Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2019

Notes:
The 26th edition of Singapore India Maritime Bilateral Exercise (SIMBEX)-19 has commenced in the South China Sea on May 19. The 4-day naval drill exercise will include various maritime combat drills such as advanced aerial tracking, coordinated targeting tactical exercises and weapon firing on aerial and surface targets”. In addition to IN Ships Kolkata and Shakti, Long Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft P8I will also participate in the exercise along with Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) Ships steadfast and valiant, maritime patrol aircraft Fokker-50 and F-16 fighter aircraft. SIMBEX is the longest uninterrupted naval exercise that India has with any other country.

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A renowned Nepali mountaineer, Kami Rita Sherpa has created history by successfully scaling the Mount Everest peak (8848m) for the 23rd time on May 14, 2019. He broke his own record of the most successful ascents of the world’s highest peak. Kami Rita, who is from Thame village in Solukhumbu district, scaled the Mount Everest for the first on May 13, 1994. He has already climbed most of the peaks above 8,000 m including K2, Cho-Oyu, Lhoste, and Annapurna among others. He is currently working as a senior guide at Seven Summit Treks.

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The Union Ministry of Finance has launched Project Sparrow for online writing of Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) in SPARROW (Smart Performance Appraisal Report Recording Online Window) for Group ‘B’ and ‘C’ Officers of Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC). SPARROW-CBIC is one of its kinds in terms of Scale/ number of employees covered as far as Central Government Departments are concerned. It brings a complete change in APAR management of such large number of Group ‘B’ & ‘C’ Officers/ Staff of CBIC, which would, in turn, lead to better HR Management. This Project leverages modern technology for enhancing the overall efficiency and morale of the huge workforce working in Central GST and Customs formations of CBIC. The Project is an important milestone in the journey towards digitization and paper less working.

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India has recently signed the new global anti-terror initiative ‘Christchurch Call to Action’, which is the brainchild of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron to fight terrorism. The document was signed and adopted with participation from 26 nations, including France, New Zealand, European Commission, Ireland, Norway, Senegal, Canada, Jordan, UK, Indonesia, Australia, Germany, Japan, Spain, Netherlands and Sweden. The agreement came in the backdrop of the attacks on mosques on 15th March 2019 and is aimed at stopping abuse of the Internet by extremists. The dissemination of such content online has adverse impacts on the human rights of the victims, on collective security and on people all over the world. The meeting held in Paris was attended by representatives of online giants like Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. India was represented by Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary.

Notes:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has celebrated the 2nd edition of International Day of Light (IDL-2019) on 16th May to mark the role light plays in our daily lives. IDL aims to raise awareness of the critical role light-based technologies play in our lives, elevating science, technology, art, and culture to help achieve the goals of UNESCO – education, equality, and peace. The day marks the anniversary of the first successful operation of the laser beam in 1960 by famous physicist and engineer – Theodore Maiman.

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An author from Oman, Jokha Alharthi has won the prestigious 2019 Man Booker International Prize for her novel “Celestial Bodies”, which reveals her Omani homeland’s post-colonial transformation. Her novel tells the story of three sisters of a desert country confronting its slave-owning past and a complex modern world. With this feat, Alharthi has become the first Arabic-language writer to take the prize. The prestigious 50,000-pound (Over 44 lakh rupees) prize, which celebrates translated fiction from around the world, is divided equally between the author and the translator. Alharthi’s translator was U.S. academic Marilyn Booth, who teaches Arabic literature at Oxford University. The prize is a counterpart to the Man Booker Prize for English-language novels and is open to books in any language that has been translated into English. This is the final year of the prize being sponsored by investment firm Man Group, which has backed the prizes for 18 years. From next year, the award will be known as the International Booker Prize.

Notes:
Police Officer Jitender Kumar is among the 119 military, police and civilian personnel who will be honoured with a prestigious 2019 UN Dag Hammarskjold Medal for courage and sacrifice in the line of duty. Kumar made the supreme sacrifice while serving in the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin would collect the medal on behalf of the fallen Indian peacekeeper at a solemn ceremony on May 29 as the world organisation observes the 2019 International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. India is the fourth largest contributor of uniformed personnel to the UN peacekeeping. It currently contributes more than 6,400 military and police personnel to the UN peace operations in Abyei, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Lebanon, the Middle East, South Sudan and the Western Sahara.

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South African lawmakers have re-elected Cyril Ramaphosa as the president of the country. The Members of Parliament (MP) from the African National Congress (ANC) have chosen the head of state in the parliament’s first post-election sitting. The party won 230 out of 400 seats in the election on May 8. The African National Congress party won the ballot with 57.5% of the vote, its thinnest majority since the end of apartheid.

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Late Malawian soldier Chancy Chitete has been posthumously conferred with the UN’s highest peacekeeping award – Captain Mbaye Diagne Medal for Exceptional Courage.- The award will be given during the 2019 International Day of UN Peacekeepers commemorations at UN Headquarters in New York on May 24. In November 2018, Chitete was killed in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during an operation in the eastern part of the country to combat the ADF, an armed force that had been terrorizing civilians and disrupting the UN’s ongoing efforts to treat, and halt, the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. The award was established in 2014 for uniformed and civilian personnel who meet the criteria and is named after the late UN peacekeeper Captain Diagne, who saved hundreds of lives in Rwanda in 1994, before being killed.

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India has been ranked 117th out of 181 countries in the 2019 KidsRight Index, which ranks countries on the basis of how much they are involved and equipped to improve child rights. Iceland made the top position with an overall score of 0.967, followed by Portugal, and Switzerland. The annual global index is an initiative of Kids Right Foundation in cooperation with Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands. They release annual reports every year by pooling data from UNICEF, UNDP and UN Committee on the Rights of the Child by considering individual country reports. The index consists of five categories – Right to Life, Right to Health, Right to Education, Right to Protection, and Enabling Environment for Child Rights.