GK & Current Affairs Quiz: September 12, 2017

Notes:
Prakash Padukone, the renowned Indian Badminton legend, will be conferred with the first Lifetime Achievement Award instituted by the Badminton Association of India (BAI) for his rich contribution to the sport. The award carries cash prize of Rs 10 lakh with a citation, which will be presented to Padukone at New Delhi very soon. Padukone had won the 1980 All England, besides bagging a bronze at the 1983 World Championship in Copenhagen. He also won a gold medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games. He was bestowed with the Arjuna award in 1972 and the Padma Shri in 1982.

Notes:
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has launched a nationwide online platform ‘FoSCoRIS’ to bring in transparency in food safety inspection and sampling. The web-based ‘FoSCoRIS’ system will help verify compliance of food safety and hygiene standards by food businesses as per the government norms.The new system will bring together all key stakeholders food businesses, food safety officers , designated officers, state food safety commissioners on a nation-wide IT platform and data related to inspection, sampling and test result data will be shared seamlessly by all the officials. The system will ease out the process of sample collection, make it transparent and traceable and controls the quality of compliances.

Notes:
The second State Start Up Conference has been organized by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) in New Delhi on September 12, 2017 to deliberate on issues including incubation facilities and making regulations easier for budding entrepreneurs. The conference was inaugurated by the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, C.R. Choudhary and was attended by senior functionaries from states, Union Territories, incubators, accelerators, funding agencies, VCs, angel investors and startups. The move is expected to provide momentum towards building a positive startup ecosystem in states.

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:
Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, has launched a nation-wide hackathon #OpenGovDataHack on September 12, 2017. As part of the Startup Eco-system Development program, NIC and IAMAI have collaborated to conduct Nation Wide Hackathon #OpenGovDataHack across seven states of India. The purposeof the hackathon is to support & showcase potentially great Ideas/Talent from Inner India by reaching out in their own State/City (7 Cities). It is to enable them making their ideas developed into Apps/Infographics primarily by use of Open Government Data around the themes of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Transport, Education, Crime and Health to a stage, after which it can be evaluated by jury and be selected for Prizes and future support/funding.

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:
The joint bilateral air force exercise “Shaheen VI” has started between air forces of China and Pakistan in China on September 7, and will run until September 27, 2017. The “Shaheen” joint training was launched by the Chinese and Pakistani air forces in March 2011 and has since gone through five major iterations.

Notes:
P.S. Kayal (8) of Lawspet in Puducherry has won a gold medal in the 8th Modern Pentathlon National Championship – 2017 in Pune, Maharashtra. She beat 30 other participants to claim the title. In the competition, the participants had to run 200 metres and swim 50 metres. Kayal is a Class IV student of a private school in The Study school at Kalapet and started to learn swimming from the age of six at the swimming pool on the school campus.

Notes:
London has retained its position as the world’s top financial centre in the 2017 Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI). The index is compiled and published by Z/Yen Group, which ranked 92 financial centres globally on factors such as infrastructure and access to high-quality staff. New York has acquired 2nd position followed by Hongkong, Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc. Meanwhile, Mumbai is the only India that has been listed in the index and acquired 60th rank. The GFCI is a ranking of the competitiveness of financial centres based on over 29,000 financial centre assessments from an online questionnaire together with over 100 indices from organisations such as the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Notes:
The Shingba Rhododendron Sanctuary (SRS) is a nature park in the Yumthang Valley of Flowers north of Lachung in North Sikkim district and covers an area of 43 sq kms. Bird species found in the park include Wood snipe and Hoary-throated barwing.