Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2019

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Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Greece. His party – New Democracy – won a landslide victory in the 2019 legislative election with a score of 39.85% of votes and 158 seats in the Hellenic Parliament.

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The film ‘Gully Boy’, directed by Zoya Akhtar, has won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) Award for Best Asian Film at the 23rd Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) in South Korea. ‘Gully Boy’, which features actors Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, is based on the lives of street rappers. It is inspired by the lives of Mumbai street rappers Vivian Fernandes aka Divine and Naved Shaikh aka Naezy. It will also be screened at the 2019 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.

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Italy’s Prosecco hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene has been named as the UNESCO World Heritage at the 43rd Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is the site where the grapes that produce the world-famous prosecco sparkling wine are grown. It is an area of hilly terrain in northeast Italy known for its Prosecco production. The landscape is characterized by hogback hills, ciglioni — small plots of vines on narrow grassy terraces — forests, small villages and farmland. The prosecco sparkling white, which has the highest classification available to Italian wine, is produced in a territory spread over 9 provinces in Italy’s northeast. The region has become the 55th Italian site inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list.

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TCS iON, a unit of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has partnered with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to provide students with a digital learning course to equip them with career skills. TCS iON has curated a free, 20 hour-career skills course that will cover topics like corporate etiquette, effective e-mail writing, impactful presentations and IT awareness that will be available to students throughout the duration of their degree course. The course will be available for students of more than 10,000 AICTE approved institutions. It can be accessed on TCS iON Digital Learning Hub through any device. The unique course provided by TCS iON will help improve placement opportunities for AICTE institutions & will initiate a strong start to the professional careers of the students. AICTE is the national-level apex advisory and regulatory body for technical education.

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The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has recently launched ‘Operation Thirst’ to crackdown the selling of unauthorized Packaged Drinking Water (PDW). According to RPF, the operation was launched in all major railway stations across the country to curb the menace of unauthorized PDW in the premises of railway stations. During the operation, which was carried out on 8th & 9th July, 1371 persons were arrested for selling of packaged drinking water of unauthorised brands under different sections i.e. 144 & 153 of Railway Act. A total fine amount of Rs 6,80,855 has been realized from these offenders.

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In 2019, the AIIMS Centre for Dental Education and Research will undertake the largest nationwide oral health survey in collaboration with the Ministry of Health to collect data that would act as a baseline for planning preventive and treatment strategies. The aim of the survey is to record specific, representative data on the most prevalent dental diseases in the country like dental decay, gum diseases, dento-facial deformities, cancerous lesions, dental fluorosis and dental trauma among others. Some of the unique aspects of this round of the survey are collection of oral health data of the children in early years of life, assessment of prosthetic treatment needs in the geriatric groups considering the increasing life expectancy, the impact of traditional oral hygiene practices and high sugars diet on oral health.

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The World Youth Skills Day (WYSD) is observed every year on 15th of July to generate awareness and discussion about skill development for the youths to have a better livelihood. The 2019 theme is “Learning to learn for life and work”. This year, the world’s leading short video platform ‘TikTok’ and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) have collaborated to support Skill Development in India and to celebrate World Youth Skills Day (WYSD) 2019. The partnership aims to leverage TikTok’s 200 million user community to build awareness around NSDC’s mission to educate India’s youth. The aim of NSDC is to promote skill development by catalysing creation of large, quality and for-profit vocational institutions.

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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’.

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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.

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Star Indian sprinter Hima Das clinched gold in the 200m race in 23.25 seconds creditable timing in the Tabor Athletics Meet in Czech Republic. Hima’s compatriot VK Vismaya was second with a season of best 23.43 seconds. Hima has a 200m personal best of 23.10 seconds.This was Hima’s fourth gold since 2nd July 2019 when she ran her first competitive race in Europe.