Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

Notes:
In Squash, India won a gold as Veer Chotrani beat compatriot Yash Fadte to win the Under-19 title at the Asian Junior Championship in Macau, China. With this victory, Veer became the third Indian to win the Asian trophy after Ravi Dixit and Vela Senthilkumar. It was a contest of fluctuating fortunes until Veer held his nerve to beat Fadte 11-5, 9-11, 11-7, 9-11, 11-7. In the other two finals, India bagged two silver medals through Neel Joshi in the boys Under-17 category and Yuvna Gupta in the girls Under-15 section. India finished the tournament with one gold, three silver and as many bronze medals.

Notes:
Arvind Kumar, a 1984 batch IPS officer from Assam- Meghalaya cadre, has been appointed as the new chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Kumar is considered an expert on Kashmir, with specialisation in counter-terrorism and is said to have been closely involved in tackling Left-wing extremism at the IB. He also holds charge as the special director of Kashmir in the intelligence agency. Kumar succeeded Rajiv Jain as IB chief, who completed his tenure of two and half years. IB is India’s internal intelligence agency and is headquartered at New Delhi.

Notes:
Mohammed Baji (103), the eminent freedom fighter, has passed away at Sunari Sahi in Nabarangpur , Odisha. He was born on 20th January 1917 and was a bachelor. A close associate of tribal civil rights activist Laxman Nayak, Baji was injured in police firing during the 1942 movement when 29 tribals were killed while protesting before the Mathili police station in Malkangiri district. He had joined the Indian National Congress in 1936, the year Odisha became a separate province on the basis of language. He also joined the Quit India Movement and was held on August 19, 1942. He spent nearly five years in jail before he was released on June 25, 1947. After the freedom struggle, Baji was active in the Sarvodaya movement. He was the chairman of Utkal Gandhi Smarak Nidhi and a close associate of Utkal Sarvodaya Mandal. Baji led padayatras at Nabarangpur for the restoration of peace after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and again after the communal riot in Kandhamal in 2008.

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:
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:
The 2nd edition of International Day of Parliamentarism (IDP-2019) is celebrated across the world on 30th June to recognize the importance of parliaments and their responsibility of representing the people. The day is not only an occasion to stress the critical importance of parliaments in any democratic society but also to reinforce the call for a global parliament. It is also an opportunity for parliaments to take stock, identify challenges, and ways to address them effectively. It is also the date, in 1889, on which the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) — the global organization of parliaments — was established. The parliamentary systems fall into two categories: bicameral and unicameral. Out of 193 countries, 79 are bicameral and 114 are unicameral, making a total of 272 chambers of parliament with over 46,000 members of parliament. The oldest parliament is the Althingi, the Icelandic Parliament, founded in 930.

Notes:
The Indian passport has been ranked at the 86th position with a mobility score of 58 in the latest Henley Passport Index 2019. The score points out that Indian passport holder can access 58 countries around the world without a prior visa. The index includes 199 passports and 227 travel destinations — including micro-states and territories. India shares the 86th position with Mauritiana and Sao Tome and Principe. The list is topped by Japan & Singapore with a mobility score of 189. South Korea, Finland and Germany have acquired 2nd position, while Denmark, Italy, and Luxembourg are on the third rank. France has dropped to the fourth spot, now sharing the position with Spain and Sweden. The ranking is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which maintains the world’s largest and most accurate database of travel information.

Notes:
Indian middle-order batsman Ambati Rayudu from Andhra Pradesh retired from all forms of cricket on July 3, 2019. He did not specify reasons for calling it quits. He was in India’s official standbys list for the on-going World Cup but was omitted twice. Rayudu played 55 ODIs for India, scoring 1694 runs at an average of 47.05. However, he did not play any Test.

Notes:
NASA has recently announced its New Frontiers program, called Dragonfly mission, to explore Saturn’s largest moon – Titan. It’s the only moon in our solar system that has an atmosphere.The rotorcraft will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan looking for pre-biotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth. The mission will launch in 2026 and will reach Titan by 2034. Titan is the 2nd-largest natural satellite in our Solar System, and is larger than the Moon and the planet Mercury. As it orbits Saturn, Titan is about 886 million miles (1.4 billion km) away from the Sun, about 10 times farther than Earth. Because it is so far from the Sun, its surface temperature is minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius). Its surface pressure is also 50% higher than Earth’s. Titan has a dense, nitrogen-based atmosphere like Earth. Unlike Earth, it has clouds and rain of methane. Other organics are formed in the atmosphere and fall like light snow.

Notes:
In Uttar Pradesh, the state government has launched a toll-free Chief Minister helpline No. 1076 that will enable people from across the state to register their complaints and will ensure a time-bound action on the complaints also. The CM helpline number 1076 will work 24×7 and anyone from any part of the state can call on this number anytime. The 500-seater call centre has been established for the helpline and it has the capacity to handle 80,000 inbound and 55,000 outbound calls on a daily basis. When the complainant calls the helpline, he/she will get an SMS informing that the complaint has been sent to the department concerned.