Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
The 52nd ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM-52) has recently taken place in Bangkok, Thailand from July 29 to Aug 3. The annual meeting opened with a call from the host Thailand for deeper integration to expand trade and bolster prosperity in the region amid rising global challenges. The meeting takes place in the shadow of rising security tension on the Korean Peninsula, China’s aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea and the US-China trade war. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is seeking to boost its own voice as a global player. It also plays host to a series of foreign ministers from key strategic and dialogue partners, including US, China and Russia.

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:
NDTV India’s senior executive editor, Ravish Kumar has been honoured with the prestigious 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award for his ‘ethical journalism’. Kumar has won the honour for his news show, Prime Time, which deals with real-life & under-reported problems of ordinary people. He is among five individuals who were declared winners of the award. The four other winners of the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award are Ko Swe Win from Myanmar, Angkhana Neelapaijit from Thailand, Raymundo Pujante Cayabyab from Philippines and Kim Jong-Ki from South Korea. The Ramon Magsaysay Award is the highest honour given to Asian individuals and organisations and often referred to as the Asian version of the Nobel Prize.

Notes:
The joint venture company namely Khanij Bidesh India Ltd. (KABIL) has been set up with the participation of three Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) to ensure a consistent supply of critical and strategic minerals to Indian domestic market. These CPSEs are National Aluminium Company Ltd. (NALCO), Hindustan Copper Ltd. (HCL) and Mineral Exploration Company Ltd. (MECL). The newly setup company will ensure supply of Lithium and Cobalt which is available in less quantity in the country. It will help in building partnerships with other mineral rich countries like Australia and those in Africa and South America, where Indian expertise in exploration and mineral processing will be mutually beneficial bringing about new economic opportunities. The equity participation between NALCO, HCL and MECL is in the ratio of 40:30:30.

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:
On August 3, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani launched the ‘Vhali Dikri Yojna’ in Rajkot for the welfare of girl child. It is a statewide cash incentive scheme for every girl child born in Gujarat, with a view to raising the female birthrate at par with male to achieve gender equality. According to scheme, the State Government will pay Rs. 4,000 to every girl child at the time of admission to Standard 4th, Rs. 6,000 at the time of taking admission to Standard IX, Rs. 1-lakh at the time of taking admission for higher education at the age of 18 and another Rs. 1-lakh at the time of marriage. Approx, Rs.133-crore has been allocated for this scheme.

Notes:
A 23-year-old Indian-origin doctor, Bhasha Mukherjee has been crowned Miss England after fending off competition from dozens of other models. She holds two different medical degrees & has an IQ of 146, which makes her officially a ‘genius’. Mukherjee speaks five languages – English, Bengali, Hindi, German and French -and has a Bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Nottingham. As winner of Miss England, she will be entered into the Miss World contest and will also bag a holiday to Mauritius.

Notes:
Kanti Bhatt (88), the veteran Gujarati journalist, author and columnist, has passed away in Mumbai. He was born on 15th July 1931 in Sachra village in erstwhile Bhavnagar state of Gujarat. He started his journalism career in the late 1960s as a financial journalist in Mumbai. He also worked as journalist, writer, columnist and editor in various Gujarati publications like Chitralekha, Mumbai Samachar, Janshakti, Sandesh, Yuva Darshan, Jansatta, Vyapar and Abhiyan. Bhatt was also the founding editor of one of the leading Gujarati magazines ‘Abhiyan’, which he launched with his wife Sheela, also a veteran journalist and member of the Editors Guild of India.