Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2017

Notes:
Waltherus Norbertus Maria Marijne has been named as the new chief coach of the Indian Senior Men Hockey Team. Marijne will succeed Roelant Oltmans on September 20, 2017. Currently, Marijne is the chief coach of Indian Senior Women Hockey Team. Besides, Harendra Singh, who is hockey coach and Dronacharya Awardee, has been appointed as High Performance Specialist Coach for Indian Senior Women Hockey Team. The decisions were announced by the newly-appointed Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore on his official twitter page. According to a top Hockey India official, both Marijne and Harendra have been given a tenure till the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Notes:
The 2018 World University Rankings (WUR), released by Times Higher Education, has found that India’s flagship Indian Institute of Science (IISc) fall from previous year’s 201-250 band to 251-300. This was attributed to drops in its research influence score and research income. In it, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore has been named the top university in India, followed by IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Kharagpur. Globally, the University of Oxford has retained its first place in the rankings, followed by University of Cambridge, California Institute of Technology and Stanford University. The World University ranking is the only global university performance table to judge research-intensive universities across all of their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Notes:
Recently, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) is in news because it will constitute a committee to advise the method and process for undertaking large scale community reform program within the Islamic Shariah. A resolution was passed in this connection in the one-day meeting of the Board’s executive body held in Bhopal on September 11, 2017. The committee will also look into the Supreme Court’s verdict on the triple Talaq. The Board reiterated that Talaq-e-biddat or triple Talaq in one-sitting, is sinful but valid. It claimed that it has taken steps to discourage this practice through community reform programmes for a long time. The AIMPLB is a non-government organisation that focuses primarily to defend the Sharia laws from any law or legislation that they consider infringes on it. Syed Mohammad Rabe Hasani is the president of the AIMPLB.

Notes:
The BWF World Senior Badminton Championship has started at Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Kochi, Kerala on September 11 and will continue till September 17. It is for the first time that India is hosting the Championship. The President of Badminton Association of India (BAI) Himanta Biswa Sarma has formally inaugurated the week long Championship. The tournament will see a total of 665 players from 40 countries battle it out in eight different age groups and will be played in all the five categories. About 175 players are representing India including Olympians in the Championship.

Notes:
Dr Harsh Vardhan, the Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, has launched the “Wood is Good” campaign at conference on “Sustainable Landscapes & Forest Ecosystems: Theory to Practice” in New Delhi on September 12, 2017. Wood is a climate-friendly material, as it is a renewable resource, having zero carbon footprints. The conference has organized to deliberate and come out with out-of-the-box ideas and solutions on increasing the forest cover much beyond the stipulated 33 per cent. The union ministery advocated the balancing of environmental and developmental concerns and also urged the gathering of scientists and foresters to devise a solution to the problem of weeds.

Notes:
Sumit Nagal of India has won the 8th MCC – S R Subramaniam Memorial ITF Futures Men’s tennis championship on September 10, 2017. Nagal defeated Colin van Beem of Netherlands in the singles final by 6-3, 6-0 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Nagal received $2,160 and 18 ITF points for the victory while van Beem received $1272 AND 12 ITF points.

Notes:
Thomas Bach, the President of International Olympic Committee (IOC), has officially announced that Paris will host 2024 and Los Angeles will host 2028 Summer Olympics. Both cities wanted to host the 2024 event, before Los Angeles agreed to wait an extra four years after the IOC made guarantees on funding. Los Angeles will also receive up to $2 billion from the IOC, which is up to $300 million more than it would have gotten for 2024.

Notes:
The 12th edition of the India-Japan annual summit-2017 has held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat on September 14, 2017. This is the 4th annual summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In it, India and Japan have signed 15 agreements for enhancing bilateral cooperation in several key areas including investment promotion, civil aviation, and science and technology. The two leaders also reviewed the entire spectrum of bilteral cooperation.They also laid the foundation for the country’s first high-speed rail corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

Notes:
President Ram Nath Kovind has launched a nationwide campaign ‘Swacchata Hi Sewa’ from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on September 15, 2017. He will administer nation-wide Swachhta Hi Seva pledge initiating parallel action in all the two lakh 50 thousand plus Gram Panchayats and cities in India. Eminent personalities, community organizations and private sector organizations will undertakes shramdaan activities. The fortnight long campaign will conclude on 2nd of October, Gandhi Jayanti. The purpose of the campaign is to mobilize people and reinforce the public movement for sanitation to contribute to Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a Clean India.

Notes:
Shripad Yesso Naik, the Union Minister of State for AYUSH, has inaugurated the India’s first State of art virology laboratory at Dr Anjali Chatterjee Regional Research Institute for Homoeopathy in Kolkata, West Bengal. The laboratory, established at a cost of Rs. 8 crore is the only one in India for conducting basic and fundamental research in Homoeopathy for viral diseases like influenza, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, chikungunya and H1N1 (swine flu). The laboratory will also be used to create new drugs and technologies in treating these viral diseases.