GK & Current Affairs Quiz: July 17, 2019

Notes:
The Sangeet Natak Akademi has named four eminent personalities in the field of performing arts – tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, dancer Sonal Mansingh, dancer and choreographer Jatin Goswami and Bharatnatyam exponent K. Kalyanasundaram Pillai – for the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellow or Akademi Ratna awards. The Fellowship of the Akademi is the most prestigious and a rare honour, which is restricted to 40 numbers at any given time. The General Council meeting of the Sangeet Natak Akademi also selected 44 artistes from the field of music, dance, theatre, traditional / folk / tribal music/ dance/ theatre, puppetry and overall contribution / scholarship in the performing arts for the Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) for the year 2018. The artistes include, Mani Prasad in Hindustani Vocal, Tarun Bhattacharya for Hindustani Instrumental – Santoor, Radha Sridhar for Bharatanatyam, Akham Lakshmi Devi for Manipuri, Rajiv Naik for Playwriting and Malini Awasthi in Folk Music. The 44 artistes include three joint awards.

Notes:
German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has been elected as the first female president of European Commission (EC) following a secret ballot among MEPs. She secured the backing of more than half of the Members in the European Parliament (MEPs) for the biggest job in Brussels. She will succeed Jean-Claude Juncker on 1st November 2019. The Commission drafts EU laws, enforces EU rules and has the power to impose fines on member states if necessary.

Notes:
Swarup Dutta (78), the veteran Bengali actor, has passed away on July 17, 2019. Born on 22nd June 1941, Dutta was considered to be one of the distinguished actors of the Bengali silver screen during the late 60s and early 70s. He had got his first break in Tapan Sinha’s ‘Apanjan’ (1968). The film was set against the political turmoil in West Bengal in the 1960s. Some of his best-known movies included ‘Sagina Mahato,’ ‘Harmonium’, ‘Pita Putra’ and ‘Maa o Meye’.

Notes:
Researchers at Assam’s Tezpur University have developed a simple and cost-effective filtration system – Arsiron Nilogon – that may help reduce the health burden caused by arsenic and iron contaminated groundwater. The system filters out 99.9% of the arsenic contamination from the groundwater to make it suitable for drinking. The chemicals used in the filtration process are cooking soda for pH conditioning, potassium permanganate for supplying oxygen and ferric chloride for providing solid iron oxide adsorbents of arsenic. The method can remove arsenic even to below 2 ppb (parts per billion) level while the World Health Organization (WHO) has set 10 ppb as the standard level. According to theWHO, arsenic is a natural component of the Earth’s crust and is widely distributed throughout the environment — in air, water and land. However, it is highly toxic in its inorganic form. The long term exposure to inorganic arsenic, mainly by drinking contaminated water, eating food grown or even prepared with this water, can cause skin lesions and cancer. The filtration process also removes other toxic metal ions like manganese, lead, nickel, chromium, copper, etc, very well along with arsenic and iron.

Notes:
The Delhi government has recently launched “Happiness Utsav” in its schools to celebrate completion of a year of introduction of its happiness curriculum. During the festival, the first 50 minutes of each day, all children studying in Delhi govt schools will take part in various activities. Activities like plays, poems, exhibitions will be part of the 15-day festival which will culminate in a grand ceremony. During the fest, the morning assembly session and the first period will be combined to conduct activities.