Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

Notes:
Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat has won gold in the 53kg category at Yasar Dogu International in Istanbul. Phogat beat her Russian opponent Ekaterina Poleshchuk 9-5 in the final match to bag the gold medal. It was third gold in the women’s competition for India after Seema (50kg) and Manju (59kg) triumphed in their respective categories.

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The critically acclaimed Bengali movie, Nagarkirtan has won the Best Feature Film award at the 9th edition of SAARC film festival 2019 in Colombo. The movie, which was directed by Kaushik Ganguly, has also won the ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Original Score’ awards. It’s a love story of a transwoman and a flautist. Two other Indian films have won awards at the fest. ‘Na Bole Wo Haram’, a 20-minute film by debutant director Nitish Patankar, bagged the ‘Best Short Film’ award, while ‘Walking With the Wind’ by Praveen Morchhale received the Special Jury award for direction and story.

Notes:
Justice Arjan Kumar Sikr, an eminent jurist and a former judge of the Supreme Court of India (SCI), has been appointed as an International Judge of the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). He will assume charge as an international judge with effect from August 1 & his term will expire on January 4, 2021. . The SICC is a division of the Singapore High Court and part of the Supreme Court of Singapore. It is designed to deal with transnational commercial disputes. It currently has 16 international judges as part of its panel. Justice AK Sikri was recently appointed as the Chairperson of the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) by the News Broadcasters Association (NBA).

Notes:
The Sangeet Natak Akademi has named four eminent personalities in the field of performing arts – tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, dancer Sonal Mansingh, dancer and choreographer Jatin Goswami and Bharatnatyam exponent K. Kalyanasundaram Pillai – for the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellow or Akademi Ratna awards. The Fellowship of the Akademi is the most prestigious and a rare honour, which is restricted to 40 numbers at any given time. The General Council meeting of the Sangeet Natak Akademi also selected 44 artistes from the field of music, dance, theatre, traditional / folk / tribal music/ dance/ theatre, puppetry and overall contribution / scholarship in the performing arts for the Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) for the year 2018. The artistes include, Mani Prasad in Hindustani Vocal, Tarun Bhattacharya for Hindustani Instrumental – Santoor, Radha Sridhar for Bharatanatyam, Akham Lakshmi Devi for Manipuri, Rajiv Naik for Playwriting and Malini Awasthi in Folk Music. The 44 artistes include three joint awards.

Notes:
Researchers at Assam’s Tezpur University have developed a simple and cost-effective filtration system – Arsiron Nilogon – that may help reduce the health burden caused by arsenic and iron contaminated groundwater. The system filters out 99.9% of the arsenic contamination from the groundwater to make it suitable for drinking. The chemicals used in the filtration process are cooking soda for pH conditioning, potassium permanganate for supplying oxygen and ferric chloride for providing solid iron oxide adsorbents of arsenic. The method can remove arsenic even to below 2 ppb (parts per billion) level while the World Health Organization (WHO) has set 10 ppb as the standard level. According to theWHO, arsenic is a natural component of the Earth’s crust and is widely distributed throughout the environment — in air, water and land. However, it is highly toxic in its inorganic form. The long term exposure to inorganic arsenic, mainly by drinking contaminated water, eating food grown or even prepared with this water, can cause skin lesions and cancer. The filtration process also removes other toxic metal ions like manganese, lead, nickel, chromium, copper, etc, very well along with arsenic and iron.

Notes:
In Madhya Pradesh, Air India has recently launched the state’s first international flight from Indore to Dubai from Devi Ahilyabai Holkar International Airport. The non-stop flight AI903 has fulfilled a long-standing desire from the travel fraternity and tourists for direct connectivity to the Gulf. From Indore, Air India is operating a 162-seater A320 Neo aircraft which will fly three times a week — Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays — non-stop to Dubai. Indore born Sunish Kumar Bhargava was the commander of this first-ever international flight from his home city. The aircraft will fly directly to Dubai on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday while the return leg from Dubai will be on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. It will have very attractive fares starting from Rs. 18,700 (return fare) and the return fare for the business class will be Rs. 42,000.

Notes:
The Incredible India campaign – Find the Incredible You – has won the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Gold Award 2019 in the “Marketing – Primary Government Destination” category. The campaign was released globally by the Union Ministry of Tourism during 2018-19. The campaign focuses on digital and social media and the promotion of Niche Tourism products of the country. The campaign strategy was to shift the focus from the external experience of tourist destinations to the internal experience of travellers themselves. This series of transformative experiences was brought alive through unique storytelling in the format of autobiographies of travellers, with the tagline “Find the Incredible You.PATA Gold Awards are given to tourism industry organizations and individuals making an outstanding contribution towards the successful promotion of the travel industry throughout the Asia Pacific Region. The winners of the awards set industry standards for excellence and innovation and serve as examples for others to follow.

Notes:
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has suspended Zimbabwe Cricket with immediate effect over violation of global body’s constitution which doesn’t allow any government intervention. Zimbabwe Cricket was found to have been in breach of Article 2.4 (c) and (d) of the ICC Constitution for failing to provide a process for free and democratic elections and to ensure that there is no government interference in its governance and/or administration for cricket respectively. As a consequence of suspension, Zimbabwe Cricket will no longer receive funding from the ICC and its representative teams are now ineligible from competing in any ICC events. The ICC has directed that the elected Zimbabwe Cricket Board be reinstated to the office within three months and progress in this respect will be considered again at the October Board meeting. The Croatia Cricket Federation and the Zambia Cricket Union have both also been suspended for continuing non-compliance with ICC Membership criteria. The Moroccan Royal Cricket Federation has also been expelled from Membership of the ICC.

Notes:
The Union environment ministry has recently declared Rhesus Macaque monkeys as vermin in Himachal Pradesh for a period of one year & allow the state forest department to cull them for preventing crop depredation, conflict with humans and loss of property. Though Rhesus Macaque monkeys are protected species under Schedule II of the Wildilfe Protection Act of 1972, the law allows for it to be hunted by declaring it ‘vermin’ for a specific period if it poses a danger to human life or property. The section 62 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972 empowers the states to send a list of wild animals to the Centre requesting it to declare them vermin for selective slaughter.

Notes:
Indian bodybuilder Ravinder Kumar Malik has clinched Mr. South Asia title. He has crowned the overall champion at 12th South Asian Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championship in Kathmandu on July 20, 2019. Malik, the winner of 80 kg category, was adjudged best bodybuilder among the winners of nine senior men’s weight categories. Afghanistan won team championship by securing a top position with 535 points. Host Nepal finished second with 445 points, while India remained third with 380 points. A total of 91 bodybuilders participated in the championship organised by South Asian Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Federation under the auspices of Nepal Bodybuilding and Fitness Association.