Test : July 2019 Weekly Current Affair - 5" - Current Affairs MCQ

Dutee Chand, hailing from Jajpur district of Odisha, became the first Indian to win a gold medal at the event. She is the current national champion in the women’s 100 metres event. She is the third Indian woman to ever qualify for the Women’s 100 meters event at Summer Olympic Games (for 2016 Rio Olympics). Japan won the top spot with 82 Medals (33 Gold, 21 Silver, 28 Bronze).India got 29th place in the list with the total medal tally of 4 (1Gold, 1Silver, 2 Bronze).

On July 11, 2019, High-level talks between India and Russia were held in New Delhi to boost the bilateral cooperation to the next level in the field of space, including assistance in India’s maiden human space flight mission ‘Gaganyaan’. Indian delegation was led by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Russian delegation was led by Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos (Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities). The meeting was held a few days after Glavcosmos signed an agreement with ISRO to train Indian astronauts for the Gaganyaan mission, which will carry Indian astronaut to space in 2022, to coincide with India’s 75th anniversary of Independence.

The Supreme Court (SC) by taking serious note of alarming extinction of two Indian birds namely Great Indian Bustard and the Lesser Florican has constituted a high powered committee to urgently frame and implement an emergency response plan for the protection of these species. It also sought responses from the Centre and state governments, where these two species of birds are prominently found.The 3 member panel comprises Deepak Apte, Director of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Dr. Asad R Rahmani, former Director of BNHS and member of governing body of Wetlands International South Asia and Dr. Dhananjai Mohan, Chief Conservator of Forests of Uttarakhand.

On July 17, 2019, Israel Aerospace Industries, a state-owned defense contractor, signed $50 million follow-up deal with Indian Navy & Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL).The follow up agreement consists of a range of maintenance and other services for sub-systems of Israel Aerospace’s naval medium range surface-to-air missile.It will help in the improvement of system development and delivery.

On July 16, 2019 The 14th President of India, Ram Nath Kovind has appointed Senior BJP(Bhartiya Janta Party ) leader Anusuiya Uikey as governors of ChhattisgarhAnusuiya Uikey is an elected MP(Member of Parliament) in Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh is currently the Vice-Chairman of the National Scheduled Tribes Commission. She has replaced Anandiben Patel, who as Governor of Madhya Pradesh was also holding the additional charge of Chhattisgarh following the demise of Chhattisgarh Governor Balram Das Tandon on August 2018. She is the first tribal women to hold the charge of Governor since the state’s formation in 2000.President of India, Ram Nath Kovind has appointed Senior BJP(Bhartiya Janta Party ) leaders Biswa Bhusan Harichandan as governors of Andhra Pradesh. Harichandran (84), has replaced ESL Narasimhan, who is serving as Governor for Andhra Pradesh since December 2009. He began his political career as a member of Bharatiya Jana Sangha in 1971. He was elected to Odisha Assembly for five times from Chilika and Bhubaneswar assembly constituencies. He was also the BJP state chief from 1980 to 1988.

The Republic of Palau, an island country located in the western Pacific Ocean has signed International Solar Alliance Framework agreement to become a 76th country that joined the International Solar Alliance(ISA). It was signed by Palau President Tommy Remengesau during a special ceremony at Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations (UN). ISA Framework Agreement has been ratified by a total of 54 of the 76 countries till now. Palau is a host country for 2020 edition of the ‘Our Oceans conference’. This will focus on issues such as climate change, sustainable fisheries, and marine pollution.

The Ministry of Tourism’s campaign, “Find the Incredible you” has won the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Gold Award 2019 under the “Marketing – Primary Government Destination” category. Aim: The campaign which focuses on digital and social media and the promotion of niche tourism products of the country won the award among 198 entries from 78 organizations and individuals worldwide.Find the Incredible You: It was launched as part of ‘Incredible India 2.0’ Campaign. Series of transformative experiences of foreign through unique storytelling in the format of autobiographies with the tagline “Find the Incredible You were launched under the campaign, which had shifted strategy focus from external experience of tourist destinations to internal experience of travelers themselves.

Managing Director (MD) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde, aged 63, has resigned from her post. She will formally step down on September 12, 2019. She is awaiting the confirmation to take over as the new President of European Central Bank (ECB) where she will succeed Mario Draghi.She was the former French Finance Minister ahead of her appointment to IMF in 2011.She is known as the “rock star” of international finance.

On July 18, 2019, The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu(T.N), Edappadi K. Palaniswami stated that two new districts Tenkasi and Chengalpattu will be created for administrative convenience by bifurcating Tirunelveli and Kancheepuram districts respectively. After including Tenkasi and Chengalpattu, the total number of districts in the Tamil Nadu will go up to 35.

The Marine Acoustic Research Ship (MARS), INS Sagardhwan started its two month long second mission Sagar Maitri from Southern Naval Command in Kochi, Kerala. It was flagged off by Southern Naval commander Vice Admiral A.K. Chawla and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chairman G. Satheesh Reddy. It will be visiting Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia and would be initiating collaborative research programmes with selected institutes in these countries.

On July 18, 2019, Government of Sri Lanka and IRCON (Indian Railway Construction Company) International Limited, under the Ministry of Railways, signed $91.26 million agreement for the up gradation of 130 km rail track located between Colombo and Jaffna in Tamil -majority northern province of Sri Lanka. It was signed by Sunil Kumar Choudhury, Chairman & Managing Director, Ircon International Limited, and L.P Jayampathy, Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation of Sri Lanka in the presence of Hon. Arjuna Ranatunga, Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation of Sri Lanka.

On July 15, 2019, A medium-sized public sector bank in India, Andhra Bank launched its AI (Artificial Intelligence) interactive assistant called “ABHi” at a function in Hyderabad, Telangana. ABHi: It uses new-age technologies include to understand the customer query and fetch the relevant information from the possible knowledge base in a matter of milliseconds.Creation: ABHi is powered by AI startup Floatbot.ai (Bangalore) in partnership with IT(Information Technology) company Netxcell Limited(Hyderabad).

The 9th Edition of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Film Festival for the year 2019 was held at the National Film Corporation Cinema Hall, Colombo, Sri Lanka from July 2-7, 2019. Indian entries bagged 6 awards.Nagarkirtan, a Bengali film, was awarded the Best Feature Film.Best Director Award was conferred to Kaushik Ganguly for Nagarkirtan.Riddhi Sen won the best actor award and Prabuddha Bannerjee bagged Best Original Score for Nagarkirtan.Best Short Film Award was conferred to Na Bole Wo Haram directed by Nitish Patan.Special Jury Award for Direction and Story was conferred to ‘Walking with the Wind’, by Praveen Morchhale.

According to the London-based consultancy Brand Finance annual report , “Brand Finance India 100 2019”, “Tata” has become India’s most valuable brand for the second straight year in 2019 with the brand value of $19.6 billion followed by LIC(Life Insurance Corporation) (2nd )with $7.3 billion and Infosys (3rd )$6.5 billion.

From 9th July to 15th July 2019, Commonwealth Weightlifting Championships held in Apia, Samoa. The championship were held across three categories — senior, junior and youth. India topped the medal tally by winning 35 medals across three categories viz 22 golds, 10 silvers and 3 bronze medals in all categories. India also broke a total of 22 records in all 3 age groups in World, Asian, Commonwealth and National level as well as set a new junior record at Commonwealth and National level.

The 8th edition of Hand-in-Hand(HiH)Military exercise 2019 between India, China will be held on December 2019 at Umroi near Shillong in Meghalaya.

The municipal officials of Chhattisgarh have launched a unique garbage cafe scheme in Ambikapur of Surguja district which has become India’s first ‘Garbage Cafe’ for Ragpickers. The ragpickers and the homeless will collect plastic waste, and in return, the municipal corporation will offer them food. The fund allocated for this scheme is Rs. 5.5 lakh.

The Kerala government will set up India’s first space tech park at Thiruvananthapuram’s Knowledge City with the entire investment made by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) which is a major space research centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It will make the city a manufacturing hub for space-related technology which will have a startup incubator, accelerators including Airbus Bizlab, skill training systems and production units.

On July 19, 2019, The Indian Naval Ship(INS) Tarkash reached Sweden on a three-day visit, as a part of Indian Navy’s mission of building “bridges of friendship” and strengthening international cooperation with friendly countries. This marks the first visit of an Indian Naval Ship which made a port call at Karlskrona in Sweden shores after a gap of 15 years.

This is the first time that UP(Uttar Pradesh) get a woman Governor as Anandi Ben Patel since its inception in 1950. Sarojini Naidu was the first Governor in 1947 but the state was then known as the United Provinces.Sitting Rajya Sabha member Anusuiya Uikey and senior BJP leader Biswa Bushan Harichandan were appointed as governors of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh respectively earlier.

On July 18, 2019, Union Government reconstituted the Group of Ministers (GoM) called the Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism (AISAM) on Air India disinvestment. The group is headed by Home minister Amit Shah and comprises of 3 other ministers namely finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, commerce, and railway minister Piyush Goyal and civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri. The panel will work out modalities for sale of Air India.

According to the 2nd edition of payments solution company Razorpay Software Pvt Ltd’s digital transactions quarterly report, ‘The Era of Rising Fintech’, Bengaluru got the top position in the list of “most digitised cities” in the April-June 2019 quarter accounting for highest card payments.Cities list: Bengaluru is followed by Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi.States list: The top five digitised states are Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and New Delhi.Development: The report noticed Tamil Nadu is among one of the most developed states in India ranked 4th in contribution in digital transactions with its capital, Chennai’s share was highest at 57%.

On July 18, 2019, In the event of G7 finance ministers meeting in France, all fully supported two-pillar taxation for large tech companies to be adopted by 2020.Digital Taxes: They agreed on a plan for taxing digital companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the countries in which they make money, even without any physical presence in the country.They also agreed that a minimum level of effective taxation would contribute to ensuring that companies pay their fair share of tax.The plan would have to be further developed by the G20 group of top 20 economies and then implemented under the aegis of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank (ABIPBL) which had started its operation on February 22, 2018, will shut down its operations within 18 months of launch due to “unanticipated developments in the business landscape that have made the economic model unviable”. ABIPBL is a joint venture by Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (51% stake) and Idea Cellular (49%).The bank has made full and complete arrangements for the return of deposits to the customers. It will restrict further credit to the accounts from July 26, 2019.It will be the first payments bank to close down after this set of niche banks were started by former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan in 2015.