Current Affairs Questions & Answers - May 25, 2017

ANSWER: None of the above

Explanation:
The two organizations Afcons Transtonnelstroy and Kolkata Metro Railway Corporation Ltd (KMCRL) involved in implementing the East West Metro have completed boring the India’s first underwater tunnel under the Hooghly river to link Howrah and Kolkata.

The length of Kolkata’s East West Metro is 16.6 km long.

Out of which a length of 502 metres is under the Hooghly river. The project is built by Afcons Transtonnelstroy and implemented by KMRCL.

Afcons Transtonnelstroy is an Indo-Russian joint venture. The project connects Howrah to the west and Salt lake to the east.

Digging the underwater tunnel was the critical task in the project.

A massive tunnel boring machine called Rachna was used for boring the underwater tunnel. The tunnel boring job was completed within in a time of one month and six days well ahead of schedule.

The East West Metro with a length of 16.6 km will have 12 stations, six of which will be underground stations. The project which was slated to be completed by 2012 got postponed many times. The final commissioning of the project is expected to be held by December 2019.

ANSWER: Rohan Chakravarthy

Explanation:
Avid bird watcher, Rohan Chakravarty has turned his love for wildlife and environment into his muse by drawing cartoons centred on conservation issues under the banner of Green Humour, a comic strip that is being distributed internationally.

Rohan Chakravarty, a wildlife and environment cartoonist from India, has won this year’s International President’s Award for his efforts to change attitudes towards nature.

The award is the top accolade given by WWF to recognise leadership in young conservationists who are under the age of 30 from around the world.

The award ceremony was held recently in Manado, Indonesia. Hailing from Nagpur (also known as the tiger capital of India), Chakravarty has been an enthusiastic bird watcher since childhood.

He was on his way to becoming a dentist when the sighting of a magnificent tigress at a waterhole at Nagzira Tiger Reserve threw his planned career off gear.

Today, this young cartoonist and illustrator has made his mark for sketching passionately and consistently on wildlife, climate change and other environmental issues and has many national and international magazines and newspapers lining up for his works.

With over 400 cartoons, Chakravarty probably has one of the largest online cartoon repositories - under the banner of Green Humour - that centres around environmental issues.

ANSWER: India

Explanation:
State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) on 21st May has closed another major deal worth $630 million with India to supply advanced long range air and missile defence systems for four ships of the Indian Navy.

The deal, a major boost to the ‘Make in India’ campaign, will be jointly executed with the Indian government’s Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), and comes close on the heels of Israel’s largest defence contract ever worth $2 billion to supply the Indian Army and Navy with missile defence systems.

IAI said the $630-million contract is for supplying Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LRSAM) systems.

LRSAM: Know More

• The LRSAM is a joint development by IAI and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation.
• It comprises several key state-of-the-art elements, advanced phased-array radar, command-and-control system, launchers and missiles with advanced radio-frequency (RF) seekers.
• The system provides the ultimate protection against a variety of aerial, naval and air borne threats. It is currently operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces.
• The Indian Army is also likely to deploy it soon.
• The LRSAM was last week successfully tested in India as part of operational interception trial aboard Indian Navy ship demonstrating again the system’s operational capabilities in a representative scenario with genuine target.

ANSWER: Only a and b

Explanation:
HDFC Life today announced the launch of an artificial intelligence-based application that can automatically read, understand, categorise, prioritise and respond to customer emails sent to the private insurer.

SPOK, an insurance email bot, can read customer queries within milliseconds and respond to them, it said.

This automation initiative will enable the company to respond to user queries faster, more efficiently and consistently.

The deployment of SPOK will improve customer experience, while providing the support staff with the bandwidth to focus on customer satisfaction.

HDFC Life has embarked on this initiative in collaboration with Senseforth, a startup that offers a wide range of enterprise bots built on its artificial intelligence (AI) platform.

The email Bot is built on cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing technologies.

ANSWER: Culture

Explanation:
Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma has launched Swachh Bharat app at the National Museum in New Delhi.

The app will enable visitors to report garbage on the premises of the ASI monuments across the country.

Around 30 galleries in the National Museum have already been equipped with a device that will make use of the intranet to connect to the app.

The services of the app will be soon rolled out in 116 monuments under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) across the country.

The devices installed in the monuments will connect to this app using Bluetooth.

The devices will have a range of around 30 metres.

The visitors with the help of the app would be permitted to report the culture ministry any litter or garbage on the premises of the monuments.

The app is available for Android mobile phones. As soon as the visitors enter the premises of the monuments and switch on the Bluetooth, the app will relay Swachh Bharat-related information to the visitors and will ask them to report any garbage around them.

Even if the visitors have not installed the App on their handsets, a message will be delivered by Google about the Swachh Bharat Abiyan and will provide the visitors with a link to install the App.

The Swachh Bharat App will be monitored by the Ministry of Culture. The App is expected to promote cleanliness in the premises of ASI monuments.

ANSWER: Saral Eindhan Vitaran App

Explanation:
Union Minister of State for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal on 23 May 2017 launched mobile app Saral Eindhan Vitaran App (SEVA) for quick tracking of coal dispatch.

This unique monitoring app was a joint initiative of the Union Ministry of Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy and Coal India Limited (CIL).

The app will provide complete information of departmental functioning and transparency to the public. It will track coal dispatch to 118 power plants through fuel supply agreement (FSA) of around 500 MT.

In addition, the dispatch through Special Forward E-Auction and Bridge Linkage from more than 200 dispatch points spread over eight states of the country will also be monitored.

It will provide a summary of quantity of coal dispatched along with grades for the given day, month, and the latest yearly updates.

It will also provide information on rake movement including latest status of indents of rake, allotment and loading which will help consumers making advance logistics planning.

Much of the information on the SEVA dashboard will be available in open access, however, consumer specific data would be password protected on the SEVA Dashboard. The app has a dedicated backend team to monitor the status of specific grievances from consumers and take action on the feedback received on the app.

By using this app, the common man will be able to hold the government accountable for the coal linkage allocations.

This will, in turn, lead to rationalization of coal linkages and finally reduction in the power prices in the country.

ANSWER: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Explanation:
Former Ethiopian Health Minister Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been elected as the new Director-General of the World Health Organisation.

This election has earned the distinction of being the first election which saw the participation of all WHO member states in the voting process.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus defeated the other two contendors to the post, namely, UK’s Dr David Nabarro and Pakistan’s Dr Sania Nishtar.

The head of the organization is the Director-General (DG), appointed by the World Health Assembly. Earlier stincts of Dr Tedros includes the post of Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs Minister (2012-2016) and Health Minister (2005-2012).

He has also served as chair of the Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Also as chair of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Board, as well as co-chair of the Board of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

During his tenure at the helm of WHO, Dr Tedros will have to tackle challenges like the spread of the Zika virus and Ebola, along with existing challenges posed by Malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, to name a few.

WHO is also at present facing the financial challenges as a result of the squeeze on donor funds. WHO The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health.

WHO: Know More

• Established on 7 April 1948, it succeeded the Health Organization, which was an agency of the League of Nations.
• It is a member of the United Nations Development Group and its headquarters are located at Geneva. WHO flag features the Rod of Asclepius as a symbol for healing

ANSWER: Voluntarily

Explanation:
The Hindi Advisory Committee on 22 May 2017 recommended that states should be encouraged to teach Hindi voluntarily instead of directing them to compulsorily teach the language in classes IX and X.

The recommendations were made during meeting of the Hindi Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, held under the Chairmanship of Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, in New Delhi.

The members of the committee emphasized the states to encourage teachers to teach Hindi voluntarily, instead of giving instructions or directions about teaching Hindi compulsorily in class IX and class X.

The members asserted that the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology should prepare technical terminology in trilingual form i.e. English, Regional languages and Hindi.

The committee expressed that the ministry should increase the original Hindi correspondence in the Regions ‘A’ ‘B’ and ‘C’ in official use of Hindi.

The Committee also emphasized that to increase the use of Hindi, simple and popular words should be used instead of difficult Hindi words.

In the meeting, 18 offices located in regions ‘A’ ‘B’ and ‘C’ were awarded Rajbhasha Shields for doing excellent work in Official Language implementation.

Two offices located in Tamil Nadu were awarded for doing excellent work in the implementation of Official Language Hindi.

ANSWER: NASA

Explanation:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have collaborated to make an Earth-imaging satellite called NISAR.

The satellite will help scientists monitor the Earth like never before.

The expanded form of NISAR is NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar.

It is scheduled to be launched in 2021.

The estimated cost of the radar is over 1.5 billion dollars and it could possibly be the world’s most expensive Earth imaging satellite.

The two documents to launch the NASA-ISRO satellite mission were signed.

The aim of the mission is to observe Earth and establish a pathway for future joint missions for Mars exploration.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar will provide an unprecedented detailed view of Earth by using advanced radar imaging.

The satellite is designed to observe and take measurements of some of the planet’s most complex processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.

Under the terms of the agreement, NASA will provide the mission’s L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid state recorder, and a payload data subsystem.

On the other hand, the ISRO will provide the satellite bus, an S-band synthetic aperture radar, the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

Data collected from the ambitious mission will unfold information about the evolution and state of Earth’s crust. It will also help scientists better understand our planet’s processes and changing climate, and aid future resource and hazard management.

The Earth-imaging satellite design will make use of a large deployable mesh antenna and will operate on dual L band and S band.

NISAR will be 3-axis stabilised and is planned to be launched into a Sun-synchronous dawn to dusk orbit with a mission life of 3 years.

NASA US Manned Programs: Know More

• Apollo Skylab Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (joint)
• Space Shuttle Shuttle–Mir (joint)
• ISS (joint)
• Mercury Gemini
• Manned Venus Flyby
• Manned Orbiting Laboratory
• Space Transportation System
• Orion Constellation

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
The United States and six Gulf countries on 23 May 2017 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to curb financing terror organisations like Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Hizbollah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Taliban and the Haqqani Network.

The MoU was signed by the US and six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh.

These six Gulf Countries are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The MoU was signed during US President Donald Trump’s historic visit to Saudi Arabia.

Under the MoU, all seven countries together aim to establish Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC).

The Terrorist Financing Targeting Centre will enhance existing tools and cooperation with partners in the Gulf to forcefully address evolving threats.

This collaboration will also address a host of other transnational threats originating throughout the Middle East, including from Iran, the Assad regime and the situation in Yemen.

These seven countries intend to identify, track and share information regarding terrorist financial networks and related activity of mutual concern.

The MoU is seen as a vital step against terrorist activities as it is believed that Gulf countries are a major source of funding major terrorist organisations across the globe including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is responsible for major terror attacks in India.


Middle East Demographics: Know More

• The Middle East is a transcontinental region centred on Western Asia and Egypt.
  The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner.
• The term has come into wider usage as a replacement of the term Near East (as opposed to the Far East) beginning in the early 20th century.
• Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azeris (excluding Republic of Azerbaijan) constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population.
• Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians and other Arameans, Baloch, Berbers, Copts, Druze, Lurs, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, and Zazas. In the Middle East, there is also a Romani community.
• European ethnic groups that form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines, and Italo-Levantines.

ANSWER: Both of the above

Explanation:
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on 22 May 2017 signed two Unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (APA) with Indian taxpayers.

Among these two agreements, one also has a Rollback Provision.

The two APAs signed pertain to chip design and development of embedded software and Information technology sectors of the economy.

With the signing of these two APAs, the number of APAs signed in Financial Year 2017-18 is now four.

The progress of the APA Scheme is directly proportional to the Union Government’s commitment to foster a non-adversarial tax regime.

The APA Scheme was introduced in the Income-tax Act, 1961 in 2012 and the Rollback Provisions were introduced in 2014.

The scheme aims to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and setting the prices of international transactions in advance for the maximum of five future years.

Further, the taxpayer has the option to roll-back the APA for four preceding years, as a result of which, total nine years of tax certainty is provided.

Since its inception, the APA scheme has showcased a lot of interest from taxpayers that has resulted in filing of over 700 applications in about five years.