Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2019

Notes:
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will attend the two-day meeting of G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank governors in Japan on June 8 and 9. This will be the first overseas visit of Ms. Sitharaman as Finance Minister. Besides Ms. Sitharaman, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das is also likely to attend the meeting at Fukuoka in Japan. Among other things, the meeting is likely to focus on risks and challenges being faced by the global economy, investment in infrastructure and international taxation. G-20, which is a group of developing and developed nations, includes India, the U.S., the U.K., China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, France and Australia. The G20 meetings, convened annually since 1999, provide a forum for key countries in the international financial system to discuss major international economic issues and to coordinate to achieve the stable and sustainable growth of the global economy.

Notes:
Justice Dhirubhai Naranbhai Patel was sworn in as new Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. Lt Governor Anil Baijal administered the oath of office to Justice Patel at a function held at Raj Niwas. Earlier, Justice Patel was posted at the Jharkhand High Court. The Supreme Court Collegium had recommended his name for the appointment as Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. With an approved strength of 60, the Delhi High Court has a shortage of around 24 judges.

Notes:
The TomTom Traffic Index 2018, carried out by location technology specialist TomTom, covered 403 cities in 56 countries and defined congestion as the extra time added to road travel when traffic doesn’t flow freely. Mumbai topped the list of cities with drivers expecting to spend an average of 65% extra travel time stuck in traffic. New Delhi ranked 4th with a congestion rank of 58%. Bogota (63%) in Colombia and Lima in Peru (58%) were ranked second and third on the list respectively, while the Russian capital Moscow (56%) ranked fifth. The study found that in 2018, the best time to drive in Mumbai was between 2 am and 5 am, when traffic flowed freely.

Notes:
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has instituted the first Antarashtriya Yoga Diwas Media Samman (AYDMS) for 2019 to mark the contribution of media in spreading the message of Yoga. The AYDMS will be conferred to print and electronic media houses. The contribution of the media in popularizing Yoga would be assessed by six juries. A total of 33 awards, under three categories, will be conferred. The award will comprise a special medal, plaque and trophy and a citation. The duration of the coverage for AYDMS would be from June 10 to June 25. Yoga has been universally acknowledged by the United Nations (UN) and is now practiced globally around 200 countries on June 21 every year.

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:
Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has recently launched the ‘Pink Sarathi’ vehicles to attend to the complaints of women passengers travelling in city buses. The vehicles are procured by the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) under the ‘Nirbhaya’ scheme. The corporation had received Rs 56.07 crore from the Union government under the scheme and had taken up various measures for the safety of women passengers, including the launch of Pink Sarathi vehicles.

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:
Girish Karnad (81), well-known writer, playwright, actor and public intellectual, has passed away on June 10 in Bengaluru. Born in May 1938, he was one of the most prominent theatre personalities of the 60s and 70s, a period regarded as the Renaissance of Indian theatre. He worked with mythology and history and gave them a contemporary resonance in plays such as Nagamandala, Tughlaq and Hayavadana. He wrote his first play Yayati in 1961 when he was a Rhodes Scholar in England. Karnad translated most of his plays himself. His last play was ‘Rakshasa Tangadi’, published in 2018, set in the last years of the Vijayanagar empire. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award — the highest literary honour conferred in India. He was also conferred the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, and had won several accolades for direction in Kannada cinema. He predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. In 2012, he played the role of RAW chairman, Shenoy, in Salman Khan-starrer ‘Ek Tha Tiger’. He reprised his role of Shenoy in ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’. Karnad was also a presenter of award-winning TV series – Turning Point on Doordarshan National during the 1990s. The show was based on science and new discoveries.

Notes:
R V Janakiraman (79), the former Puducherry Chief Minister and senior Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader, has passed away in Puducherry on 10th June 2019. He began his career as a taxi driver and later went on to become a fleet operator before foraying into politics. He was the Chief Minister between 1996 and 2000, heading the coalition government of DMK and the Tamil Maanila Congress. Mr. Janakiraman became the Chief Minister in 1996 and represented the Nellithope Assembly constituency for five consecutive times.