Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Dec 14, 2016

ANSWER: UNICEF

Explanation:
Actor Priyanka Chopra has been appointed as United Nations Children’s Fund’s latest Global Goodwill Ambassador.

Decision was announced by well known soccer player David Beckham and British actress Millie Bobby Brown on 12th Dec.

The honour was conferred on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the UN body in NY.

Other UNICEF goodwill ambassadors include Orlando Bloom, Jackie Chan, Ishmael Beah, Kodjo and Femi Kuti.

The actor thanked UNICEF for the experience she had gained and pledged to be a driver of change.

Priyanka is also UNICEF’s National Ambassador since 2010 with the responsibility of working on child rights and adolescence.

She has also been associated with other causes such as women’s rights, health, environment, education, gender equality and gender parity.

She made her debut on American TV show Quantico recently.

She has also made her Hollywood debut in Baywatch starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.

UNICEF

• Founded: 11th Dec, 1946.
• Headquarters: New York City
• President: Sven Jürgenson
• Executive Director: Anthony Lake
• Parent organisation: United Nations Economic and Social Council
• Affiliations: United Nations
• Founder: Ludwik Rajchman
• First Chairman: Ludwik Rajchman

ANSWER: Pulkit Trivedi

Explanation:
Pulkit Trivedi was on 12th December 2016 appointed as Industry Director of Facebook India for eCommerce, retail, travel and financial services verticals.

He will build and maintain strategic relations with clients in India.

He held the post of Head of Industry and eCommerce before this at Google India.

He has worked in many other companies such as Intel, Microsoft, IBM and HCL.

He has 18 years of experience in sales, business development and partnerships.

He started his career with IBM; he was a professor at IIT Roorkee for 4 years before that.

He is an MBA from BITS Mesra.

He was featured in the Hottest Young Business Leaders under 40 in India by Business Today in 2015.

Google

• American multinational technology company.
• CEO: Sundar Pichai
• Founded: Sept 4, 1998
• Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
• Revenue: 74.54 billion USD
• Subsidiaries: YouTube, Nik Software, AdMob, ITA Software.
• Founders: Larry Page, Sergey Brin
• Parent organisation: Alphabet Inc.

ANSWER: Venezuela

Explanation:
To deal with the world’s worst inflation, Venezuelan Government announced demonetisation of Bolivar Fuerte 100 banknotes.

The demonetisation will be effective in next 72 hours.

President Nicolas Maduro on 11 December 2016 said that the Bolivar 100 banknotes, worth only two US cents on the black money, will be withdrawn from the market on 14 December 2016.

He also gave 10-days time to Venezuelans to exchange the notes at the central bank of the country.

In addition to this demonetisation of the country’s biggest banknotes, Venezuelan President also ordered the closure of the border with Colombia for 72 hours.

This closure would help him in cracking down on currency smuggling by what he has called mafias trying to destabilise the socialist-run economy.

Maduro warned that people would not be allowed to bring back bolivar 100 notes from outside Venezuela to convert them in new bank notes.

Bolivar Notes

• Venezuelan inflation rate is 500% presently.
• Led to shortages in food and medicine in a 30m population.
• More than 6 billion Bolivar 100 notes are in circulation currently.
• Government will be introducing six larger notes and three new coins from 15th Dec.
• The largest will be Bolivar 2000.
• It will be less than USD 5 in the market.

ANSWER: Alpha Design Technologies Pvt. Ltd

Explanation:
The Indian Space Research Organisation in Dec 2016 signed an agreement with a consortium of six companies to deliver India's first industry-built satellite by late 2017.

Agreement was signed between Director of ISRO Satellite Centre and consortium led Alpha Design Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

This marks the first time ISRO has outsourced the construction of an entire satellite.

ISAC assembles satellites for communication, remote sensing and navigation.

Agreement includes assembly, integration and testing (AIT) of two spare navigation satellites in a row in around 18 months.

The consortium is led by Alpha Design Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a defence manufacturing contractor and 6 companies namely Newtech Solutions, Aidin Technologies and DCX Cables of Bengaluru, Vinyas Technologies of Mysuru and Avantel Systems of Hyderabad.

The development work will start around January 2017 and the first satellite will be out in around late 2017.

The outsourcing of the manufacture of 2 navigation satellites will provide India a chance to be a market leader in space technology.

ISRO also aims to facilitate greater participation of Indian industries.

For this purpose, it has already passed on 300 technologies to industries in various fields- electronics, speciality polymer chemicals and materials, electro-optical instruments etc.

ANSWER: Ballon d’Or

Explanation:
Portuguese football ace Cristiano Ronaldo has won the esteemed 2016 Ballon d'Or award.

The decision was announced by France Football magazine in Ballon d'Or ceremony on 12 December 2016.

This is Ronaldo’s fourth Ballon d'Or award.

He won his first award in 2008, the same year in which he won the FIFA World Player of the Year.

He subsequently won the 2013 and 2014 honours as well.

In 2015, he was beaten by Argentina’s Lionel Messi.

Ronaldo won by a good margin. Messi came second followed by France’s Antoine Griezmann in the third position. Luis Suarez and Neymar also made it into the top 5.

This is the third major honour for the footballer this year.

His club, Real Madrid won the UEFA Champions League 2016 and his national team Portugal won the UEFA Euro 2016.

This was the 9th year in a row that either Messi or Ronaldo won the prestigious honour. The last player to win the award before their domination began was Kaka in 2007.

Know About the Ballon d'Or Award

• Annual association football award.
• Presented by French magazine France Football.
• Voting is done by sports journalists.
• Ballon d’Or was merged with FIFA World Player of the Year in 2010.
• Considered the most prestigious honour in football.
• Messi won the inaugural FIFA Ballon d’Or.
• Award was reintroduced in 2016.
• FIFA introduced the Best FIFA Football Awards.

ANSWER: Katinka Hosszu

Explanation:
Katinka Hosszu closed a week of dominance at the Short Course World Swimming Championships on 11th Dec by clinching her seventh gold medal of the meet.

The Hungarian swimming star, popularly known as the "Iron Lady" surged to victory in the 100m butterfly to cap a superb campaign at the championships in Windsor, Ontario.

She clocked 55.12sec, taking gold ahead of Kelsi Worrell of the United States (55.22) and Japan's Rikako Ikee 55.64.

27-year-old Hosszu had already stamped her class on the championships with wins in the 100m, 200m and 400m medley as well as the 200m butterfly and 100m and 200m backstrokes.

Hosszu also lit up the Rio de Janeiro Olympics with three gold medals.

ANSWER: AB De Villiers

Explanation:
AB De Villiers resigned from South Africa's Test captaincy with immediate effect on 12 December 2016.

He also endorsed Faf du Plessis’s name to take over his role permanently, which was confirmed by Cricket South Africa.

He led the Proteas in two Test matches against England, before injury forced him to miss the series against New Zealand and Australia.

De Villiers, who stepped down as the captain of South African Cricket team, was appointed to the post in January 2016 succeeding Hashim Amla, who resigned from the position.

ANSWER: 11th

Explanation:
India’s ace cueist Pankaj Advani on 12 December 2016 won the World Billiards title.

To win the title, he defeated Peter Gilchrist of Singapore 6-3 in the summit clash held in Bengaluru.

For Advani, it was the 11th world billiards champion title in his over 15-year long international billiards career.

In early 2016, he won the Asian 6-Red snooker title in May and a bronze medal at the IBSF World snooker championship in December.

Pankaj Advani is the leading player in the world to win world titles in all formats of snooker and billiards. So far, he won 16 titles in both the formats.

Major Titles of Pankaj Advanvi

• World Billiards Championship title for 8 times viz., 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
• IBSF World Snooker Champion in 2003 and 2015.
• World Team Billiards Championship in 2014.
• Gold medals in 2006 and 2010 Asian Games that were held in Doha and Guangzhou respectively.
• Asian Billiards Championship for 5 times and Australian Open in 2008.
• 24 titles at the national level in various formats of the game.
• Awarded Padma Shri (2009) and Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna in 2006.

ANSWER: Sultan Muhammad V

Explanation:
Malaysia’s new king, a 47-year-old state sultan, ascended the throne on 13th Dec, becoming one of the youngest constitutional monarch in the Southeast Asian nation’s history.

Sultan Muhammad V took his oath of office in a nationally televised ceremony in Malaysia’s federal palace.

Under a unique system maintained since Malaysia’s independence from Britain in 1957, nine hereditary state rulers take turns as the country’s king for five-year terms.

The monarch’s role is largely ceremonial, since administrative power is vested in the Prime Minister and Parliament.

He is highly regarded, particularly among the ethnic Malay Muslim majority, as the supreme upholder of Malay tradition and symbolic head of Islam.

ANSWER: HD 163296

Explanation:
Astronomers believe they have found two newborn planets, each about the size of Saturn, orbiting around a young star known as HD 163296.

These planets, which are not yet formed fully, revealed themselves by the dual imprint they left in both the dust and the gas portions of the star's protoplanetary disk, the scientists said.

Studying HD 163296, the research team used Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) to trace, for the first time, the distribution of both the dust and the carbon monoxide (CO) gas components of the disk.

The new observations provide evidence that planets are indeed forming around this one young star.

HD 163296 is around five million years old and about twice the mass of the Sun. It is located approximately 400 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

The researchers found three distinct gaps in the star's dust-filled protoplanetary disk.

By observing the same features in both the gas and the dust components of the disk, the astronomers believe they have found compelling evidence that there are two planets coalescing remarkably far from the central star.

Width and depth of the two carbon monoxide gaps suggest that each potential planet is roughly the same mass as Saturn.

ANSWER: Legion

Explanation:
In view of the several hacking incidents in the country by the so-called hacker group 'Legion', the ministry of electronics and IT has ordered a series of measures.

This includes audit of the financial sector starting immediately with the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), review of the IT Act to make it stronger and setting up a crack team to respond to unusual incidents on a war footing.

Social networking site Twitter has also been asked to strengthen its network and all stakeholders of the financial industry including payment and wallfirm have been asked to immediately report any incident.

A digital payment section has been created in CERT-In, an agency which monitors the Internet traffic on a real time basis given the ongoing momentum in cashless payments in the country. “

Under the IT Act it is mandatory for all institutions to report cyber incidents to CERT-In, however prompt reporting of such incidents, especially by banks has not happened in the past.

Prasad said that all digital payment firms have been asked to report any unusual movement immediately to CERT.

Legion

• Hacker group.
• So far hacked:
• Twitter accounts of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's,
• official account of Indian National Congress,
• liquor baron Vijay Mallya,
• journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar
• news channel NDTV
• NPCI, IRDBT and a popular e-wallet firm's servers are compromised, and have been attacked at the root level.
• IDRBT is a technology service provider for banks in India.

ANSWER: Facebook

Explanation:
To empower parents help their child navigate safely on Facebook, the social networking giant on 13th Dec 2016 announced Parent's Portal in collaboration with parents, teenagers and safety experts around the world.

Facebook updated its Safety Centre and Bullying Prevention Hub and has now introduced Parent's Portal, which provides parent specific advice as part of the Safety Centre.

Parent's Portal comprises guides for parents about how Facebook works, tips for talking with kids about staying safe online and resources from experts around the world.

It is present in over 55 languages, including 11 in India, is mobile friendly and includes step-by-step videos.

With the new Safety Centre and Parent's Portal, we worked with safety experts and local partners to develop content that resonates within India.

ANSWER: Sagar Kavach

Explanation:
The Navy and other coastal security agencies will conduct a three-day coastal security exercise 'Sagar Kavach' from December 15 for Kerala and Lakshadweep islands.

The exercise is conducted half yearly with an objective to check coastal security mechanism and validate standard operating procedures, a Navy release said here.

The organisations participating in the exercise are the

• Indian Navy,
• Indian Coast Guard,
• Coastal Police,
• Police Special Branch,
• Intelligence Bureau,
• Customs,
• Department of Port,
• Department of Fisheries,
• Director General of Lighthouses and
• light ships and Fishing Community,
• Participants of the exercise will be divided into two teams- Attack (Red) and Defence (Blue).

India’s Defence Spending


• With an expenditure of $50.6 billion in 2016, India is now amongst the top five defence spenders.
• Equipment requirements are conducted in a planned and progressive manner.
• There is a detailed process that will include “15 year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP), a five-year Service-wise Capability Acquisition Plan and a two year roll-on Annual Acquisition Plan.

Defence Ministry estimates defence spending:


• INR 32,498.97 crore in the financial year 2014-15
• INR 30,173.09 crore in the financial year 2015-16

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
The Karnataka government is set to launch an online portal for trading livestock.

It will start with the auction of cattle and sheep.

The portal would allow buyers and sellers to make their choice based on online profiles of the cattle.

The scheme is aimed at saving the dairy farmers from being swindled by brokers during the trade.

Rolled out in 27 APMC markets and aims to put an end to complaints from dairy farmers who are duped by brokers, who bring livestock to cattle fairs for trade, the cattle trading software, developed by ReMS, will enable buyers and sellers to search and select cows of their choice based on their online profiles.

Tens of thousands of cattle and sheep in the state will soon get online profiles, complete with

• photographs,
• video footage,
• vital stats, age,
• animal’s vet and feed history
• UID number.

How Online Trade Works


• Buyer and seller apply online for membership to auction their livestock.
• Members follow the trading rules.
• Seller submit lots of cattle for sale and also post snaps and details.
• Money will be transferred online through e-banking system.
• Auction will present in preset order and awarded high bidder.

ANSWER: America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 years

Explanation:
Facebook’s 32-year-old Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with a net worth of $50 billion, has topped Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 years of age for 2016.

Zuckerberg is followed by another Facebook Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.

Uber Co-founder Garrett Camp. Snapchat Co-founder Evan Spiegel and Instagram Co-founder Kevin Systrom also came on to the list.

Other inclusions are Collison brothers, John and Patrick, who together created online payment outfit Stripe.

John Collison, Stripe’s president is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

Among these ranks, only 24-year-old Palmer Luckey, who sold his virtual reality equipment company Oculus to Facebook at age 21, is younger.

About Mark Zuckerberg

• Born: May 14, 1984
• American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur.
• Co Founder of FB.
• Also its CEO and Chairman.
• Founded FB with fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.