Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2017

Notes:
The 48th Conference of Governors has started at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on October 12, 2017. The 2-day conference is being attended by 27 Governors and 3 Lt. Governors of States and Union Territories. The two-day Conference will deliberate on distinct agenda items in different sessions. The theme of the opening session was ‘New India-2022’. The second session is on the subjects of ‘Higher Education in States’ and ‘Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to Make Youth Employable’. In the third session, to take place on October 13, 2017, Governors will make brief remarks on any special issues pertaining to their respective States/Union Territories. In the concluding session, a brief report on the deliberations will be presented by the respective conveners.

Notes:
The Union Law Ministry has finalized the appointment of a Second National Judicial Pay Commission to recommend salary hikes for the 21,000 lower court judges in India. The proposed commission will be headed by former Supreme Court judge PV Reddi. The commission will submit its recommendations in early 2019 and the hike again is expected to be given with retrospective effect. The move comes after directions from the Supreme Court in May. The first judicial pay commission, headed by Justice Jagannatha Shetty, was set up in March 1996 and it submitted its report in November 1999. The judges and judicial officers got the last pay hike in 2010, a three-fold jump, from their salaries decided in 1999. The 2010 hike was applied retrospectively from January 1, 2006. The current entry level salary for a junior civil judge is Rs 45000 while a senior judge gets nearly Rs 80,000.

Notes:
The Himachal Pradesh government has implemented the Senior Citizen Health Insurance Scheme (SCHIS) to provide easy access to curative geriatric health care services by way of additional cover. The scheme will provide top up coverage of Rs. 30,000 per senior citizen to all existing Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) smart card holders in addition to basic coverage of Rs.30,000 in Trust/Society mode. the targeted beneficiaries of this scheme are RSBY enrolled persons aged 60 years and above. The senior citizens of those families that are eligible for RSBY but not currently rolled in this scheme will not get benefit of SCHIS.

Notes:
India has been ranked 100th out of 119 countries in the 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report, which is released by Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). As per report, India’s score (31.4) is at the high end of the serious category, and is one of the main factors pushing South Asia to the category of worst performing region on the GHI 2017, followed closely by Africa South of the Sahara.The list is topped by Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Chile, Croatia and Cuba. The GHI score is a multidimensional index composed of four indicators—proportion of undernourished in the population, prevalence of child mortality, child stunting, and child wasting. On the severity scale, a GHI score of less than 10 means low prevalence of hunger while a score of more than 50 implies an extremely alarming situation.

Notes:
The Indian Air Force (IAF) has launched an innovative mobile health App ‘MedWatch’ TO Provide authentic health information to all IAF personnel at New Delhi on 11 Oct 17. The app has been developed in-house with zero financial outlay by the Directorate of Information Technology (DIT). The important component of the App is its ‘Reminder Tool’ that will enable timely immunization for the children of all Air Warriors. It will be available on the IAF’s AFCEL network and will directly enable ‘Mission Indradhanush’ of the Govt of India. It is the first mobile health app in the three Armed Services.

Notes:
Young Indian paddler Selena Selvakumar has won triple gold medal at the Egypt Junior and Cadet Open Table Tennis Championship 2017. In the junior girls’ team event, she won singles and doubles gold medal apart from the team championship gold. Selvakumar remained unbeaten throughout the 2017 ITTF World Junior Circuit event.

Notes:
Prof. Satish Chandra, the veteran historian of medieval India and noted educational administrator, has passed away on October 13, 2017. He was the author of the NCERT’s medieval India textbook ‘History of Medieval India’ that was in circulation from some time in the 1970s till the early 2000s and was considered the most comprehensive textbook of the era, loaded with information. His information-rich work on medieval India was known to uphold India’s composite culture and showed the medieval state as broadly secular in orientation. He was also the chairman and vice chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India during 1970s.

Notes:
Noted Indian-American attorney Ajay Raju has been honoured with the 3rd American Bazaar Philanthropy award in recognition of his philanthropic activities in the US. Asif Ismail, publisher of The American Bazaar, an online ethnic news publication about Indian-Americans stated that Raju was honoured for his commitment to revive Philadelphia through the Germination Project. 

Notes:
The Global Handwashing Day(GHD) is observed every year on October 15 as an annual global advocacy day to increase awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives. The day is an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times. The 2017 theme “Our hands, our future!” reminds us that handwashing protects our own health, but also allows us to build our own futures, as well as those of our communities, and the world.

Notes:
The Multi-Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX) has launched India’s first commodity options in gold and gave stakeholders a new set of financial instruments to hedge their price risks. It is launched by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi on October 17, 2017. MCX has currently launched a Gold Option contract, with Gold (1 Kg) futures as the underlying asset, with expiry on November 28, 2017 and January 29, 2018. The options product is unique and the first of its kind, giving buyers the right to buy or sell the underlying asset, but no obligation, at a specified price at the expiry. Thus, for buyers, the risk is limited only to the premium paid to the option seller (i.e. Option writer).