GK & Current Affairs Quiz: May 01, 2019

Notes:
The “Politics of Jugaad: The Coalition Handbook” has been authored by journalist Saba Naqvi. In it, the author examined the possibility of a coalition government after 2019 Lok Sabha polls. It traces the history of political alliances in the country taking into account their performance on economic and and social policies, among others. The book also makes a study of the Congress’ “tryst with dynasty” with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra taking a plunge into active politics for the party helmed by her brother Rahul Gandhi.

Notes:
In China, the 2nd edition of Belt and Road Forum (BRF – 2019) was officially held in Beijing with theme “Belt and Road Cooperation: Shaping a Brighter Shared Future”. In it, 37 heads-of-state and 159 countries had participated along with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Monetary Chief (IMF) Christine Lagarde. The BRF is part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The aim of BRI is to reinvent the ancient Silk Road to connect Asia to Europe and Africa through massive investments in maritime, road and rail projects. The initiative offers to bring much-needed modern infrastructure to developing countries, but critics say it mainly favours Chinese companies while saddling nations with debt and causing environmental damage. The idea of BRI was first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. The BRI (or yi dai yi lu) is made up of a “belt” of overland routes and a maritime “road” connecting Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe and Africa.

Notes:
Bajrang Punia is set to become the first Indian wrestler to fight at iconic Madison Square Garden in New York. Punia, who won the 65kg men’s freestyle gold at the recent 2019 Asian championships, will be among top wrestlers selected by the American governing body for the May 6 tournament. Bajrang will take on two-time US champion Yianni Diakomihalis in the 65kg category in the “Grapple at the Garden” Beat the Streets event, which since 2010 has become a major showcase for international wrestling.

Notes:
Dr. Srinivasa Chakravathy and his team at IIT Madras has developed a unified script for nine Indian languages, named the Bharati script. The team has developed a method for reading documents in Bharati script using a multi-lingual Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scheme. The team has also created a finger-spelling method that can be used to generate a sign language for hearing-impaired persons. In collaboration with TCS Mumbai, the researchers have found a way for persons with hearing disability to generate signatures using this finger-spelling technique. The scripts that have been integrated include Devnagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil. Here, it must be noted that Urdu and English alphabet systems have a very different phonetic organisation. But that does not mean a mapping is not possible. It is quite possible and can be done.

Notes:
The World Day For Safety And Health At Work is observed every year on 28th of April by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to promote safe, healthy and decent work. The day marks the need and awareness of a safe and healthy environment at the workplace. All of us spend most of our day at our workplaces and it is a necessity that our workplace is safe and secure, and we feel healthy and happy while we are there. It is both the duty of the management and the employees to make sure the best of conditions and environment are provided to the employees to make sure their productivity is always on the rise, and they are healthy throughout the year.