Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2017

Notes:
Davinder Singh Kang from Punjab has become the first Indian to qualify for the final round of the javelin throw at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in London. He was under pressure to touch the 83 m in his final attempt and he was the last man to take the throw. He did it in style by sending the spear beyond the qualification mark to the huge relief of the Indian camp. Kang’s best effort of 84.22m put him in the seventh position among the final round qualifiers.

Notes:
Uhuru Kenyatta, the current President of Kenya, has officially declared the winner of the 2017 Kenya Presidential election amid allegations of voting fraud by the opposition. According to official figures released by the country’s electoral commission, Kenyatta secured 54.27% of the ballots cast, while his rival, Raila Odinga, won 44.74%.

Notes:
The Indian duo of Mairaj Ahmad Khan and Rashmmi Rathore has won a gold medal in the skeet mixed team event at the 7th Asian Championship Shotgun in Astana, Kazakhstan on August 13, 2017. With this, India finished the championship with a total of 8 medals. Earlier, Ankur Mittal had won a gold in the men’s double trap and had also helped India bag the team gold in the event. Kynan Chenai won a bronze in the men’s trap and also partnered Shreyasi Singh to claim the trap mixed team bronze. Maheshwari Chauhan clinched a bronze in the women’s skeet, along with team silver in the event before the men’s skeet team picked up another bronze. The results will serve as good encouragement for the 2017 Shotgun World Championships in Moscow, which is scheduled to start from August 30.

Notes:
The World Elephant Day (WED) is observed every year on August 12 to focus the attention of various stakeholders in supporting various conservation policies to protect elephants, including improving enforcement policies to prevent illegal poaching and trade in ivory. On the occasion of 2017 WED, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister has launched a nationwide campaign “Gaj Yatra” in New Delhi to protect elephants in the country. The campaign is planned to cover 12 elephant range states.

Notes:
The Orang National Park (ONP) is located on the north bank of the Brahmaputra River in the Darrang and Sonitpur districts of Assam and covers an area of 78.81 square kilometers. The park has a rich flora and fauna, including great Indian one-horned rhinoceros, pigmy hog, elephants, wild buffalo and tigers. It is the only stronghold of rhinoceros on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river.

Notes:
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has launched the live twitter wall for promoting Bharat Ke Veer portal on the eve of 71st Independence Day. According to an official release, this social media awareness campaign will display all tweets with hashtag Bharat Ke Veer at Connaught Place, CGO complex and Khan Market in New Delhi where huge LED display screens have been installed. This portal facilitates online donation directly to the families of CAPF Martyrs who have sacrificed their lives for the country in line of duty from January 2016. The Bharat Ke Veer portal was launched by Rajnath Singh and actor Akshay Kumar on April 2017.

Notes:
Dr Bhakti Yadav (92), the first woman doctor of Madhya Pradesh, has recently passed away in Indore on August 14, 2017. Her life epitomised the power of compassion and service and she is an inspiration for all. Dr Yadav had offered free treatment to patients for last 68 years. She was awarded Padma Shri for her exemplary services in the field of medicine in April 2017.

Notes:
Preethi Srinivasan, the former State under-19 cricket captain, has bestowed with the 2017 Kalpana Chawla Award for courage and daring enterprise from Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami during the 71st Independence Day celebrations at Fort St. George in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Beside her, the Government of Tamil Nadu has also awarded S.P. Thyagarajan with the APJ Abdul Kalam award for discovering a patented drug to treat hepatitis B.

Notes:
India will host the next steering committee meeting of the proposed 1,814 kilometre-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline in New Delhi. The decision was taken during the 6th joint Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC) meeting on trade, economic, scientific and technological cooperation. The benefit of the TAPI project is that it will give an opportunity to India to secure its interest in Central Asia. The project’s success will also ensure that India, Pakistan and Afghanistan find ways of cooperating on other issues as well.

Notes:
The book “The Adivasi Will Not Dance” has been authored by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. It is a mature, passionate, intensely political book of stories, made up of the very stuff of life. Recently, the book is in news because the Jharkhand government has banned the book on the grounds that it portrayed the Santhal women in a bad light. The writer himself belongs to the Santhal adivasi community, which is numerically among the largest indigenous groups. Shekhar won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar in 2015 for his novel ‘The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey’.