya Pradesh), Similipal (Odisha), and Valmiki (Bihar). Founded in 1982, the IIFM is a premier national level institute engaged in education, research, training and consultancy in the area of Forest, Environment and Natural Resources Management and allied sectors.

Notes:
The Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance is conducting India’s first national Time Release Study (TRS) between 1st – 7th August to enable faster movement of cargo across borders to benefit traders. The exercise will be institutionalized on an annual basis, during the same period every year hereafter. The TRS is an internationally recognized tool advocated by World Customs Organization (WCO) to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of international trade flows. This initiative will be conducted at the same time across 15 ports including sea, air, land and dry ports which cumulatively account for 81% of total Bills of Entries for import and 67% of Shipping Bills for export filed within India. The national TRS will establish baseline performance measurement and have standardized operations and procedures across all ports. Based on the results of the TRS, government agencies associated with cross border trade will be able to diagnose existing and potential bottlenecks which act as barriers to the free flow of trade, and take remedial actions for reducing the cargo release time. The initiative is on ground lead by the Central Board of Indirect Tax and Customs.

Notes:
Former Indian opener and Bengal captain, Arun Lal has been conferred with Karthik Bose Lifetime Achievement award of the Cricket Association of Bengal’s (CAB’s) in Kolkata. He played 16 Test matches and 13 One-Day Internationals (ODIs) for India between 1982 and 1989. He played six seasons for Delhi before becoming a regular feature for Bengal and was a major figure in Bengal’s Ranji Trophy triumph in 1989. He was credited with instilling a positive attitude in the team’s approach.

Notes:
Nobel Prize-winning US author Toni Morrison (88) has passed away in New York, United States on 5th August 2019. She is the first African-American woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature for her novels depicting the struggles of black Americans living in a white society ridden with racial discrimination. She won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “Beloved” that told the story of a runaway female slave and was made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998. In 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the highest civilian honor – Presidential Medal of Freedom.