Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2019

Notes:
In squash, Mahesh Mangaonkar from India has clinched the Sekisui Open title for the second time in his career in Kriens, Switzerland on May 25, 2019. In the final, Top-seeded Mahesh beat third seed Bernat Jaume of Spain in four games 11-9, 3-11, 11-5, 11-5. He had won the corresponding title for the first time in 2016. Sekisui Open is a Challenger tour event of the Professional Squash Association (PSA), the world body which governs the sports .

Notes:
The first session of the UN-Habitat Assembly has started at the headquarters of UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya on May 27, 2019. In it, India has been elected to the Executive Board of the UN-Habitat Assembly. The special theme for 2019 Assembly is ‘Innovation for a better quality of life in cities and communities’ with the sub theme of ‘Accelerated Implementation of the New Urban Agenda towards achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals’. The 5-day Assembly will be attended by four Heads of State, over 40 ministers and high-level representatives from 116 countries with over 3,000 delegates attending. During the first session, The Assembly is expected establish the Executive Board of UN-Habitat and elect its members, to review and approve the UN-Habitat Strategic Plan 2020-2025 and also review the Progress in implementation of New Urban Agenda, among other things.

Notes:
Kalpana Dash (50), the first woman mountaineer of Odisha, has passed away near Balcony area of world’s highest peak Mount Everest on May 23, 2019.She had first scaled Mt Everest in 2008. During her decade and half-old career, she had trekked many mountains conquering peaks in Europe, America and Australia, besides India.

Notes:
In October 2020, Sweden will host an international conference against anti-Semitism in memory of the Holocaust. The conference, which is scheduled to be held in Malmo, will coincide with two significant dates: the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule and the 20th anniversary of the Stockholm Declaration, the founding document of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which assists with the commemoration and study of the Holocaust around the world. Antisemitism is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews.

Notes:
The Union government has constituted the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal to adjudicate whether or not there is sufficient cause for declaring the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as an unlawful association. The Tribunal is comprised of sitting Judge of Delhi High Court Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal. Earlier, the Home Ministry had issued a notification extending ban on LTTE in India for a further period of five years. LTTE was banned in India after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

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:
N Kumar, Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), has been conferred the lifetime recognition award by the Confederation of Horticulture Association of India at the International Conference on Innovative horticulture at Pantnagar, Uttarakhand on May 28, 2019. The award has been conferred for his outstanding contribution in the field of horticulture and academic leadership focussed on human resource development in agriculture.

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.

Notes:
The Gujarat government has decided to equip the traffic police with ‘laser guns’ for detection of over-speeding by vehicles. The state traffic police has purchased 39 such high-tech guns at a cost of Rs.3.9 crore. The gun uses laser technology to detect the speed of a vehicle. It can record speed of three vehicles simultaneously in a second, even if the vehicles are a km away. The speed gun is an online device which can send an e-memo to the owner with a photo of the vehicle. If required, the speed gun can also generate and print the challan offline on the spot. It is also capable of recording videos of the over- speeding vehicles which will serve as a proof if the vehicle owner confronts the police.

Notes:
Indians Scientists has recently identified a new species of primate wasp from the genus Kudakrumia in Goa. The new species was collected in the forests of Western Ghats. The wasp, which is dubbed as Kudakrumia rangnekari, was named after Goa-based researcher Parag Rangnekar. Rangnekar is the author of a book “Butterflies of Goa”, which is perhaps a first field guide with photographs of the species found in this region. His quest to document the butterflies of this unique region resulted in a record of 220 species, of which 13 species had not been described before. He is the founder-president of the Goa Bird Conservation Network. The holotype is from Kotigao Wildlife Sanctuary of Goa of northern Western Ghats and the paratype is from Ranipuram hill of Kerala of southern Western Ghats. A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant.