Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2019

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The World Wildlife Day (WWD) is observed every year on 3rd of March to celebrate the many beautiful and varied forms of wild fauna & flora and to raise awareness of the multitude of benefits that conservation provides to people. The 2019 theme “Life Below Water: For people and planet” aims to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

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The Tea Board of India is a state agency of the Government of India (GoI) established to promote the cultivation, processing, and domestic trade as well as export of tea from India. It was established by the enactment of the Tea Act in 1953 with its headquarters in Kolkata. The Tea Board India is responsible for the assignment of certification numbers to exports of certain tea merchants. Recently, it is in news because the Union Ministry of Commerce has reappointed P K Bezbaruah as the chairman of Tea Board for a period of three years. Bezbaruah, the owner of Bokahola Tea Company in Assam, was earlier appointed as chairman of Tea Board as its first non-IAS officer. He was also instrumental in initiating a revamp of the old electronic auctioning system.

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On 4th March 2019, the World Bank (WB) and the Government of India (GoI) has signed a $250 million loan agreement for the National Rural Economic Transformation Project (NRETP) to boost Rural Incomes across 13 States in India. The loan will help women in rural households develop viable enterprises for farm and non-farm products. The $250-million loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has a 5-year grace period, and a final maturity of 20 years. The key focus of the NRETP will be to promote women-owned and women-led farm and non-farm enterprises across value chains; to enable them to build businesses that help them access finance, markets and networks; and to generate employment. The NRETP is an additional financing to the $500-million National Rural Livelihoods Project (NRLP) approved by the World Bank in July 2011. The NRLP, which is currently being implemented across 13 states, 162 districts and 575 blocks, has so far mobilised more than 8.8 million women from poor rural households into 7.5 lakh Self-Help Groups (SHGs).

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The Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) has identified nine Science and Technology missions with focus on ‘Science for People and People for Science’. These missions include Natural Language Translation (NLT), Quantum Frontier, Artificial Intelligence (AT), National Biodiversity Mission (NBM), Electric Vehicles, Bioscience for Human Health, Waste to Wealth, Deep Ocean Exploration and AGNIi (Accelerating Growth for New India’s Innovations). The missions are aimed at understanding and conserving biodiversity, developing sustainable agricultural processes, leveraging precision health for personal well-being, recovering wealth from waste, developing and using AI, quantum computing, connected mobility solutions and other technologies to address frontier scientific questions and the challenges that the country in particular and the planet in general face.

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The US space agency NASA has recently announced that it will carry out first all-female spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) on 29th March 2019. Astronauts – Christina Koch and Anne McClain -will walk outside the ISS on a mission to replace batteries installed last summer. They will get ground support from Canadian Space Agency flight controller Kristen Facciol at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. In addition to two space walkers and the flight controller, Mary Lawrence will take the helm as lead flight director and Jackie Kagey will be the lead flight controller. Earlier, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to carry out a spacewalk on 25 July 1984.

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The Government of India (GoI) has constituted a 5-member committee to examine the issues related to framing of a proper, structured scheme for providing insurance cover to advocates and suggest modalities for its implementation. The committee, under the chairmanship of Legal Affairs Secretary Alok Srivastava, will recommend a comprehensive insurance scheme for the welfare of advocates all over the country to address concerns relating to untimely death and medical insurance. The committee will submit its reports within 3 months.

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Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has recently launched the free milk scheme “Mukhyamantri Anchal Amrit Yojana” for anganwadi children . Under the Amrit Yojana, flavored, sweet, skimmed milk powder will be made available to the 20,000 Anganwadi kendras across the state. Nearly 2.5 lakh children at 20,000 Anganwadi kendras in the state will be given 100 ml milk twice a week for free. This scheme has been launched as part of state government drive to fight against malnutrition in the state. Approx 18,000 children suffer from malnutrition in Uttarakhand.

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The Union Ministry of Tourism has won the First Prize in the category of TV Cinema Spot at the prestigious international Golden City Gate Tourism Awards 2019. The awards were given for the following promotional films and TV commercials produced under the Incredible India 2.0 Campaign: Yogi of the Racetrack, The Reincarnation of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Sanctuary in Paris, Maharani of Manhattan and The Masala Master Chef. The Golden City Gate Tourism Multi-media Awards are given annually in various categories related to the Tourism and Hospitality sectors. The ‘Golden City Gate’ is a creative multi-media international competition for countries, cities, regions and hotels. The annual award ceremony takes place at ITB Berlin, the world’s leading tourism trade show. The Ministry of Tourism has launched the Incredible India 2.0 Campaign in September 2017. The 2.0 Campaign marks a shift from generic promotions across the world to market specific promotional plans and content creation.

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Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has been named 2019 laureate of the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award. He is the 46th recipient of the Pritzker Prize, and the 8th Japanese architect to receive the honour. The prize will be presented at a ceremony at the Palace of Versailles in May 2019, with a public lecture in Paris. Isozaki is credited with bringing together the East and West in his innovative designs. He is regarded as Japan’s most influential postwar architect and is known for his visionary ideas including an inflatable concert hall. His first international commission was the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which he worked on from 1981 through 1986. Isozaki said that he was inspired by the red sandstone buildings of India. Among Isozaki’s works are the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics, the Shenzen Cultural Center in China and the Allianz Tower in Milan. His buildings are also found all over Japan, including museums and community centers in Kyushu, Osaka and Tokyo.

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On March 11, the indigenously developed Pinaka guided weapon rocket system successfully test fired at Pokhran desert in Rajasthan to boost artillery capability of the Indian Army. The short range guided Pinaka weapon system is equipped with a state-of-the-art guidance kit comprising an advanced navigation and control system. The weapon system, which is developed by DRDO, impacted the intended targets with high precision and achieved desired accuracies in all the missions. The unique feature of the Pinaka versions tested is the integrated avionics system; it consists of an on-board mission computer, miniaturised navigation system and telemetry. The existing Pinaka systems held in the inventory of the Indian defence runs into thousands of numbers. The new guidance system will benefit them.