Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2019

Notes:
Facebook has launched its first interactive game show titled “Confetti” in India, which will start from June 12 on its dedicated video platform – Facebook Watch. The interactive show will air from Wednesday to Sunday and will challenge participants to answer pop culture trivia questions for a chance to win Rs 3 lakh as cash prize every day. In 2018, the social networking giant globally rolled out Facebook Watch as its video-on-demand service in an attempt to take on its rival YouTube. The video service allows users to enjoy videos from different genres, including entertainment, sports and news in their personalised “Watch Feed” that carries a collection of recent videos from the pages they follow.

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:
China has successfully launched a space rocket from sea for the first time and became the third nation to successfully demonstrate the ability to launch satellites into orbit from a floating platform after Russia and United States. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has announced that a Long March 11 rocket was launched from a floating launch pad in the Yellow Sea just off the coast of Shandong on 5th June 2019. China now spends more than Russia and Japan on its civil and military space programmes. Earlier this year, China became the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon. It also unveiled ambitious plans to build a research base on the lunar surface, send a probe to Mars and build a space station in Earth orbit.

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:
Bancha in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh has become the first village in India to have zero wooden stoves and almost no use for LPG cylinders with all its 75 houses relying on solar-powered stoves to meet their cooking needs. The team of IIT Mumbai has designed a special solar stove & now no trees are being cut by the villagers for lighting their stoves. The project of installing solar power plates, batteries and stoves in all the 74 houses was started in September 2017 and got completed by December 2018. The success story of Bancha is an eye opener which shows the potential of renewable energy. Not only will it help the nation economically but will also prove to work wonders for the environment if implemented across India.

Notes:
The ruling National People’s Party (NPP), which is in an alliance with the BJP in Meghalaya, has been granted recognition as a national party by the Election Commission of India (ECI). As per the party’s request, the symbol ‘book’ has been allotted to it. With this, the NPP has become the first party from the North East (NE) to get the national party status. It is a recognized party in four states of the region viz. Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. According to the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order of 1968, a political party can be recognised as a national party if its candidates secure at least 6% of votes polled in four or more states in Lok Sabha or assembly elections. In addition, it has at least 4 members in the Lok Sabha. It also has to have at least 2% of the total Lok Sabha seats and its candidates come from not less than 3 states. Third, it is recognised as a state party in at least four states.

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:
The Union Minister of Commerce and Industry & Railways, Piyush Goyal led the Indian delegation for the 2-day G20 Ministerial meeting on Trade and Digital Economy at Tsukuba city in Japan on June 8. The G-20 Trade Ministers deliberations will form part of the G-20 Summit Leaders agenda in the formal discussions and will also be a part of the Summit Declaration. Over 50 Trade and Digital Economy Ministers get together for the first time in G20 history in Tsukuba, to discuss how G20 economies can promote trade and investment and maximize benefits from the development of the digital economy. The Trade and Digital Economy meeting is one of the 8 Ministerial meetings taking place in Japan alongside the 2019 G20 Summit. The other seven Ministerial meetings are Agriculture Ministers’, Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ meeting, Labour and Employment Ministers’ meeting, Tourism Ministers meeting, Ministerial meeting on Energy Transitions and Global Environment for Sustainable Growth, Health Ministers’ meeting and Foreign Ministers’ meeting. The G20 members represent two-thirds of the world’s people and 85 percent of its economy.

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.