Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2019

Notes:
Indian Navy has recently launched Operation Sankalp in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to reassure Indian flagged vessels transiting through the area. The development has come in the wake of the suspected attacks on two merchant ships in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman region. Both the attacks took place at Strait of Hormuz, which is a major conduit for global oil supplies. The US has blamed Iran for the attack. The Navy has deployed stealth guided missile destroyers INS Chennai and patrol vessel INS Sunayna in the region for maritime security operations. In addition, aerial surveillance in the area is also being done by IN aircraft. The Information Fusion Centre – Indian Ocean Region of the Indian Navy is also keeping a close watch on the movement of ships in the Gulf region. Both the attacks took place at Strait of Hormuz, which is a major conduit for global oil supplies.

Notes:
The National Freight Index (NFI) has been launched by a technology-enabled logistics company Rivigo, which owns a fleet of over 3,000 trucks. The index aims to bring transparency and boost efficiency in the market. The NFI is the barometer of the road freight market in India and is based on Rivigo rate exchange, which gives a live spot rate on over 7 million lane and vehicle type combinations in the country. The move is aimed at bringing transparency to the road freight market place and transforming the logistics sector. The NFI offers an aggregated picture of both live rates and historical trends of spot price movements in the road freight industry. The index is represented in two main forms: in terms of actual freight rates condensed to Rupees per tonne-km and in terms of relative movement with respect to a base month.

Notes:
On June 20, the first-ever International Theatre Festival of Bangladesh inaugurated at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy (BSA) in Dhaka by the Bangladesh State Minister for Cultural Affairs KM Khalid. The week-long festival will feature theatre and puppet shows by eight troupes from seven countries. Rabindranath Tagore’s dance-drama ‘Mayar Khela’ was performed as the inaugural presentation of the festival on Thursday evening. The festival is being organised at the initiative of the Culture Affairs Ministry of Bangladesh. Theatre troupes from India, Bangladesh, Russia, China, France, Vietnam and Nepal are participating in the festival. The festival will also have a dance drama and a seminar on theatre. The Cultural Affairs Ministry has announced that this festival will be organized every other year.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the 14th G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan on 28th and 29th of June 2019. Former Union Minister Suresh Prabhu will be India’s sherpa at the summit. More than 20 countries will be participating in the G20 Summit. Informal meeting of the BRICS leaders and bilateral meetings with other leaders would also take place on the sidelines of the summit. The theme of the summit is “Human-centred future society”. India has participated in all the G20 Summits held so far. It will host the G20 summit in 2022 for the first time.

Notes:
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has constituted a working group, headed by NSE Clearing Ltd., to review the current framework of margins in the futures and options segment. The group will look into the issue and submit its recommendations to the Secondary Market Advisory Committee. This assumes significance as lower cost of trading was primarily the reason why institutional investors preferred to trade in Nifty contracts on SGX at Singapore rather than on the highly liquid derivatives segment of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Incidentally, a recent study jointly conducted by Association of National Exchanges Members of India (ANMI) and consultancy firm Ernst & Young (EY) highlighted the fact that trading in derivatives in India costs much more when compared with most of the other leading markets due to a variety of margins that are imposed on the traders.

Notes:
The South-East Asian countries will jointly bid to host the 2034 Football World Cup. For this, the meeting of ASEAN countries was held in Bangkok. Prime Minister of Thailand Prayuth Chan-ocha invited the people of ASEAN to support the football associations in their countries to host the tournament. The FIFA World Cup has held only once in the continent when Japan and South Korea were joint hosts in 2002. Qatar will bring it back to Asia in 2022. The ASEAN countries are Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei. ASEAN region is home to more than 640 million people many of whom follow football avidly.

Notes:
The Imphal Peace Museum (IPM) has been gifted by Japan to Manipur to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Imphal, which was one of the fiercest battles of the Second World War. The museum was inaugurated at Maibam Lokpa Ching popularly known as Red Hill. Around 70,000 Japanese soldiers, alongside those of Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA), died in battles with the British-led Allied forces in areas around Imphal and Kohima from March to June 1944. The last of these battles was fought at Red Hill, where the Japanese War Memorial was built in 1944 to mark the 50th anniversary of the battle. The museum symbolizes the reconciliation between Japan & Britain and Japan & India. It is to reinforce the message that history changes and makes us learn from the past.

Notes:
The Congress government in Madhya Pradesh has recently approved a proposal to provide 10% reservation for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) of the general category in jobs and education. The family should not own more than 5 acres of agricultural land or a house measuring more than 1,200 square feet in municipal corporation limits. The size limit for the house would be 1,500 square feet in municipality areas and 1,800 square feet in Nagar Panchayat areas. In rural areas, size of the house won’t matter. The state cabinet also approved a proposal to enter into a tripartite agreement with the Union government and Madhya Pradesh Metro Rail Company for metro rail projects in Bhopal and Indore.

Notes:
Under the flagship Sagarmala Programme, the Union Ministry of Shipping has recently signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with IIT Kharagpur for setting up the Centre for Inland and Coastal Maritime Technology (CICMT) at IIT Kharagpur. The first-of-its-kind Centre will focus on ship design for coastal/inland waterways, shipbuilding technology and structural design, transport systems & logistics, cryogenic cargo handling, green/renewable energy harvesting from coastal and inland waters and automation and artificial intelligence (AI) for maritime operations. It will provide technological support, research, testing and experimentation facility to agencies involved in inland water transport, shipbuilding, ports. etc. Presently, only Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and Belgium have model testing facilities for ships.

Notes:
Sarada Kumar Hota has been appointed as the new Managing Director of National Housing Bank (NHB) for a period of three years. Prior to this appointment, Hota was Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Can Fin Homes. NHB, which is now 100% owned by the government, is the nodal agency for supervision, refinance and development of the housing finance segment.