Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2018

Notes:
Tennis player Anikta Raina, who has displayed good form this season both in the Fed Cup and the professional circuit, has been included in the Government of India (GoI)’s Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). Ankita recently broke into the top-200, reaching a career-best 197 in the WTA rankings released earlier this month. With this, she became only the 5th Indian woman singles tennis player after Sania Mirza, Nirupama Vaidyanathan, Sunita Rao and Shikha Uberoi to break into the world’s top 200. Beside Raina, Mehuli Ghosh, Om Prakash Mitharwal, Gaurav Solanki, Shahzar Rizvi, Hussamuddin Mohammad, Manu Bhaker, Anish Bhanwala and Gaurav Solanki were also included in the TOPS list.

Notes:
The 19th edition of TOONZ Animation Masters Summit 2018 was held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala on May 4-5, 2018. It was inaugurated by Ashish Kulkarni, Chairman of FICCI for Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics Forum, and was organized by the Technopark-based Toonz Media Group. The purpose of the summit is to present new trends which can give a fresh vigour to the industry segment with the help of modern technology and taking advantage of fresh opportunities. At least 400 members of the animation and media industry drawn from within India and overseas attended the summit. In the summit, V G Samant, a venerated pioneer of Indian animation and creator of ‘Hanuman’, was honoured with the ‘Legend of Animation’ award for his contributions to the animation industry. Legendary masters including Kiran Antony- Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, Resul Pookutty- Oscar winning sound engineer and Paul Robinson- International Media Executive, also took part in the event.

Notes:
On May 5, the NITI Aayog and IBM have signed a Statement of Intent (SoI) to develop a crop yield prediction model using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide real time advisory to farmers in Aspirational Districts. The purpose of the partnership is to work together towards use of technology to provide insights to farmers to improve crop productivity, soil yield, control agricultural inputs with the overarching goal of improving farmers’ incomes. The first phase of the project will focus on developing the model for 10 Aspirational Districts across the States of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The scope of this project is to introduce and make available climate-aware cognitive farming techniques and identifying systems of crop monitoring, early warning on pest/disease outbreak based on advanced AI innovations.

Notes:
The World Cartoonist’s Day is celebrated every year on May 5 to honor all those creative ink-stained artists, past and present, the fascinating pieces they have created and the humor they have brought into our lives. The cartoonist’s aim is always to sum up the most important news of the time in a cartoon which ultimately makes the reader sit up and take notice.

Notes:
The 2018 International Children’s Theatre Festival will be held at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, West Bengal from June 17 to 21. Children of various theatre groups from eight countries besides host India will take part in fest. The participating countries are France, Slovenia, Swaziland, Mexico, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Children of theatre groups from Indian states such as Kerala, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Odisha and West Bengal will also be participating in the 5-day festival. There will be no entry free and the festival will be open for everybody.

Notes:
The Tiroda Thermal Power Station is a coal-based thermal power plant located at Tirora in Gondia district, Maharashtra. The power plant is operated by the Adani Power. It has a planned capacity of 3300 MW.

Notes:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has developed an indigenous atomic clock that will be used in navigation satellites to measure precise location data. It is being developed by the Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre (SAC). This clock is currently undergoing a series of qualification tests. Once it successfully clears all tests, the desi atomic clock will be used in an experimental navigation satellite to test its accuracy and durability in space. At present, ISRO imports atomic clocks from European aerospace manufacturer Astrium for its navigation satellites. With the development of indigenous atomic clocks, the space agency sure gets a mark of technological advancement.

Notes:
Pradeep Kumar Sinha, a 1977-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, has been given one year extension to the post of Cabinet Secretary. With this, he will continue as cabinet secretary till June 12, 2019 as against his current retirement date of 12th June 2018. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the extension. In May 2015, Mr Sinha was appointed as cabinet secretary for a fixed two-year term. This is his second extension. As per government rules, no government servant shall be granted extension in service beyond age of retirement of 60 years but as per rule FR 56, extension in public interest may be given “for a period not exceeding four years in the case of Cabinet Secretary”. The Cabinet Secretary is the top-most executive official and senior-most civil servant of the Government of India. He is the ex-officio head of the Civil Services Board, the Cabinet Secretariat, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and head of all civil services under the rules of business of the government.

Notes:
The Bhadra Dam is located on the Bhadra River, a tributary of Tungabhadra River, in Chikkamagaluru district of Karnataka. The dam commissioned in 1965 is a composite earth cum masonry structure of 59.13m height with length of 1,708m at the crest level, which submerges a land area of 11,250.88 hectares. It has a gross storage capacity of 2.025 km3, live storage of 63.00 BCF at full reservoir level and a dead storage of 8.50 BCF at RL (reservoir level) of 631.54m.

Notes:
India has been ranked 4th out of 25 nations in the Asia Pacific region listed on the Lowy Institute Asia Pacific Power Index. The inaugural index, compiled by Australian think tank The Lowy Institute, has pegged India as the “giant of the future”. The index measures a country’s overall power in an average of 8 parameters —economic resources, military capability, resilience, future trends, diplomatic influence, economic relationships, defense networks and cultural influence. The index is topped by United States, followed by China and Japan.