Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

Notes:
Abburi Chaya Devi (86), the popular Telugu fiction writer, has passed away in Hyderabad on June 28, 2019. Born on 13th October 1933 in Andhra Pradesh, she was active in literary circles since the fifties and even in her 70s, was still known as a creative feminist writer. She highlighted the cause of women in her writings & received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005 for her book ‘Thana Margam’. Chaya Devi is the wife of the late Abburi Varada Rajeswara Rao, who himself was a writer, critic and former Chairman of Official Languages Commission (OFC). Her works are Anaga Anaga (folk stories for children), Abburi Chayadevi Kathalu (short stories), 1991, Mrityunjaya (long story),1993 Tana Margam (short stories about the exploitation of women in the guise of family bonds).

Notes:
The 13th National Statistics Day (NSD-2019) is celebrated on 29th June at the National level in India with theme “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” to popularize the use of Statistics in everyday life and sensitize the public as to how Statistics helps in shaping and framing policies. The 2019 theme has been chosen for intensive and focused discussions towards filling the data gaps and improvement of timelines/quality in SDGs. The day is celebrated on the birth anniversary of Late Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in recognition of his invaluable contribution in establishing the National Statistical System. He had set up Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) at Kolkata in 1931 for research and training in Statistics.

Notes:
Aparna Kumar, a 2002 batch IPS officer from UP cadre, has created history by becoming the first civil servant and IPS officer to achieve the incredible and rare feat of completing ‘7 Summits’ challenge.She hoisted India’s tricolour on Mount Denali in Alaska, which is the highest peak of North America standing at 20,310 ft. She is also the first woman IPS DIG and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) officer to successfully complete the South Pole expedition. The Seven Summits is a mountaineering challenge which includes scaling the highest mountains from each of the 7 continents. It includes Mount Everest in Nepal, Aconcagua in Argentina, Denali in the US, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Elbrus in Russia, Mount Vinson in Antarctica, and Puncak Jaya and Mount Kosciuszko in Australia. Canadian mountaineer Patrick Morrow was the first man to climb the Seven Summits in 1986 while Indian Army officer Colonel Ranveer Singh Jamwal is the first Indian to summit the seven highest peaks spread across the seven continents.

Notes:
Santosh Rana (76), the veteran Naxalite leader, has passed away in Kolkata on June 29, 2019. He is one of the foremost leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and a major thinker on caste, class and tribal politics in West Bengal and winner of a top literary award in the State. The CPI-ML (PCC) was one of the very first Naxalite groups to participate in elections. Under his leadership, CPI-ML (PCC) was active in parts of Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam. It played a significant role in opposing the CPI-M led government during the Nandigram land agitation, which contributed to the electoral debacle of the Left Front in West Bengal. He argued in his award-winning autobiography, Rajnitir Ek Jibon [A Life in Politics], that the Left in India made a huge mistake as they never analysed and responded to the caste question.

Notes:
On 1st July 2019, Japan officially resumed commercial whaling after more than 30 years of limiting whale hunts to scientific purposes — a policy that still resulted in the deaths of hundreds of whales every year. The hunts come after Japan’s withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The move is slammed by anti-whaling activists but welcomed by Japanese whaling communities. Now, Japan has joined Iceland and Norway as the only nations to allow commercial whaling despite the IWC moratorium. Hunting will reportedly be limited to Japan’s territorial sea and exclusive economic zone, which stretches about 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the nation’s coasts. The IWC, established in 1946, to conserve and manage the world’s whale and cetacean population, introduced a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986.

Notes:
Dr. Jaya Arunachalam (87), founder of Working Women’s Forum (WWF), has passed away in Chennai on June 29, 2019. She is best known for her social service contributions through WWF which she initiated in 1978. Through WWF, she helped several lakhs of women from underprivileged background to organise themselves towards becoming financially independent. Dr. Arunachalam was conferred the Padma Shri by the Government of India (GoI) in 1987. She received the Jamnalal Bajaj Award in 2009 for her work towards the welfare of women and children. A graduate in Economics and Geography, she was awarded a honorary doctorate by the University of Lueneberg, Germany in 1999. She is a recipient of the International Activist Award by Glietsman Foundation in 2003, and the Godfrey Phillips National Bravery Social Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. She has also served as vice president of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) and member of All India Congress Committee.

Notes:
Dr. Narinder Batra, President of Indian Olympic Association (IOA), has been elected as a member of International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland. Batra now has a rare distinction of becoming a member of the IOC, while heading a National Olympic Committee (NOC) as well as an international federation. He is the first Indian to have this distinction. He has already become the first Indian to head an international federation of an Olympic sport — that of International Hockey Federation (FIH). With the election of Batra, the number of Indians who are currently active members of IOC will rise to two. Reliance Foundation Chairperson Nita Ambani was elected as an individual member of the IOC in 2016. She is the first Indian woman to be elected to the prestigious seat.

Notes:
A team of herpetologists from the Forest Department and two NGOs — Help Earth and Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) have discovered the Impressed Tortoise (Manouria impressa) in Yazali area of the Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh. This is the first-ever recorded sighting in India of this tortoise which is on a red list of threatened species. Chelonian is an order of reptile that includes turtles, terrapins and tortoises. The male Impressed Tortoise is smaller than the female which is 30 cm in length. This Manouria species is one-third the size of the Asian Forest Tortoise. There are only two species of tortoises under the Manouria genus. India was known to be the home of only the Asian Forest Tortoise (Manouria emys) until the discovery of the Impressed Tortoise. The Asian Forest Tortoise, the largest in mainland Asia, is found only in the northeast, as are 20 of the other 28 species of chelonians.

Notes:
In Maharashtra, the state government has decided to inter-link rivers to solve the crisis of drought. For Mumbai, the best option is the Damnganga-Pinjal river inter-linking project that will fulfill Mumbai’s water needs till 2060. The project proposes to divert excess water from reservoirs in the Damanganga basin to Mumbai through the Pinjal dam, built on the Pinjal river in Vaitarna basin.

Notes:
The ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Iraq has been lobbying since 1983 for the 4,000-year-old site to be added to the UN’s prestigious list. The seat of successive empires, under rulers such as Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon represents the expression of the creativity of the Neo-Babylonian Empire at its height. The city’s association with one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — the Hanging Gardens — has also inspired artistic, popular and religious culture on a global scale. It also warns that the site is in an “extremely vulnerable condition” and in need of urgent conservation. The city was famous for its Hanging Gardens, which were among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The site has suffered in recent years – first from the construction of a palace for Saddam Hussein, and later from being used as a base for US troops.