Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
Denmark’s third largest, Jyske Bank has launched the world’s first negative interest rate mortgage and started to offer a10-year mortgage deals at a negative interest rate of 0.5% a year. Under its negative mortgage, borrowers will pay the usual EMI but the outstanding amount will be slashed each month by more than the borrower has paid. The unconventional decision is the latest in a series of moves central and commercial banks in advanced economies have undertaken to revive demand and boost consumption.

Notes:
India has recently contributed $1 million to the UN Special Purpose Trust Fund (SPTF) for the Resident Coordinator System. The SPTF is a specific fund housed within the UN Secretariat. The fund has been established to receive, consolidate, manage and account for all contributions and financial transactions of the new Resident Coordinator system in a transparent and effective way. On real time basis, the SPTF web portal reflects all commitments, contributions and expenditures recorded for the fund.

Notes:
Ranjit Guru (61), the noted Odisha journalist and columnist, has passed away in Bhubaneswar on August 18, 2019. He was working with leading Odia daily Sambad in a senior editorial position. During his over a 3-decade long career in journalism, he was also associated with the leading newspapers like ‘Anandabazar Patrika’ and ‘The Asian Age’.

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:
On 21st August 2019, the Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ launched the world’s biggest teacher training programme – , NISHTHA – in New Delhi under which more than 42 lakh teachers will be trained across the country. The acronym ‘NISHTHA’ stands for ‘National Initiative for School Head’s and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement’. The purpose of the integrated programme is to build the capacities of around 42 lakh participants covering all teachers and Heads of the school at the elementary level in all government schools, faculty members of states councils of Educational Research and Training and other educational departments. The integrated training will motivate and equip teachers to encourage and foster critical thinking in students, handle diverse situations and act as first-level counsellors.

Notes:
On 21st August 2019, Indian Para swimmer Satendra Singh Lohia from Madhya Pradesh has scripted history by becoming the first Asian swimmer to cross the Catalina Channel of America. He holds the Asian record of crossing both the English and Catalina channels. Gwalior-born Satendra led the Indian Para Relay team along with 5 team mates and crossed the Catalina Channel in 11 hours 34 minutes. At that time, the water temperature was around 13 degrees Celsius. In 2014, Satyendra has also honoured with the highest sports award of Madhya Pradesh – Vikram Award.

Notes:
Navneeth Murali, an Indian-American teenager from New Jersey, has won the 2019 South Asian Spelling Bee (SASB) contest. The prize money for this contest is USD 3,000. The SASB is an annual spelling bee platform in the US for children of South Asian descent. The competition is open to any student at or below the age of 14, who has at least one parent or grandparent who is of South Asian descent, or whose lineage can be traced to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and/or Sri Lanka.

Notes:
Ajay Kumar, a 1985 batch IAS officer of Kerala cadre, has been appointed as the new Defence Secretary. He succeeded Sanjay Mitra. Apart from him, Brij Kumar Agarwal has been appointed as Secretary to the Lokpal and Subash Chandra as Secretary of Department of Defence Production. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the appointments.

Notes:
In a first-of-its-kind initiative in Asia, 8 armed forces veterans have initiated a high-end adventure sports survival training and self-defence mission at a pan India level titled ‘Op-Blue Freedom’ as a part of their parent project — Special Forces Adventures (SFA). The SFA is led by Major (retd) Vivek Jacob and has veterans from the Indian Army Para Commandos and the Naval Marine Commandos (MARCOS). ‘Op-Blue Freedom’ is a nation-wide adaptive scuba diving programme for people with disabilities as well as able-bodied persons. The purpose of the program is to train adventure enthusiasts in special forces skills like survival techniques, emergency first response skills, unarmed combat, endurance and fitness. Recently, ‘Op-Blue Freedom’ is in news because the Union Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju and football legend Bhaichung Bhutia have flagged off dive for Delhi-NCT leg for the Op-Blue Freedom.

Notes:
Wipro has partnered with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to conduct advanced applied research in autonomous systems – robotics and 5G. Both the organizations have jointly set up a hybrid industry-academia collaboration unit – Wipro IISc Research and Innovation Network (WIRIN) – which will drive idea discovery, research and innovation in technology and product design. Both will focus on the research and development of cutting-edge technologies in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Visual Computing, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Vehicle-to-everything communication (V2X). The insights from the research will be leveraged by Wipro for its customers and the industry ecosystem.