Current Affairs January 28-29, 2019
In this post, GKToday presents Current Affairs of January 28-29, 2019 in Short Notes form for preparation of IBPS, Banking, CLAT, SSC, Railway, UPSC, IAS/PCS, UPPSC, BPSC, MPPSC, RPSC, TNPSC, MPSC, KPSC and all other competitive examinations of India.
1. The Southern Railway has bagged the number one position for cleanliness in the country. This achievement was under the category of other than Premium Category trains in the recent Trains Cleanliness Survey conducted by IRCTC on all India level. During the year 2018, Southern Railway's gross earnings also stood at more than Rs six thousand crores rupees which is almost 10% higher than the last year earnings. To cater to the growing demands of passengers, Southern Railway has also introduced 54 trains over past four years.
2. Kartik Sharma from India has won the New South Wales men's Amateur Golf Championship in Australia. Kartik notched up a magnificent win over Australia's Nathan Barberie in the scheduled 36-hole final to emerge as champion. Kartik has been playing for India since the age of 10 as part of the National Squad. He had been selected to represent Indian Golf Union for three events in Australia.
3. The South Asian Nitrogen Hub (SANH) is a major international research programme to tackle the challenge that nitrogen pollution poses for environment, food security, human health and the economy in South Asia. The SANH will be established with funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under its Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). 18 Indian research institutions are part of a group of 50 which have received £20 million funding from the United Kingdom Government.The SANH will study the impact of the different forms of pollution to form a coherent picture of the nitrogen cycle. In particular, it will look at nitrogen in agriculture in eight countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives. The Hub’s recommendations will support cleaner and more profitable farming, as well as industrial recycling of nitrogen, fostering development of a cleaner circular economy for nitrogen.
4. The Indian Railways has named the indigenously manufactured Train 18 as Vande Bharat Express. The train is set to run between Delhi and Varanasi at a maximum speed of 160kmph. The 16-coach train is designed and manufactured by the Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory (ICF) at a cost of approx Rs 97 crore. It is regarded as a successor to the 30-year-old Shatabdi Express. Train 18 is also the first locomotive-less train in the country. The fully air-conditioned train will stop at Kanpur and Allahabad and will have two executive chair cars. It has diffused lighting, automatic doors and footsteps besides GPS-based Passenger Information System.
5. Oxford dictionaries has declared "Nari Shakti" as the Hindi word for the year 2018. The announcement was made during a session at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) at the Diggi Palace. According to the Oxford dictionaries, the word has been derived from Sanskrit and is used today to symbolise women "taking charge of their lives". The word was selected by the Oxford Dictionaries (India) with the help of an advisory panel of language experts, including Namita Gokhale, Randhir Thakur, Kritika Agrawal and Saurabh Dwivedi. Oxford had named 'Aadhaar' as its Hindi word for the year 2017.
6. The Government of Pakistan has recently declared sugarcane juice as the 'national drink' of the country. The announcement came after the government conducted a Twitter poll where people were asked to decide on the country’s national drink with two other options -- orange and carrot -- besides sugarcane. According to the poll, 7,616 people or 81% cast their votes favouring sugarcane juice, 15% voted for orange juice while 4% chose carrot. Upon securing majority votes, sugarcane juice was declared as the 'national drink' of Pakistan.
7. Jayant Kaikini, renowned Kannada poet short-story writer, columnist and playwright and lyricist, has won the prestigious 2018 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for 'No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories' at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet. The novel is a collection of short stories set in Mumbai dating back to the 1980s. It offers a fine-grained, ground-up view of arguably India’s greatest metropolis. The book was originally written in the southern Indian language of Kannada and translated into English by the award-winning translator Tejaswini Niranjana. The $25,000 (£19,100) prize rewards the best writing about south Asian culture from writers of any ethnicity and from all over the world, will be split equally between author and translator. It will be split equally between author and translator. No Presents Please is the first work in translation to win the award in the prize’s eight-year history.
8. Novak Djokovic from Serbia defeated Rafael Nadal to win his 7th Australian Open Men's Singles title at Melbourne on 28th January 2019. The resurgent world No.1 outplayed the second-ranked Nadal 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 in a largely one-sided match. With this, Djokovic has surpassed American legend Pete Sampras to elevate himself to outright third on the all-time Grand Slam title leaderboard. Earlier, In 2019 Women's Singles, Japan's Naomi Osaka clinched her first-ever Australian Open Grand Slam Singles title in Melbourne. With this, Osaka became the first Asian player to achieve the world number one ranking.
9. Malaysia has been stripped of the right to host the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships for threatening to refuse to allow Israeli athletes to take part. The decision was taken by International Paralympic Committee (IPC) after the Malaysian authorities failed to provide the necessary guarantees that Israeli Para swimmers could participate, free from discrimination, and safely in the Championships. IPC President Andrew Parsons said when a host country excludes athletes from a particular nation, for political reasons, then they have absolutely no alternative but to look for a new Championships host. The 2019 championships was a qualifying event for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics & were due to take place in Kuching on July 29-August 4.
10. On 27th January 2019, Ace shuttler Saina Nehwal won her first Indonesia Masters title after three-time world champion Carolina Marin of Spain limped out of the final due to a leg injury in Jakarta. Marin was leading 10-4 in the first game when she developed an injury in the knee.