Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2019

Notes:
Mohd Mushtaque Ahmad from India has been elected as the new Vice-President of the Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) for a four-year term at the AHF Congress in Gifu, Japan. Beside him, Ms. Asima Ali has been elected unopposed as one of the executive board members of the AHF. Mushtaque Ahmad is currently serving as the President of Hockey India, while Ali of Hockey Jammu & Kashmir is the Vice-President of the national federation. The AHF Executive Board manages the affairs of the continental federation, implements the decisions of the AHF Congress, supervises over the AHF CEO and professional staff, as well as appoints the AHF Committees.

Notes:
The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath government has rolled out its flagship ‘Mukhyamantri Yuva Swabhiman Yojana’ that guarantees 100 days of employment every year to urban youths from Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). Apart from this, they will also be given skill development training by the government. The purpose of the scheme is to empower the unemployed youth candidates. Only those youths, whose family’s annual income is less than Rs 2 lakh and who are in the age group of 21-30 years, are eligible for the scheme.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently launched the supercomputer ‘Param of 833 teraflop capacity built at the IIT-BHU. It is built at the cost of Rs 32.5 crore under the National Super Computing Mission. About 40% of the total computer power will be used by the students of Navodaya Vidyalaya. The institute claims that relevant social issues faced by common people like irrigation schemes, traffic management, health, an affordable drug will also be taken care of with the help of this supercomputer centre. The ‘Param Shivay’ will include 1 peta byte secondary storage and appropriate open source system and application software suite using 223 processor nodes, 384 GB per node DDR4 RAM, parallel file system, including CPU and GPU. India’s first supercomputer called PARAM 8000 was launched in 1991. At present, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has Pratyush, National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) has Mihir and IISc has SERC-Cray as supercomputers in India.

Notes:
China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua has launched the world’s first female AI news anchor ‘Xin Xiaomeng’ to read alongside its male AI news presenters. She was developed jointly by Xinhua and search engine company Sogou Inc. Xiaomeng is expected to make a debut in March during the upcoming meetings of the country’s national legislature and top political advisory body. Earlier, in 2018, China became the first country in the world to develop the first of its kind AI ‘journalist’, a male news presenter by the name of Qui Hao.

Notes:
An American biographical comedy-drama film “Green Book” has won the Best Picture at 91st Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on 25th February 2019. Green Book also won best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali and best original screenplay. In it, British actress Olivia Colman won the best actress award for “The Favourite” for her performance as Queen Anne in the period comedy-drama. Rami Malek won the best actor for a biographical film “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron won Best Director Oscar for ‘Roma’, which is an American and Mexican drama. ‘Roma’ also won Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography category. Pop diva Lady Gaga got the Best Original Song Academy Award for “Shallow” from her feature debut “A Star is Born”. Marvel’s Black Panther too won 3 Oscars – Best Original Music, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design.

Notes:
The book titled “ India in Distress” has been authored by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, which is scheduled to be launch in the National Capital on February 27. Banerjee has so far published 87 books. Among the seven books that Banerjee has penned this time, there are ones for children, of poems in Bengali, Urdu and English and a couple of books on politics – in Hindi and Bengali.

Notes:
India has been invited to attend a meeting of foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Abu Dhabi, UAE on the 1st and 2nd March of 2019. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will be the Guest of Honour and address the inaugural plenary of the 46th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of OIC at the invitation of UAE Foreign Minister. This is the first time that a leader of the non-Muslim country has been invited to the OIC conference. The move will boost relations with West Asian and Muslim-majority nations. New Delhi sees the invitation as a milestone in the comprehensive strategic partnership with the UAE. It is also a welcome recognition of the presence of 185 million Muslims in India and of India’s contribution to the Islamic world.The official languages of the OIC are Arabic, English, and French.

Notes:
Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has recently launched the PRANAM Commission for protection of parents of state government employees. The Commission will look after the issues concerning a PRANAM (Parents Responsibility and Norms for Accountability and Monitoring) Bill to protect elderly parents of government employees in their times of need. PRANAM Bill, which was approved by the state cabinet in 2018, makes it mandatory for state government employees to look after their parents and unmarried Divyang siblings who do not have their own sources of income. As per the Bill, if the PRANAM Commission gets a complaint that parents of a state government employee is being ignored, and then 10 or 15% of the employee’s salary will be deducted by the government and paid to the parents or differently-abled siblings.

Notes:
Bengaluru-based Semiconductor Company “SignalChip” has launched India’s first indigenous semiconductor chips for 4G /LTE and 5G NR modems in New Delhi. The SCBM34XX and SCRF34XX/45XX series of chips, code-named ‘Agumbe’, are the result of over 8 years of relentless and deep R&D by Signalchip engineers. The RF sections cover all LTE/5G-NR bands upto 6GHz. These chips also support positioning using India’s own satellite navigation system, NAVIC. The Agumbe series builds up on SCRF1401: India’s first RF transceiver chip for high performance wireless standards like 3G/4G and WiFi, created by Signalchip in 2015. The combined multi-standard system-on-chip (SoC) can serve as a base station chipset for a wide range of form factors from low-cost indoor small cells to high performance base stations. These are optimally designed to support evolving network architectures like Open RAN/CRAN with flexible interface configurations. Through the IPs created for this device, the company now has the potential to design products for multiple related fields and is currently forging ahead with additional chipsets for advanced 5G NR features.

Notes:
The Afghanistan cricket team has created history by posting the highest-ever T20 international score at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Dehradun, Uttarakhand on 23rd Feb 2019. They posted 278 runs from their 20 overs in the second T20I against Ireland.. Here, Afghan batsman Hazratullah Zazai scored the 2nd highest individual score (162 runs off 62 balls) in T20Is, behind Australian cricketer Aaron Finch’s 172. His innings also included a record 16 sixes and his first-wicket partnership with Usman Ghani was also a record for any wicket in a T20I, with 236 runs scored. With this feat, Afghanistan broke Australia’s record score of 263/3 which they achieved back in 2016 against Sri Lanka.