Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2019

Notes:
Indian-American Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal has become the first South Asian American woman to preside over the US House of Representatives. She is a Democrat from Washington DC. The 116th Congress broke records with women and lawmakers crossing racial and religious barriers, including an all time high for Asian American lawmakers. A record number of 17 Asian Americans serve in Congress, with 14 in the House and three in the Senate.

Notes:
India has been ranked 95th out of a total 129 countries in the first-ever SDG Gender Index, which measures strides made in achieving gender commitments against internationally set targets. The index has been developed by Equal Measures 2030, which is a partnership among global and regional organisations from the civil society and the development and private sectors. It includes The African Women’s Development and Communication Network, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, International Women’s Health Coalition and Plan International. The overall index scores are based on a scale of 0–100. A score of 100 indicates the achievement of gender equality in relation to the underlying indicators. A score of 50 would indicate that a country is about halfway to meeting its goal. India’s score of 56.2 means that it is among 43 countries that fall in the ‘very poor’ category. Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, Canada, Ireland, and Australia rank as the top 10 countries in the index.

Notes:
India has notified a Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with the Marshall Islands, which enables a bilateral sharing of banking & ownership information and allows officials of one country to undertake tax examinations in the other. The TIEA for exchange of information with respect to taxes was signed on March 18, 2016 at Majuro, the Capital of the Marshall Islands. India notified the TIEA on May 21, 2019. The TIEA is based on international standards of tax transparency and exchange of information and enables sharing of information on request. The agreement will enhance mutual cooperation between India and the Marshall Islands by providing an effective framework for exchange of information on tax matters which will help curb tax evasion and tax avoidance. The Marshall Islands are a sprawling chain of volcanic islands and coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and the Philippines.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently reconstituted the federal policy think-tank National Institution of Transforming India (NITI) Aayog by introducing key Cabinet ministers as members as ex-officio members. Defence minister Rajnath Singh, Home minister Amit Shah, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar are now ex-officio members of the think tank that is headed by Mr. Modi. Rajiv Kumar will continue to be the vice-chairperson, along with full time members—Ramesh Chand, VK Saraswat and VK Paul.On 15th June 2019, Prime Minister will chair the 5th meeting of NITI Aayog’s Governing Council to discuss various issues concerning water management, agriculture and security. The council includes all chief ministers, lieutenant governors of union territories, several union ministers and senior government officials. This will be the first governing council meeting under the new Modi government. NITI Aayog was constituted via a resolution of the Union Cabinet on 1st January 2015 & replaced the erstwhile planning commission.

Notes:
The 16-year-old Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and her “Fridays for Future” global movement has won a prestigious Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award for 2019. She has been recognized for mobilizing world public opinion on the looming peril of global warming. The Fridays for Future movement was started in August 2018 by Greta Thunberg, who decided to miss school every Friday and protest outside the Swedish parliament until it took more serious action to tackle climate change. Her efforts to raise awareness of the climate crisis quickly went global. Her strike inspired millions of students to skip school to join protests demanding faster action on climate change. The movement has now spread beyond Sweden to other European nations.

Notes:
Crazy Mohan (67), prominent theatre artiste and ace scriptwriter for Tamil films, has passed away in Chennai on 10th June 2019. Born in 1952, as Mohan Rangachari, ‘Crazy’ was an epithet that he acquired after his popular play ‘Crazy Thieves in Palavakkam’. An engineer by profession, Mohan started writing stage plays and established his own drama troupe called “Crazy Creations” in 1979. He entered the film industry after a long and successful career as a theatre personality. He penned the scripts for several super hit films, including Kamal Haasan-starrer “Avvai Shanmugi”, “Vasool Raja MBBS”, and “Michael Madhana Kamarajan”, besides acting in many.

Notes:
India has partnered with Portugal to set up a national maritime heritage museum at the ancient Indian site of Lothal in Gujarat. It is likely to come up on the lines of a similar museum at Lisbon, which is administered by the Portuguese Navy. The Government of India (GoI) has allocated a grant for building the maritime museum and the foundation stone for the project was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2019. The project is being implemented by the Ministry of Shipping through its Sagarmala programme, with the involvement of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the State government and other stakeholders.

Notes:
India’s first dinosaur museum and fossil park has recently inaugurated by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani at Raiyoli village near Balasinor town of Mahisagar district. The new museum will create a prehistoric-like era environment when dinosaurs might have roamed around freely in Raiyoli. As many as 50 sculptures of dinosaurs, including a life-size one of Rajasaurus Narmadensis that was found in Gujarat, have been erected at the museum. The museum would have 3D projection, 360 degrees virtual reality presentations, interactive kiosks, gaming consoles and other facilities. According to government officials, Raiyoli is globally known to be the third largest fossil site and the second largest dinosaur hatchery from where about 10,000 dinosaur eggs have been found.

Notes:
India is planning to conduct its first-ever simulated space warfare exercise titled ‘IndSpaceEx’ in the last week of July under the aegis of the Integrated Defence Staff of the defence ministry. All military stakeholders, including those from the scientific community, will participate in it. The purpose of the exercise is to understand the possible challenges in space warfare and to counter China’s growing influence in this domain, which poses a major threat to India’s national security interest.

Notes:
V.S. Kaumudi, a 1986 batch Andhra Pradesh cadre IPS officer, has been appointed as the new Director General (DG) of Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) by temporarily downgrading the post to the level of Additional Director General (ADG). He has been appointed BPR&D chief for a period of two years or until further orders, whichever is earlier. He succeeded 1984 batch IPS officer Sudeep Lakhtakia. Kaumudi Prior to this post, Kaumudi was ADG in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).