Current Affairs Quiz- September, 2019

Notes:
Vasai-based Catholic priest Father Francis D’Britto, who is writer and environmentalist, has been elected president of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan (ABMSS) 2020. He is the first Christian to be elected president of the ABMSS.  Fr. D’Britto is known for serving people beyond the four walls of the Catholic Church & attributed his success to the people who have stood by him for several decades.

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:
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 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg has been honoured as one of four winners of the 2019 Rights Livelihood awards for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts. The award is known as Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize. Ms. Thunberg shares the award with Brazilian indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa of the Yanomami people, Chinese women’s rights lawyer Guo Jianmei and Western Sahara human rights defender Aminatou Haidar. The four laureates will received a cash award of 1 million Swedish crowns ($103,000) each.

Notes:
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has become the first state in India to issue highest number of golden cards under Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY). Over 11 lakh golden cards have been generated within first 90 days of the launch of the scheme with 60% families having at least one golden card which is highest in the country.   

Notes:
Infosys has won the prestigious United Nations Global Climate Action Award in the ‘Climate Neutral Now’ category. With this feat, Infosys has become the only corporate from India to earn the recognition for its efforts to combat climate change. The award will be presented to Infosys at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Santiago, Chile on December 2019.   

Notes:
The National Film Archive of India (NFAI) has recently discovered 30 reels of unedited footage on Mahatma Gandhi that amounts to almost 6 hours of duration. These 35mm celluloid footages, unedited and stock shots with title cards in between, belonged to several prominent film studios of the time like Paramount, Pathe, Warner, Universal, British Movietone and Wadia Movietone. The major highlight of the discovery is a rare half-an-hour footage that has visuals of a special train carrying Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes, after his assasination on 30th January 1948, from Madras to Rameshwaram. In 1964, the NFAI was established as a media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) with headquarters at Pune, Maharashtra.

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.

Notes:
The World Tourism Day (WTD) is observed every year on 27th of September to create awareness on the role of tourism among the international community and to demonstrate how it affects social, cultural, political and economic values worldwide. The 2019 theme is “Tourism and Jobs: A Better Future for All”.