Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
Australian all-rounder Ellyse Perry has become the first cricketer of either gender to reach the rare milestone of scoring 1000 runs and taking 100 wickets in T20 international cricket. She achieved the feat run in the multi-format 2019 Ashes series where Australia beat England by 7 wickets in Hove. Former Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi (1416 runs and 98 wickets) currently stands closest to achieving the feat, while Bangladesh’s Shakib al Hasan, with 1471 runs and 88 wickets, stands next in line to join Perry.

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Microsoft India has partnered with Apollo Hospitals to set up a National Clinical Coordination Committee (NCCC), which will guide the two entities on all cardiology and cardiovascular related Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects. It will also provide clinical insights on developing clinical algorithms and treatment guidelines based on the inferences of national, multi-centre prospective study. The committee will work for the AI-powered Cardiovascular Disease Risk Score API. It will have members drawn from Apollo Hospitals, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi; and King George’s Medical University, Lucknow. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the biggest cause of mortality in India with nearly 25% of mortalities – amongst the age group of 25 to 69 years.

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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 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.

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President Ram Nath Kovind has been awarded the National order of Merit by the President of Guinea for his exceptional contribution to the advancement of overall relations and development of mutual cooperation between India and Guinea and for promoting friendship and partnership between the people of both the countries. This is the highest award of Republic of Guinea. Beside this, 3 MoUs were signed between the two countries viz. Cooperation in the Field of Traditional System of Medicine, e- Vidhyabharati – e-Aarogya Bharati Network Project and Renewal Energy. President Kovind also announced a new Line of Credit of US$ 170 million for Water Supply Project of Conakry city. Both countries also agreed on the need for reform of the UN Security Council to make it reflective of contemporary realities.

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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).

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The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has launched India’s first large-scale trial for two new TB vaccines – VPM1002 and Immuvac. The initiative would enroll 12,000 healthy household contacts of a patient whose sputum has tested positive for TB and are therefore at high risk of contracting the disease. VPM1002 is produced by the Serum Institute of India (Pune) & Immuvac is manufactured by Cadila Pharmaceuticals. These anti-Tuberculosis vaccines aim to prevent infection (pre-exposure) or prevent primary progression or reactivation of latent TB infection (post-exposure). According to the Global TB Report 2017 issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), India has the highest number of TB cases in the world.

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India’s transsexual woman Naaz Joshi has been crowned Miss World Diversity 2019 at Port Louis in Mauritius on August 3. She has made the country proud with a third successive victory in the beauty pageant Miss World Diversity. Apart from the Miss World Diversity title, Naaz also bagged the Best Project, Miss Congeniality, Miss People’s Choice Ambassador and Best National Costume titles. She was the first transgender in the world to win a coveted international crown against natural born females in 2017.

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According to the revised state-wise wild elephant population estimate based on the 2017 census, jumbo population across the country stood at 29,964 against 29,576 recorded as the mean figure in 2012. The South Region accounted for 14,612 followed by North East with 10,139 elephants. Among the South Indian states, Karnataka leads the table with 6,049 elephants followed by Kerala. The tiger population across the country is estimated at 2,967 as per the 2018 census. The census of tigers is undertaken at the national level once every 4 years and that of elephants at every 5 years. As per the India State of Forest Report 2017, there has been an increase of 6,778 kilometers of forest cover at the national level as compared to the assessment of 2015. The increase in forest cover is attributed to plantation and conservation activities both within and outside Recorded forest areas.