GK & Current Affairs Quiz: April 6, 2017

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recently appointed Malvika Sinha as new Executive Director (ED), following the appointment of B P Kanungo as Deputy Governor. As Executive Director (ED), she will look after foreign exchange department, department of government and bank accounts and internal debt management wing. Prior to being promoted as ED, she was Principal Chief General Manager, Department of Cooperative Banking Supervision in the Reserve Bank. Apart from her, there are 10 other EDs of RBI viz. Surekha Marandi, M. Rajeshwar Rao, Sudarshan Sen, Deepak Singhal, Meena Hemchandra, K. K. Vohra, Dr M. D. Patra, Chandan Sinha, Deepali Pant Joshi and Dr. Deepak Mohanty.

Notes:
The Assam government has recently started four-day long Gunotsav programme to improve quality of school education in the state from April 4, which will cover over 9 lakh students of 12320 primary schools in Barpeta, Chirang, Dibrugarh, Hailakandi, Kamrup (Metro), Lakhimpur, Morigaon and West Karbi Anglong districts. It is a quality improvement programme where external evaluators are deputed to the schools for conducting external evaluation of students. The programme is a great initiative to gauge the quality of learning and teachers and students will greatly benefit from it. Originally a Gujarat government initiative, Gunotsav has been adopted by Sarbananda Sonowal led government in Assam.

Notes:
The National Maritime Day (NMD) is celebrated every year in India on April 5 to commemorate the maiden voyage of the first Indian –owned ship “SS Loyalty” sailed from Bombay to London on 5th April 1919. This was a crucial step for Indian shipping history when sea routes were controlled by the British. The 2017 theme of 54th edition of NMD is “Connecting India through Shipping”. The United Nations’ World Maritime Day (WMD) is observed every year on September 29 to highlight the importance of shipping safety, maritime security and the marine environment.

Notes:
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford, has been bestowed with the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web (WWW), the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale. The ACM Turing Award is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” which is presented by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The annual award carries a $1 million prize, with financial support provided by Google Inc.

Notes:
The Uttar Pradesh Government has recently formed an 8-member committee under Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar to implement farm loan waiver decision. The committee would formalise the loan waiver with the banks by April 21, 2017. It will also try to find ways for making payment to the banks by May 15, so that farmers will be in a position to avail of crop loans in 2017. There are 700,000 farmers in the state whose combined Rs 5,630-crore debt has been declared non-performing by the banks; they cannot get new loans.

Notes:
The famous Berhampur Thakurani Yatra festival has started with great pomp and gaiety in Berhampur, Odisha. It is one of the biggest festivals of southern Odisha. The month-long festival of the deity “Goddess Budhi Thakurani” will be held for 29 days till May 1,2017. As per tradition, the Goddess will stay in a temporary abode near her parental house in Desibehera street. The idol of the Goddess would be taken out in a procession to different streets to facilitate residents worship her at their own doorsteps. The biannual extravaganza is the festival of the weaving community, known as Devangiris, and organised by P Durga Prasad Desibehera, whose family has been conducting the festival for generations.

Notes:
Raman Roy, the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Quatrro, has been appointed as the new chairman of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) for 2017-18. Roy is considered one of the poster boys of the Indian business process outsourcing industry, has been a member of Nasscom’s executive council and was the vice-chairman for 2016-17. He succeeded CP Gurnani, who is the MD & CEO of Tech Mahindra. Apart from him, Rishad Premji has been appointed as the Vice Chairman of NASSCOM for 2017-18. Premji is the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) and Member of the Board in Wipro Ltd.

Notes:
Ikutaro Kakehashi (87), the Roland founder and digital music pioneer, has passed away on April 1, 2017 in Japan. The Japanese engineer was best known for founding Roland Corporation in 1972 as well as his roles in the development of Roland drum machines and the MIDI standard. He invented a series of drum machines and synthesisers such as the TR-808, TR-909 and TB-303 that have been used by some of music’s biggest names since the mid-1970s, from Prince to Kanye West, New Order to Dr Dre.

Notes:
Recently, Iceland’s parliament has presented a bill that would require public and private businesses to prove they offer equal pay to employees. The bill entails that companies and institutions of a certain size, 25 or more employees, undertake a certification of their equal-pay programmes. If the bill passed then Iceland will become the world’s first country to neutralize gender pay gap. According to World Economic Forum (WEF)’s 2015 Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), Iceland ranks first, followed by fellow Nordic nations Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Notes:
The Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary (DWLS) is located in the Upper Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh covering an area of 4,149 km2. The sanctuary is rich in wildlife. Rare mammals such as Mishmi takin, red goral, musk deer , red panda, Asiatic black bear, occasional tiger and Gongshan muntjac occur while among birds there are the rare Sclater’s monal and Blyth’s tragopan. A flying squirrel, new to science has been recently discovered from the edge of this sanctuary. It has been named the Mishmi Hills giant flying squirrel (Petaurista mishmiensis).