Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
On August 1, East Bengal club has officially started the centenary celebrations on its foundation day with a glittering ceremony at the Netaji Indoor Stadium. On this occasion, the iconic football club awarded its highest honour – Bharat Gaurav – to India’s first cricket World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev. Kapil is no stranger to football as he had donned the club’s colours in an exhibition match against Mohun Bagan in 1992. Kapil is no stranger to football as he had donned the club’s colours in an exhibition match against Mohun Bagan in 1992.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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 World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) is an annual celebration which is being held every year from 1 to 7 August in more than 120 countries. The purpose of WBW is to create awareness among the parents about breastfeeding and to encourage parents to adopt breastfeeding. The week also create awareness about the importance of initiation and exclusive breastfeeding, and adequate and appropriate complementary feeding. It provides advocacy material about the importance of breastfeeding. The 2019 theme is “Empower Parents, Enable Breastfeeding”. The focus this year is on protection, promotion, and support of breastfeeding.

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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:
The State Bank of India’s (SBI) Shanghai branch has become the first Indian bank to link up with China’s National Advance Payment System (CNAPS). After being a member of the CNAPS, SBI Shanghai can also offer real time transfer of local funds within China by routing them through the PBOC. It eliminates the need of tie up and maintenance of accounts with multiple Banks for fund transfer. The CNAPS provides real-time settlement services for all payments cleared in mainland China, as well as in all clearing banks in offshore yuan centers, such as Hong Kong. The CNAPS system is complemented by its international counterpart, the CIPS (China International Payments System or Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payment System), launched in 2015 with the aim of boosting international use of the Chinese currency, yuan. The CNAP was launched in 2008 by People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

Notes:
In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court has recently held that a judicial magistrate can order an accused to give his voice samples even against his consent in the course of a criminal investigation. This judgment was rendered by a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna. The bench dealt with the issues, including that whether in the absence of any provision in the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc), can a magistrate authorise the investigating agency to record the voice sample of the person accused of an offence. The CJI pointed out that the Supreme Court has issued this order under Article 142 of the Constitution following the interpretation of all the pertinent laws.

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Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have become the first Indian pair to win a BWF Super 500 badminton tournament. They beat World champions Li Jun Hui and Liu Yu Chen of China in the summit clash of Thailand Open 21-19, 18-21, 21-18 in Bangkok to win the men’s doubles category.