Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
Dr. K Thangaraj, Chief Scientist at the city based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has bagged the prestigious J C Bose Fellowship for his outstanding scientific contributions in the field of population and medical genomics. The J C Bose fellowship is awarded to active scientists in recognition of their outstanding performance by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science & Technology. Dr Thangaraj is a population geneticist. Some of his major works includes finding out the origin of Indian population– how humans migrated from Africa during different episodes and populated different parts of India. These studies led to further work on understanding how these populations interbred. He also showed how in the last 2000 years Indians started practicing endogamy resulting in many population specific genetic disorders.

Notes:
On 23rd August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a 3-day official visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. During the visit, PM Modi will receive the the UAE’s highest civil honour ‘Order of Zayed”. The honour was conferred to him in April 2019 in recognition of his distinguished leadership that gave a big boost to bilateral relations between the two countries. The award is named after the UAE’s founding father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. It acquires special significance as it was awarded to PM Modi in the year of the birth centenary of Sheikh Zayed. So far, six countries — Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Palestine and Afghanistan — have given their highest award to Prime Minister Modi.After that, PM Modi will visit Bahrain that will be the first-ever Prime Ministerial visit from India to Bahrain.

Notes:
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) in collaboration with IIT Kanpur has developed a kit to spread sexual-abuse awareness among children by using interactive means to teach them about personal safety. The kit is a set of cards, posters, short animation clips and games. It can be used by teachers or NGOs to conduct an interactive workshop for children about sexual-abuse awareness. The kit also features game cards as an intervention to assess the learning acquired by children. It can be used in classrooms for kids aged between 8-12 and in a group of 30-35 students in one session. It has manuals, reading and video material for the teacher or workshop facilitator to read and understand how to conduct the workshop. The workshop kit has been vetted by the psychologists at Central Institute of Psychiatry of Ranchi, and a revised version will be developed based on their feedback.

Notes:
Mohammed Zahur Hashmi (92), the veteran music composer, has passed away in Mumbai on August 20, 2019. Popularly known as Khayyam, he was best known for his music in classic films such as ‘Umrao Jaan’ and ‘Kabhi Kabhie’. He was a recipient of Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and Padma Bhushan. In 2016, the veteran composer established Khayyam Jagjeet Kaur KPG Charitable Trust and pledged to donate his entire wealth to the trust to support budding artists and technicians in India.

Notes:
Environmental NGO Greenpeace has recently released an analysis of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite data. as per country-wise world rankings, India is the world’s largest emitter of Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) as it has the maximum hotspots. It contributes more than 15% of all anthropogenic SO2 hotspots in the world. The major SO2 emission hotspots in India are Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh, Neyveli and Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Talcher and Jharsuguda in Odisha, Korba in Chhattisgarh, Kutch in Gujarat, Ramagundam in Telangana and Chandrapur and Koradi in Maharashtra. According to report, the vast majority of plants in India lack Flue-Gas Desulfurization (FGD) technology to reduce their air pollution. Individually, the Norilsk smelter complex in Russia is the largest SO2 emission hotspot in the world, followed by Kriel in Mpumalanga province in South Africa and Zagroz in Iran. Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh is at 5th position.

Notes:
President Ram Nath Kovind has recently inaugurated thematic underground British-era Bunker turned Museum inside the Raj Bhavan at Malabar Hill in Mumbai. The 15,000 sq.ft museum has Virtual Reality Booths (VRBs) in which visitors can “time travel” to the 19th century when the bunker was created to fire cannons at approaching enemy ships. The history of Raj Bhavan has also been depicted in another section. In 2016, the British-era bunker was discovered by Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao. It is made up of 13 rooms such as Shell Store, Gun Shell, Cartridge Store and Central Artillery Store. The underground passage has a proper drainage system and inlets for fresh air and light. The bunker dates back to the pre-World War I era and is believed to have been an asset of the battery stationed near the coast to defend Bombay Castle from naval attacks.

Notes:
Nepal is planning to hold SAARC Foreign Ministers’ informal meet on the sidelines of the 74th UN General Assembly (UNGA) session in September 2019. The 18th SAARC summit was held in Kathmandu in 2014 and Pakistan was to host the next summit in 2016. But, the summit was cancelled after India boycotted the meeting, in the wake of the terror attack at a military base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), which killed 19 soldiers. Other countries viz. Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan, also walked out following India’s decision to exit the summit to step up diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. India also declared that it will participate only if Pakistan took steps to tackle terrorism.

Notes:
Rajiv Gauba, a 1982 batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre, has been appointed as the new Cabinet Secretary for two years. His tenure will be effective from August 30, 2019 & will succeed Pradeep Kumar Sinha. Gauba is currently posted as Union Home Affairs secretary. The Cabinet Secretary is the top-most executive official and senior-most civil servant of the Government of India (GoI). He works under the direct charge of the Prime minister.

Notes:
On 18th August 2019, visitors to the Injambakkam beach in Chennai and Besant Nagar’s Eliot’s Beach noticed a blue shimmer on the waves i.e. Popularly known as ‘Sea Tinkle’. According to marine experts, the Noctiluca algae were behind this blue glow phenomenon. The algae exhibit the phenomenon of bioluminescence (or biologically produce light when disturbed). The light is produced by a chemical reaction in the presence of oxygen involving an enzyme called “luciferase”. Bioluminescence has been observed in fireflies, a few beetles and in marine creatures such as Anglerfish and copepods. Though the sight that algae produce is beautiful, their arrival may not be good news for marine health. Noctiluca are known to be voracious predators of planktonic organisms(diatoms) that leads to disruption of the marine food chain. Such blooms have been reported annually in the Northern Arabian Sea since the early 2000s. Goa, Mumbai and the backwaters of Kerala have witnessed these algal blooms. Recently the magical glow featured in the Malayalam movie Kumbalangi Nights, which gained much attention.

Notes:
The Government of India (GoI) has recently notified the Sabka Vishwas – Legacy Dispute Resolution Scheme 2019 to reduce legacy service tax and central excise cases in the pre-GST era. The scheme will be operationalized from 1st September 2019 & would continue till 31st December 2019. The two main components of the Scheme are dispute resolution and amnesty. The most attractive aspect of the scheme is that it provides substantial relief in tax dues for all categories of cases as well as full waiver of interest, fine and penalty. For all the cases pending in adjudication or appeal – in any forum – this Scheme offers a relief of 70% from the duty demand if it is Rs.50 lakhs or less and 50% if it is more than Rs. 50 lakhs. The same relief is available for cases under investigation and audit where the duty involved is quantified and communicated to the party or admitted by him in a statement on or before June 30, 2019. The scheme is especially tailored to free the large number of small taxpayers of their pending disputes with the tax administration.