GK & Current Affairs Quiz: August 17, 2017

Notes:
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has recently approved the proposal of Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) for the strategic disinvestment. The approval will help in speedy completion of strategic disinvestment transactions. The department will set up an alternative mechanism comprising of the Finance Minister, Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Minister of Administrative Department, to decide on the matters relating to terms and conditions of the sale from the stage of inviting of Express of Interests till inviting of financial bid. It will also empower the Core Group of Secretaries to take policy decisions with regard to procedural issues and to consider deviations as necessary from time to time for effective implementation of decisions of CCEA.

Notes:
Preethi Srinivasan, the former State under-19 cricket captain, has bestowed with the 2017 Kalpana Chawla Award for courage and daring enterprise from Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami during the 71st Independence Day celebrations at Fort St. George in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Beside her, the Government of Tamil Nadu has also awarded S.P. Thyagarajan with the APJ Abdul Kalam award for discovering a patented drug to treat hepatitis B.

Notes:
Young Indian shuttler Lakshya Sen has clinched the 2017 Bulgaria Open International Series title after defeating Croatia’s Zvonimir Durkinjak in the men’s singles final by 18-21 21-12 21-17 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Notes:
The Desert National Park (DNP) is located near Jaisalmer, Rajasthan and covers an area of 3162 km². The park is an excellent example of the ecosystem of the Thar Desert. The sand dunes form around 20% of the Park. It is home to desert fox, Bengal fox, desert cat, wolf, hedgehog, blackbuck and chinkara.

Notes:
Melbourne has been declared the world’s most liveable city for the 7th consecutive year by The Economist’s annual global liveability survey, despite soaring housing costs and serious congestion challenges. The annual survey assesses 140 cities and ranks them according to their stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Others in the 10 most liveable cities in the world include Vienna (3rd), followed by Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Adelaide, Perth, Auckland, Helsinki and Hamburg. As per the survey, the least liveable city was Damascus at 140th place, followed by Lagos (139), Tripoli (138), Dhaka (137), Port Moresby (136), Algiers (135), Karachi (134), Harare (133), Douala (132) and Kiev (131).

Notes:
India will host the next steering committee meeting of the proposed 1,814 kilometre-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline in New Delhi. The decision was taken during the 6th joint Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) meeting on trade, economic, scientific and technological cooperation. The benefit of the TAPI project is that it will give an opportunity to India to secure its interest in Central Asia. The project’s success will also ensure that India, Pakistan and Afghanistan find ways of cooperating on other issues as well.

Notes:
India’s first museum on the Partition of the Indian Sub-continent will soon open in Amritsar, Punjab, which focuses on stories and display memorabilia of survivors. The museum will include newspaper clippings and donated personal items meant to tell the story of how the region’s struggle for freedom from colonial rule turned into one of its most violent episodes, as communal clashes left hundreds of thousands of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs dead and another 15 million displaced from their ancestral homes. It will also have ‘The Gallery of Hope’, where visitors can scribble messages of love and peace. Tickets are priced low at Rs10 for Indians and Rs150 for foreigners.

Notes:
The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has conferred the ‘best performance award’ for 2015-16 and 2016-17 to Karnataka Vikas Grameen Bank (KVGB) for its work in the field of credit-linking joint liability groups (JLGs). The KVGB is sponsored by syndicate bank.

Notes:
The Karnataka government and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi have launched ‘Indira Canteen’ in Bengaluru with an aim to reach out to the poorer sections of the society. The canteens will offer breakfast at Rs 5 and lunch and dinner at Rs 10 per plate. Of a total of proposed 198 canteens, 101 were launched on August 16, 2017 and the rest would start functioning from October 2, 2017.

Notes:
The book “The Adivasi Will Not Dance” has been authored by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. It is a mature, passionate, intensely political book of stories, made up of the very stuff of life. Recently, the book is in news because the Jharkhand government has banned the book on the grounds that it portrayed the Santhal women in a bad light. The writer himself belongs to the Santhal adivasi community, which is numerically among the largest indigenous groups. Shekhar won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar in 2015 for his novel ‘The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey’.