Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

Notes:
The 17th edition of the Homeless World Cup football tournament will take place in Cardiff in Wales from July 27 to August 3, 2019. The tournament is organised by the Homeless World Cup Foundation, which uses football as a vehicle to help homeless people learn to trust, share, and build relationships and discipline. As per the Homeless World Cup Foundation, players must be at least 16 years old and should not have taken part in a previous edition of the World Cup. Indian men’s and women’s football squads, led by Amrit Pal Singh and Sujata Rai, would take part in the 2019 football tournament. Singh hails from Bhathinda in Punjab while Sujata Rai is from West Bengal. Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain.

Notes:
The 2019 edition of India and China joint military exercise titled “Hand-in-Hand” will be held in Umroi near Shillong, Meghalaya in December 2019. It will be a two-week exercise which will be based on counter-terrorism and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. The exercise aims to build close relations between the armies of the two countries. It comes in the backdrop of situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which has so far remained peaceful. It will be a company-level exercise, where around 120 troops from each side will be participating.

Notes:
The Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) has launched a research project for developing an online platform in order to facilitate effective fish marketing systems. The project aims to develop a fish market information system, fish price information and facilitate an e-auctioning system trade platform for commercially important fish species. As many as 1,500 fish markets, including landing centres, wholesale markets, retail markets and aquaculture production markets, across the country will be selected for implementing the programme. The project on fish market and price information system is funded by the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB), Hyderabad. The headquarters of CMFRI is located in Kochi, Kerala.

Notes:
In Kerala, the 4-day International shark meet 2019 is being held in Kochi from July 24 to set up a platform for researchers from across the globe working on shark and ray trade to share their experience in the field. It is a first-of-its-kind event in India, which is being jointly organized by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) and the FAO under the collaborative research project of the two entities on sharks and rays non-fin commodities. The purpose of the meet is to bring together scientific community in the spectrum to describe various methodologies being transpired and adopted in research works on sharks and rays, to define their strengths and weaknesses and develop practical but not rigid set of guidance. Representatives from the FAO and experts from various countries such as UK, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Italy, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Somalia, Myanmar and Namibia will attend the meet to discuss the priorities in monitoring shark and ray fisheries, trade and market chain assessment..

Notes:
Vivek Kohli has been elected as chairman of the Commonwealth Table Tennis Federation (CTTF). He defeated incumbent Alan Ransome of England. The elections were recently held in Bhubaneswar, close to the venue of the 21st Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship 2019 (Cuttack). M.P. Singh, who is secretary general at Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI), was unanimously elected as secretary general of CTTF. The CTTF president’s post is already held by TTFI chief Dushyant Chautala. It is for the first time that all the three positions in CTTF are held by Indians.

Notes:
Lt Gen. Manoj Mukund Naravane appointed next Vice Chief of Indian Army. He will succeed Lt Gen Devraj Anbu who is slated to retire on August 31. Lt Gen Naravane will be in contention for the Army chief’s post as he will be the senior-most commander when incumbent Gen Bipin Rawat retires on December 31. In his 37 years of service, Lt Gen Naravane has served in numerous command and staff appointments in peace, field and highly active counter insurgency environments. He has also commanded a Rashtriya Rifles Battalion in Jammu and Kashmir and an Infantry Brigade on the eastern front.

Notes:
The Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) set up to look into the legality of cryptocurrencies and blockchain has recently submitted its report to the Finance Ministry and recommended that private cryptocurrencies be banned completely in India. It has also drafted a law, the ‘Banning of Cryptocurrency & Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2019’, which mandates a fine and imprisonment of up to 10 years for offences. The committee was formed under the Chairmanship of Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg. The draft law says that anybody who mines, generates, holds, sells, deals in; transfers, disposes of or issues cryptocurrencies with will face a fine and/or jail time of between 1 and 10 years. The fine has been set at the either three times the loss or harm caused by a person, or three times the gain made by the person, whichever is higher.

Notes:
The Western Railway (WR) has opened the first-of-its-kind printing press heritage gallery of the Indian Railways at Mahalaxmi in Mumbai. With this, the Western Railway Mahalaxmi General Stores Depot (GSD) has become the first in Indian Railways to portray a heritage gallery of the printing and allied machines used in the Western Railway Printing Press since 1948, which are still in working condition. The GSD Mahalaxmi is spread over 12,171 sq meter area, which is a British-era single-storey building made with black stone having interiors made with wood, has its own beauty and uniqueness. The press came into existence in 1912 under the Greater Indian Peninsular Railway (GIP) Bombay, as the railway needed stationery and tickets to run the operations.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has assigned deputy governor B.P. Kanungo to run the monetary policy portfolio after the resignation of fellow deputy governor Viral Acharya. Kanungo would become the 6th member of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee, which will next convene on 5-7 August. He will also retain his currency management portfolio. Now, all the other three deputy governors — N S Vishwanathan, B P Kanungo and M K Jain — have been made responsible for 12 departments each.

Notes:
The research team led by Assam forest officer Jatindra Sarma has discovered Dracaena cambodiana – a dragon tree species in the Dongka Sarpo area of West Karbi Anglong. Researchers took 4 years of fieldwork and study to classify the plant as a dragon tree species whose sap turns bright red after coming in contact with air. This is for the first time that a dragon tree species has been reported from India. Dracaena cambodiana is an important medicinal plant as well as an ornamental tree. It is a major source of dragon’s blood, a precious traditional medicine in China. Several antifungal and antibacterial compounds, antioxidants, flavonoids, etc., have been extracted from various parts of the plant. In India, the Dracaena genus belonging to the family Asparagaceae is represented by nine species and two varieties in the Himalayan region, the northeast and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. But Dracaena cambodiana is the only true dragon tree species.