Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2017

Notes:
Para Athlete Devendra Jhajharia and Hockey player Sardar Singh have been selected for the 2017 Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award. Cricketer Cheteshwar Pujara, Women Cricketer Harmanpreet Kaur and shooter P. N. Prakash are among the 17 sportsmen who will be given Arjuna Awards for their outstanding performance. Seven persons have been chosen for Dronacharya Awards for producing medal winners at prestigious International sports events. They include late Dr. R. Gandhi in Athletics, Brij Bhushan Mohanty in Boxing and P.A. Raphel in the field of hockey. Dhyan Chand Award will be given to Bhupender Singh in Athletics, Syed Shahid Hakim in Football and Sumarai Tete in Hockey for their life time contribution to sports development.The awardees will receive their awards from the President Ram Nath Kovind in a special function at Rashtrapati Bhawan on August 29, 2017.

Notes:
Recently, the Union Ministry of Defence has granted additional administrative and financial powers to the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to speed up the construction of roads along the Indo-China border. With this, from now, a chief engineer in BRO can now accord administrative approval for contracts of up to Rs50 crore, the additional director general (ADG) can approve projects worth up to Rs75 crore and the director general (DG) can take decisions on projects worth up to Rs100 crore. These projects can be implemented through departmental and contractual modes of execution. The BRO is functioning under the control of the Ministry of Defence since 2015 and is engaged in road construction to provide connectivity to difficult and inaccessible regions in the border areas of the country. Its headquarters is located in New Delhi.

Notes:
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Union Ministry of Health has inked a pact with the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) to collaborate on vaccine research and development. With this partnership, India will commit an annual contribution of $5,00,000 to IVI and joins Sweden and South Korea as financially contributing signatories to IVI. In addition, ICMR will be focussed on research and development of vaccines combatting various infectious diseases. As per official statement, the IVI has 35 signatory countries and India officially became a signatory in 2012. The IVI is an international nonprofit organization i.e. devoted to developing and introducing new and improved vaccine to protect the people, especially children, against deadly infectious diseases. The headquarters of IVI is located in Seoul, South Korea. The ICMR is the apex body in the country for the formulation, coordination and promotion of biomedical research.

Notes:
The Karnataka Government has recently launched an ambitious clouding seeding Project Varshadhari in Bengaluru to deal with poor monsoons in the state. Under the project, an aircraft will spray chemicals to induce rainfall. The purpose of the project is to condense small water particles by clouds (size less than 10 microns) to droplets of 50 microns, which can constitute rains. It is an experimental project that will cover Bengaluru, Gadag and Yadgir districts of the state. The Cloud seeding (also known as weather modification technique) is an artificial way to induce moisture in the clouds so as to cause a rainfall.

Notes:
The Karnataka Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with software giant Microsoft India to develop a unique “farm price forecasting model” using latest IT tools in a bid to help farmers, administrators and other stakeholders to understand the market behaviour in advance. The proposed initiative is said to be the first-of-its-kind in the country as it is a multi-variate one that takes into consideration various factors beyond the conventional supply-demand equation while forecasting the prices for crops. It will examine a slew of related factors including weather, rainfall and external factors that impact market behaviour. The model is expected to be in place for major crops by next kharif crops.

Notes:
The Palamau Tiger Reserve (PTR) is located in Latehar District of Jharkhand and covers an area of 1,129.93 square kilometres. Apart from tigers and elephants, leopards, gaurs, sambars and wild dogs live in the reserve. It forms part of Betla National Park and Palamau Wildlife Sanctuary.

Notes:
The Haryana government will organize Digital Haryana Summit (DHS) in Gurugram on September 15, 2017 to discuss issues like digital governance, smart living in cities and villages, citizen partnership, entrepreneurship, skilling and geo-governance and sustainability, among others. The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) will be partner for this event and the summit would be organised as a part of the state’s Swarna Jayanti celebrations. The purpose of the summit is to bring together different stakeholders and develop a singular agenda for the digital transformation of Haryana, in line with the Digital India initiative.

Notes:
Sanjivani Jadhav from India, a marathon runner from Nashik, has clinched silver medal in the women’s 10,000-metre at the 29th World University Games in Taipei, Taiwan on August 24, 2017. Earlier, she won a bronze in the 5000 metres at the Asian Athletics Championships in Bhubaneswar in July 2017.

Notes:
Venkaiah Naidu, the Vice President of India, will officially launch the Sports Ministry’s much- awaited National Sports Talent Search Portal at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Delhi on August 28, 2017. The portal will provide a three step simple process for registration, profile creation and upload of achievements. Approx 1000 kids will be selected and they will receive scholarships of Rs 5 lakh per year for eight years. It will be available in English and other regional languages so that it is easier for any boy or girl who is talented in a particular sport to upload his or her achievements from any part of the country. The portal will also be available as App which can be downloaded on smartphones.

Notes:
Saina Nehwal from India has won bronze in the 2017 women’s singles World Badminton championships (WBC). In the first women’s singles semi-final at Glasgow, Nehwal lost to Nozomi Okuhara of Japan in three games 12-21, 21-17, 21-10. It must be noted that Okuhara is the first shuttler from Japan to reach the finals of World Championship. Apart from this, Olympic silver medallist P V Sindhu from India has won 2nd Women’s Singles semi-final by defeating Chinese Chen Yufei 21-13 21-10 on August 26, 2017 and reached at finals of the World championship.