Current Affairs Quiz- September, 2019

Notes:
Iran has lifted the 2019 Asian Men’s Volleyball Championship title by defeating Australia in straight sets at Azadi Sports Complex  in Tehran. 

Notes:
Indian wrestler Rahul Aware has won a bronze in men’s 61Kg free-style category at the 2019 World Championship in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. However, this was not an Olympic category and thus the bronze did not help Aware qualify for the Tokyo Games. It was India’s fifth medal at this edition of the World Championships with a total haul of 1 silver and 4 bronzes. In the ongoing event, Deepak Punia  in men’s 86kg category was forced to pull out of the final due to an injury and settled for silver.

Notes:
The Madhya Pradesh government has launched a month-long Swachhata hi Seva Abhiyan from 25th September to till October 25 against the single-use plastic. The campaign will encourage alternatives by eliminating single-use plastic and non-standard polythene in markets, malls and shops etc. The aim of the campaign is to administer oath to at least 50 lakh citizens against the use of single-use plastic. Through this campaign, the government has targeted to reach 2 crore urban population so that they can be made aware to single used the plastic-free city as well as to celebrate plastic-free Deepawali. People will also be made aware to use cloth bags in the campaign. The competition will be organized in the market places at the district level to free the markets from single used plastic. 

Notes:
Mathematician Adam Harper of University of Warwick (England) has been awarded the 2019 SASTRA Ramanujan prize for several outstanding contributions to analytic and probabilistic number theory. The prize carries a citation and an award of $10,000 and is conferred annually on mathematicians from across the world who are less than 32 years of age, working in an area influenced by the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Every year, this prize is awarded by SASTRA University on its campus near Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, on Ramanujan’s birth anniversary (December 22).

Notes:
Bhagat Ram Vats (97), a former PTI senior correspondent who covered India’s first Lok Sabha polls, has passed away on 18th September 2019. He started his career with The Statesman, New Delhi, and later joined the Press Trust of India (PTI). He travelled extensively with first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for 14 years & covered his activities in India and abroad, especially his election tours in 1952, 1957 and 1962. Vats authored a book — ‘Foreign Intrigue Against India’ — on different aspects of the country’s Partition and its neighbours.

Notes:
The 17-year old Payal Jangid from Rajasthan has become the first Indian to win the Goalkeepers Global Goals Changemaker Award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York. She  was recognised for her campaign to end child labour and child marriage. Jangid, who fought against her own marriage at a young age, work towards the abolition of child marriage in her village “Hinsla”, which is a child-friendly village (Bal Mitra Gram), and other neighbouring villages. Her campaign includes organizing rallies, putting up posters, paining walls and going door-to-door to speak to families on the same.

Notes:
During the 52nd IAAF Congress at Doha, Sebastian Coe from Britain has been re-elected as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for a second term for 4 years. Coe is the former Olympic and world champion middle-distance runner. Beside this, Adille Sumariwalla (the President of Athletics Federation of India (AFI)) was re-elected as member of the Council of IAAF for a 2nd four-year term.

Notes:
The mascot ‘Tikki Mausi’ has been launched by the Odisha government in collaboration with UNICEF to spread awareness about child and woman’s nutrition. The mascot has been named as ‘Tikki Mausi’ in reference to the second mother of a child. The mascot resembles a typical friendly neighbourhood aunty that has words of advice for everyone starting from mothers to children and adolescents.  

Notes:
Japan has successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft “Kounotori8” towards the International Space Station (ISS) from the Tanegashima Space Center at Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in southwestern Japan. The acronym ‘Kounotori8’ stands for “white stork” in Japanese & intends to deliver about 5.3 tonnes of supplies to astronauts at the ISS.

Notes:
The National Tourism Awards 2017-18 were recently presented by Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on the occasion of World Tourism Day (WTD-2019). In it, Andhra Pradesh has bagged 3 national tourism awards in different categories viz. ‘Best State for comprehensive development of tourism’, ‘Excellence in publishing in English’ and the ‘Best tourist-friendly Railway Station (Visakhapatnam). Goa and Madhya Pradesh were the joint winners in the Adventure Tourism category and Uttarakhand won the award for the Best Film Promotion-Friendly State. Telangana won the award for the Best State for the innovative use of IT.