Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2019

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released a vision document – Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision 2019 – 2021 – with its core theme of ‘Empowering Exceptional E-payment Experience’, for ensuring a safe, secure, convenient, quick and affordable e-payment system. The move comes as the apex bank expects the number of digital transactions to increase more than four times to 8,707 crore in December 2021. The vision document has been envisages to achieve a highly digital and cash-less society through the goal posts of competition, cost-effectiveness, convenience and confidence (4Cs). The document talks about creating customer awareness, setting up a 24X7 helpline and self-regulatory organisation for system operators and service providers, among others. And also, the ‘no-compromise’ approach towards safety and security of payment systems remains a hallmark of the vision.

Notes:
China has expanded its ban on Wikipedia to block the community-edited online encyclopedia in all available languages. Hence, Wikipedia had joined thousands of other websites which cannot be accessed in China. According to a report by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), China started blocking all language editions of Wikipedia from April 2019. China’s online censorship apparatus — dubbed the ‘Great Firewall’ — blocks a large number of foreign sites in the country, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and The New York Times. Topics that are deemed too sensitive are also scrubbed. An earlier enforced ban barred Internet users from viewing the Chinese version, as well as the pages for sensitive search terms such as Dalai Lama and the Tiananmen massacre.

Notes:
Justice Madan B Lokur, the Retired Supreme Court judge of India, has been appointed to the Supreme Court of Fiji as a judge of its non-resident panel. He he received the offer from the Chief Justice of the Fiji Supreme Court on the day of his superannuation from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of Fiji has three sessions in a year. Justice Lokur will attend the August session from August 15 to August 30, 2019.

Notes:
The first full-fledged Services Selection Board (SSB) of Indian Navy has been inaugurated by Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba at Diamond Harbour near Kolkata. The SSB (Kolkata) will boost the induction of officers, both men and women, into the Indian Navy. Its location will reduce the travel time and effort for candidates from northern and northeastern parts of the country. This is the fifth SSB of the Indian Navy and will cater for selection of both permanent and short service commission (SSC) officers. The other boards are located in Bhopal, Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam and Coimbatore. The board can accommodate 160 candidates at a time and has separate facilities and accommodation for men and women candidates. Facilities available at the board include a GTO ground, testing hall, conference room, accommodation for staff and a medical inspection room.

Notes:
The International Day of Families is observed every year on May 15 to promote awareness of issues relating to families and to increase knowledge of the social, economic and demographic processes affecting families. The 2019 theme “Families and Climate Action: Focus on SDG 13” focuses on families, family policies and major SDG 13 targets such as improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and impact reduction and early warning.

Notes:
Kadavoor Sivadasan (87), the veteran Congress leader and former Kerala Minister, has passed away in Thiruvananthapuram on May 17, 2019. An active trade union leader, Sivadasan had served as secretary of Kerala Provisional United Trade Union Congress in 1977 and participated in the International Labour Organisation conference in Geneva representing the Central government in 1985. Mr. Sivadasan, a five-time MLA, had served as a Minister in the United Democratic Front governments headed by the late K. Karunakaran and A. K. Antony and had held Power, Health and Forest portfolios. He represented the Kollam and Kundra segments in the Assembly.

Notes:
As an initiative towards a greener ecosystem in Ganga Basin, the tripartite MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) was signed between National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), HCL Foundation and INTACH for taking up a project of ‘Plantation of Rudraksh Trees in Uttarakhand’ under the ‘Namami Gange’ Programme. The aim of the project is to plant 10 thousand Rudraksh trees in the catchment area of river Ganga in Uttarakhand in association with local community and other stakeholders. It will also help in generating income for people residing in those areas. The aim of the Namami Gange Mission is to provide comprehensive and sustainable solutions for a cleaner ecosystem along the stretch of 97 towns and over 4 thousand 4 hundred villages on the Ganga stem and a public-private partnership will provide the initiative a much-needed impetus

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Finance has launched Project Sparrow for online writing of Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) in SPARROW (Smart Performance Appraisal Report Recording Online Window) for Group ‘B’ and ‘C’ Officers of Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC). SPARROW-CBIC is one of its kinds in terms of Scale/ number of employees covered as far as Central Government Departments are concerned. It brings a complete change in APAR management of such large number of Group ‘B’ & ‘C’ Officers/ Staff of CBIC, which would, in turn, lead to better HR Management. This Project leverages modern technology for enhancing the overall efficiency and morale of the huge workforce working in Central GST and Customs formations of CBIC. The Project is an important milestone in the journey towards digitization and paper less working.

Notes:
An American politician, Nancy Pelosi has been honored with the 2019 John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. She has been recognized for her efforts to pass former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law and for helping Democrats reclaim control of the U.S. House during last year’s elections. Pelosi is serving as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since January 2019. First elected to Congress in 1987, she is the only woman to have served as Speaker and is the highest-ranking elected woman in United States history.

Notes:
An author from Oman, Jokha Alharthi has won the prestigious 2019 Man Booker International Prize for her novel “Celestial Bodies”, which reveals her Omani homeland’s post-colonial transformation. Her novel tells the story of three sisters of a desert country confronting its slave-owning past and a complex modern world. With this feat, Alharthi has become the first Arabic-language writer to take the prize. The prestigious 50,000-pound (Over 44 lakh rupees) prize, which celebrates translated fiction from around the world, is divided equally between the author and the translator. Alharthi’s translator was U.S. academic Marilyn Booth, who teaches Arabic literature at Oxford University. The prize is a counterpart to the Man Booker Prize for English-language novels and is open to books in any language that has been translated into English. This is the final year of the prize being sponsored by investment firm Man Group, which has backed the prizes for 18 years. From next year, the award will be known as the International Booker Prize.