Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

Notes:
The book titled ”War over Words: Censorship in India, 1930-1960” has been authored by Devika Sethi, who teaches modern Indian history at IIT-Mandi. The book explores the diverse mechanisms and motivations for censorship and its role in the shaping of the modern Indian republic. It looks at state censorship in India in the transition period from colonial to national rule, when historical actors behaved in unpredictable ways. The book is divided into four parts – Guarding the State, Protecting the Public: Censorship Policies and Practices in the 1930s; Protests and Publicity: Banning Non-Indian Authors; Political or Military? Censorship in India during the Second World War; and The Censored Turn Censors: Freedom and Free Speech.

Notes:
Under Puducherry smart city development plan, the Union Territory government has decided to introduce Bi-cycle sharing scheme in a couple of months. The registered users or customers can use bicycles to hop from one place to another within the boulevard area. The bicycles can be left at any of the docking stations after use. For the scheme, 100 spots have been identified for cycle docking stations. To begin with, 20 docking stations with 10 to 15 cycles each, are to be set up in places like beach promenade, Bharathi Park, Gandhi Thidal, Aurobindo ashram and railway station. The novel scheme is a boon to tourists who throng to Puducherry in thousands whose number swells to several thousand on weekends. The project under the public-private partnership model will be operationalised after a suitable operator is found out through tender. This scheme is one among the 22 prioritised schemes of the Puducherry Smart City Project for which about 194 crore rupees would be spent.

Notes:
Arinjeeta Dey, a village girl from West Bengal, has won a silver under-12 age group category in the 2019 World Youth Cup in Umag, Croatia. The tournament was organised by World Karate Federation affiliated to the International Olympic Association. A total of 35 countries participated in this competition.

Notes:
The ‘WorldSkills India’s International Cloud Computing Challenge 2019’ will be organized by NASSCOM in partnership with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). Ten countries including India are participating in the competition, along with New Zealand, Belgium, Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, Oman and Ireland. The finalists would further compete in the 45th “WorldSkills International Competition 2019”, to be held in Kazan, Russia in August 2019. The “WorldSkills India” is an NSDC initiative launched in 2011 to provide a platform to the youth, along with industries and educators to compete, experience, learn and develop key professional skill sets required for Industry 4.0. The NSDC is headquarterd at New Delhi & Anil Manibhai Naik is its chief.

Notes:
The International Co-operative Day (ICD) is an annual celebration of the co-operative movement observed on the first Saturday in July since 1923 by the International Co-operative Alliance. The 2019 theme is “COOPS 4 DECENT WORK”. The aim of this celebration is to increase awareness of cooperatives. The event underscores the contributions of the cooperative movement to resolving the major problems addressed by the United Nations and to strengthening and extending the partnerships between the international cooperative movement and other actors.

Notes:
Former India captain Rahul Dravid has been appointed as Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru. He will oversee all cricket related activities at NCA and will be involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA. He will also work closely with the National men’s and women’s Head coaches and coaches for India Developmental teams including India A, India Under 19, India Under 23 teams — to identify key training methods and the areas for development. Dravid will also be responsible for monitoring progress of the developmental teams and provide necessary inputs on the same to the senior men’s and women’s head coaches.

Notes:
The board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has finalized a 3- year roadmap — named Utkarsh 2022 — to improve regulation and supervision of the central bank. This medium term strategy is in line with the global central banks’ plan to strengthen the regulatory and supervisory mechanism. This specifically includes central bank’s proactive role to avoid any other IL&FS debt default issue in future. The RBI board also approved the RBI’s budget for the July 2019—June 2020 period.

Notes:
Lucrezia Terzi, a researcher at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCKCEN), has come up with a new way of predicting the monsoon at a science and technology conference organised in Vienna by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO). The new method measures how much Beryllium-7 (an isotope of the element Beryllium) is present in the air. The Be-7 is chosen because it is created only in the stratosphere, when cosmic rays hit and break the nuclei of nitrogen and oxygen. Due to the sun warming the oceans differently at different latitudes, and the spin of the earth, water-bearing air moves up and down in circular fashions, which is the basic cause of the monsoons. When air flows down from the stratosphere (upwards of 33,000 feet from the earth’s surface), it brings with it some Be-7. That makes the strong connection between the amount of Be-7 and the timing of monsoons.

Notes:
As per the Finance Bill 2019, a new section — 15HAA — has been inserted in the SEBI Act to act against entities that tamper or destroy electronic databases or fail to furnish information when sought by the capital markets regulator. Now, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) can impose penalties of up to Rs 1 crore on brokers for certain violations. These new powers assume significance as the regulator is in the midst of probing the leak of sensitive data through WhatsApp and also recently passed fresh orders on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location matter, which had been challenged at the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT).

Notes:
Indian sprinter Dutee Chand has clinched a Gold medal in the 100-metre dash event at the 30th World University Games (WUG-2019) at Napoli in Italy. Del Ponte of Switzerland won the Silver, while German Lisa Kwayie took home the Bronze. With the Gold, Dutee has become the first Indian woman track and field athlete to win the coveted yellow metal at the event. No Indian had qualified for the 100-metre final in the history of the University Games before this. She is also now only the second Indian sprinter to win a Gold in a global event after 19-year old Hima Das.