GK & Current Affairs Quiz: March 18, 2019

Notes:
Maate Mahadevi (74), Head of Basava Dharma Peetha at Kudalasangama and a prominent Lingayat leader, has passed away in Bangalore, Karnataka on March 21, 2019. Installed as ‘Jagadguru’ in the 1970s, Maate Mahadevi launched several educational and religious institutions and published several books. She holds the 12th century woman poet Akka Mahadevi, who also wrote vachanas, as her role model. Beside this, she was at the forefront of the movement demanding separate religion status for the Lingayat community that erupted in the state in 2017-18 and had angered Veerashaiva seers and leaders.

Notes:
The Supreme Court of India (SCI) has appointed senior advocate P.S. Narasimha as mediator for resolving various disputes related to cricket administration in the country. Narsimha is also assisting the apex court as amicus curiae in the BCCI matter. A bench of Justices S.A. Bobde and A.M. Spare also asked Mr. Narasimha to look into the dispute relating to release of funds by the court appointed committee of administrators to various cricket associations. In addition, the Supreme Court has also directed that no Court or Tribunal in India shall entertain or proceed with any matter pertaining to BCCI or any State Cricket Association(s) till Narsimha submits his report. Earlier, the apex court had appointed its former judge Justice (retd) D K Jain, as the first court-appointed ombudsman for Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Notes:
Karnataka has won the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy for the first time. In the final, they defeated Maharashtra by 8 wickets at the Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore. With the win, Karnataka set a record of most number of wins in a row by an Indian domestic team as they won 14 T20 matches to lift the coveted T20 trophy. Karnataka also equaled Indian Premier League outfit Kolkata Knight Riders’ record of 14 consecutive wins.

Notes:
National record holder Irfan Kolothum Thodi has become the first Indian from athletics to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics while finishing fourth in the 20 km event of the Asian Race Walking Championships at Nomi in Japan. Irfan clocked 1 hour 20 minutes and 57 seconds in the 20-kilometre walk to attain the standard qualifying mark for the Olympics. The fourth-place finishes also ensured a berth in the upcoming International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championship in Doha that begins in September 2019. Two other Indian race walkers, who qualified for the World Championship are Devinder and Ganapati. Having qualified for Tokyo 2020, this will be Irfan’s second Olympics having represented the country in 2012 London Games. The Olympics qualification period for race walk events and marathon race has begun from January 1 this year and will run till May 31, 2020.

Notes:
The IIT Kharagpur has signed a MoU with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to set up India’s first state-of-the-art 1.3 PetaFlop high performance computing facility and data center funded under the National Supercomputing Mission. PetaFlop is the measurement of computing power based on the frequency of mathematical calculations that can be done per second. This computing facility will provide large-scale computational support to the researchers, who are engaged in research activities in diverse areas of national importance. It will be used for specific challenge domains like cryptography, molecular dynamics, chemistry, drug discovery, artificial intelligence (AI) and data sciences. The facility is expected to come up in the next 3-4 months with the work to be carried in three phases of – ‘assembling, assembling and manufacturing and design and manufacturing. C-DAC is a premier R&D organisation of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).