Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

Notes:
In a move to help geriatric care, students of IIT Kharagpur have built an app which will inform the caregiver when the elderly person falls down with the exact location. The app named ‘CARE4U’ will connect the caregiver to the elderly person. The neural network-based fall detection algorithm in the app installed on the phone of the elderly can detect whether the elderly has fallen down. If there is a fall, it automatically calls the caregiver and emergency services with the location of the elderly person. CARE4U can also detect emotions and whenever the elderly opens the app, the phone takes his picture and a mood index is calculated. This detects whether the person is sad or not and automatically updates the caregiver with the time stamp. The caregiver can check what mood the senior citizen has been through in the day. To make this feature more effective the team has developed a cognitive intelligent chatbot for the elderly person to engage with.

Notes:
Priti Patel, a prominent member of the Back Boris campaign for the Conservative Party leadership, has become the Britain’s first Indian-origin home secretary as part of new Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top team. She succeeded Pakistani-origin Sajid Javid, who moves to the Treasury department as the first ethnic minority Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Javid, a former banker from a modest background, was a contender for the premiership but endorsed Johnson when he failed to get enough support from fellow Conservative MPs. Mr Johnson has also named Brexit hardliner Dominic Raab as the country’s Foreign Secretary.

Notes:
India has improved its rank by five places to stand at 52nd in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2019 of the world’s most innovative economies and maintained its position as the top exporter of IT services. The list continues to be topped by Switzerland while Israel finds its place in the top ten for the first time. The latest GII ranking shows that India has constantly been maintaining its leadership position as the most innovative country in Central and South Asia region every year since 2011. The GII ranks 129 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications. The rankings are published annually by Cornell University, INSEAD and the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and GII Knowledge Partners.

Notes:
Dejan Papic from Canada has been appointed the new national coach of the Indian table tennis team. He accepted the one-year contract that was offered to him by the Sports Authority of India (SAI). He will be paid USD 7000 per month and his contract will be up for renewal after the Tokyo Olympics. The Indian team has been playing without a coach since the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. Without a coach, the team suffered a lot of defeats in several important tournaments. However, in the recently concluded 2019 Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship, India won the gold medal in all categories.

Notes:
India’s first space war drill ‘IndSpaceEx’ has kick started by Indian armed forces in New Delhi on July 25 and 26. The aim of the exercise is to assess imminent threats to the nation beyond earth. It also plans on drafting a joint space doctrine for future battles. The development comes on the background of China’s growing influence in space defence and counter-space capabilities.

Notes:
Six companies — Tata Power, ReNew Power, Hindustan Zinc, Aditya Birla Capital Ltd., YES Bank Ltd. and Mahindra & Mahindra — emerged winners in the CSR Journal Excellence Awards. In the 3rd edition of awards, there were six categories — education and skill training, women empowerment and child welfare, agriculture and rural development, sports, health and sanitation and environment. The awards are instituted by The CSR Journal, a digital and print news publication. The theme of the event was ‘India First’.

Notes:
Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi (92), the North African country’s first democratically elected leader, has passed away on July 25, 2019. He was the world’s oldest sitting president. Essebsi won Tunisia’s first free elections in 2014 following Arab uprisings across the region. As president, Essebsi largely maintained stability in Tunisia. Tunisia has won praise as the only democracy to emerge from the revolutions of the so-called Arab spring.

Notes:
The National Institute of Miners’ Health (NIMH), an autonomous institute under the Ministry of Mines (MoM), has been dissolved and merged with the ICMR-National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH), Ahmedabad with all assets and liabilities. All the employees of NIMH will be absorbed in NIOH in the similar post/pay scale as the case may be and their pay be protected. The merger / amalgamation of NIMH with NIOH will prove beneficial to both the Institutes in term of enhanced expertise in the field of occupational health besides the efficient management of public money. The ICMR – NIOH works under Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoH&FW).

Notes:
The World Hepatitis Day (WHD) is observed every year on 28rd of July to raise awareness about the disease which causes inflammation of the liver and claims around 1.4 million lives every year. The date of 28 July was chosen because it is the birthday of Nobel-prize winning scientist Dr Baruch Blumberg, who discovered hepatitis B virus (HBV) and developed a diagnostic test and vaccine for the virus. The host country for WHD 2019 is Pakistan and the theme for this year is “Invest in eliminating hepatitis“. Hepatitis is preventable, treatable, and in the case of hepatitis C, curable. However, over 80% of people living with hepatitis are lacking prevention, testing and treatment services.

Notes:
The Ministry of Finance has imposed definitive anti-dumping duty on all imports of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) from South Korea and Thailand. PTA is primary raw material in the manufacture of polyester chips, which in turn are used in a number of applications in textile, packaging, furnishings, consumer goods, resins and coatings. The latest action comes in less than a month after the Designated Authority came up with its final findings on the sunset review.