Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2019

Notes:
The World Bee Day (WBD) is celebrated every year on May 20 to acknowledge the role of bees and other pollinators for the ecosystem. It provides an opportunity for governments, organizations, civil society and concerned citizens everywhere to promote actions that will protect and enhance pollinators and their habitats, improve their abundance and diversity, and support the sustainable development of beekeeping. 20 May coincides with the birthday of Anton Janaa, who in the 18th century pioneered modern beekeeping techniques in his native Slovenia and praised the bees for their ability to work so hard, while needing so little attention. The 2019 theme ‘Save the Bees’ is meant to raise awareness on the increasing need to preserve bees and other pollinators.

Notes:
Dr. Hema Divakar, a Bengaluru-based medical doctor, has been honoured with the ‘Global Asian of the Year 2018-19’ award in Dubai recently for her yeomen services and contributions to the women’s healthcare ecosystem, in India. Dr. Divakar received the award at the Asian Business & Social Forum 2019 under the ‘In Service of the Society and the Nation’ category from UAE’s Trade Promotion Director Mohammed Naser Hamdan Al Zaabi. The award is conferred on those who stand out for vision, action and ingenuity and represent contemporary ideas to make global impact.

Notes:
The United Nations (UN) has recently released the World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2019 Mid-year Update. In it, the UN has lowered its forecast for India’s GDP growth in 2019-20 to 7.1% from its estimate in January of 7.5%, citing an overall slowdown in global growth. The report stated that the global economy is experiencing a broad-based growth slowdown led by slowing industrial production coupled with the weakening of international trade activity due in large part to the unresolved trade disputes between the U.S. and China. Overall, the UN lowered its growth forecast for South Asia marginally to 5.8% in 2020 from the 5.9% estimated for the year in January.

Notes:
NASA has recently unveiled the calendar for the “Artemis” program that will return astronauts to the Moon for the first time in half a century. It will also include 8 scheduled launches and a mini-station in lunar orbit by 2024. The original lunar missions were named for Apollo — Artemis was his twin sister in Greek mythology, and the goddess of hunting, wilderness and the Moon. The acronym ‘ARTEMIS’ stands for ‘Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun’. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine confirmed that Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed mission around the Moon planned for 2020. Next will come Artemis 2, which will orbit Earth’s satellite with a crew around 2022; followed finally by Artemis 3 that will put astronauts on lunar soil in 2024, including the first woman. All the three will be launched into space by the Boeing-led Space Launch System (SLS), the biggest rocket of all time.

Notes:
On May 24, the Defence Research and Defence Organisation (DRDO) successfully flight tested a 500 kg class Inertial Guided Bomb (IGB) from Su-30 MKI Aircraft from the Pokhran test range in Rajasthan. The guided bomb achieved the desired range and hit the target with high precision. The weapon system is capable of carrying different warheads. The test firing of the guided bomb came two days after the Indian Air Force (IAF) successfully test fired the aerial version of the supersonic BrahMos cruise missile from a Sukhoi jet at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The 2.5 tonne air-to-surface missile has a range of around 300 km, and it will significantly enhance the IAF’s combat capability. The BrahMos cruise missile travels at a speed of Mach 2.8, nearly three times that of sound.

Notes:
The World Turtle Day (WTD) is observed every year on May 23 across the world to bring attention to, and increase knowledge of and respect for, turtles and tortoises, and encourage human action to help them survive and thrive. This year, in 2019, the India Biodiversity Portal (IBP) initiated a ‘Turtle Spotting Week’ as part of a unique exercise to document the creatures across India. The initiative aims to gather information about India’s freshwater turtles and tortoises. Anyone who has an interest in Indian Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises can participate in the first edition of the Turtle Spotting Week 2019 (May 17 to May 23) and contribute by photographing, documenting and submitting observations of turtles and tortoises that they have observed around their neighbourhood, backyard water body or on wildlife trips.

Notes:
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is observed every year on May 29 to pay tribute to the invaluable contribution by the uniformed and civilian personnel and to honour more than 3,800 peacekeepers who have lost their lives while rendering peacekeeping services. The 2019 theme is “Protecting Civilians, Protecting Peace”. This is the date when in 1948 the first UN peacekeeping mission named the “United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), began operations in Palestine. Since then, more than one million men and women have served in 72 UN peacekeeping operations, directly impacting the lives of millions of people, protecting the world’s most vulnerable and saving countless lives. India is the 4th largest troop contributor to the UN peacekeeping missions. UN peacekeeping has helped countries move from war to peace. At present, India contributes about 6,400 peacekeepers to various missions across the world.

Notes:
Gian Chand (93), the veteran freedom fighter, has passed away at his native village in Mohalla Ramgarh of Chamba district, Himachal Pradesh on May 27, 2019. Born on 26th October 1926, Chand was a member of Azad Hind Fauj led by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Notes:
Murray Gell-Mann (89), a Jewish American physicist who theorized the existence of the quark and won a Nobel Prize for his method of classifying particles, has passed away in New Mexico on May 24, 2019. He transformed physics by devising a method for sorting subatomic particles into simple groups of eight, based on electric charge, spin and other characteristics. He called his method the “eightfold way” after the Buddhist Eightfold Path to enlightenment. Later he developed the theory that identified “quarks,” indivisible components of Earth’s matter that make up protons, neutrons and other particles.

Notes:
The scientists at the Stanford University in the US have developed a more stable prosthetic foot which they say could make challenging terrain more manageable for people who have lost a lower leg. The new design has a kind of tripod foot that responds to rough terrain by actively shifting pressure between three different contact points. Prosthetic emulators allow them to try lots of different designs without the overhead of new hardware. According to the study published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, prosthetic limbs can better handle the rough ground. Outfitted with position sensors and motors, the foot could adjust its orientation to respond to varying terrain, much as someone with an intact foot could move their toes and flex their ankles to compensate while walking over rough ground.