Current Affairs - March 24, 2019 Current Affairs

Former India hockey captain Sardar Singh along with 13 Indian Olympic Association (IOA) members, have been named in various Standing Committees of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) at its 38th General Assembly which held in Bangkok.Sardar Singh has been appointed in the athletes standing committee, Rajeev Mehta who is IOA's secretary general appointed in the culture standing committee, Hockey India secretary general Mohd Mustaque Ahmad is in the media standing committee, Athletics Federation of India (AFI) president Adille Sumariwala and Lalit Bhanot have been appointed in the sports for environment and sports standing committees respectively for four-year term (2019 to 202C).

World football governing body FIFA has imposed a lifetime ban on 72 years old, former Ecuadorian Football Federation (FEF) President, Luis Chiriboga. He has also fined with million swiss francs ($1.01 million). He had breached the article 27 (bribery) of the 2018 edition of the FIFA Code of Ethics by accepting bribes in exchange for awarding lucrative media and marketing rights for tournaments. He was also the former member of FIFA's standing committee and the South American Football Confederation's (CONMEBOL) executive committee.

The Indian English word 'chuddies' recognized as official English word by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The word is one of the new 650 entries announced by the OED. The contribution to the English vocabulary was made by a show which was aired on BBC in the mid-1990s named 'Goodness Gracious Me'. The show received the gold award for comedy in 1997. The word means short trousers or shorts. It qualifies as a regional vocabulary because it is a mixture of English and Hindi which is an example of Queen's Hinglish.

An Artificial Intelligence (AI) and block chain based software products firm Intain Fintech will launch eMulya by the end of 2019. eMulya is an intelligence blockchain which facilitates secure, efficient and trustworthy asset securitization transactions for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) in India. eMulya will utilize AI to onboard authenticated loans and asset data to the platform and allows investors originators issuers rating agencies and services to manage the securitization life cycle in complete trust and transparency.

A new application named 'Shiksha Vani' was launched by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to upload podcast on Class 10, 12 exam evaluation process in a timely manner.

Xiaomi launched Mi Pay, a UPI (Unified Payments Interface) Based mobile payment service in India to send money from one bank account to another or between UPI (Unified Payments Interface) accounts. The service provider of this application is ICICI Bank. It was certified by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). A customer can pay various types of bills, make DTH recharge with the help of this application.

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch was appointed as the brand ambassador of Morris Garages (MG Motors) for its India operation. MG Motor will launch its first car named 'Hector' which is a sports utility vehicle (SUV) in India by the end of 2019. The vehicle will be manufactured at the Halol Plant in Gujarat, which was previously owned by General Motors.

After the appointment of Goa's new CM Pramod Sawant, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP)'s Sudin Dhavalikar and Goa Forward Party (GFP)'s chief Vijay Sardesai appointed as Goa Deputy Chief Minister. Sudin Dhavalikar, Vijay Sardesai will succeeded Francis Dsouza.

Oman has signed an agreement with the United States of America that allow American ships and warplanes to take advantage of his ports and airports. The framework agreement is aimed at bolstering Omani-American military relations. The agreement will allow the US forces to take advantage of the facilities offered at some of the Sultanate's ports and airports during visits of the US military vessels and aircraft. The US-Omani deal was signed by the defence ministries of both countries.

Kiwi captain Kane Williamson got Sir Richard Hadlee Medal for Men's Player of the Year on 21 March 2019. Williamson also got the Test Player of the Year award and the Redpath Cup for First Class batting.

Mizoram assembly passed a bill to bring back total prohibition of liquor in the northeastern state after four years. The state government decided to prohibit the manufacture, import, sale, and consumption of liquor for the common people for their general health. Earlier total prohibition was in force in Mizoram from 1997 to 2015.

India's fastest growing payments platform PhonePe appointed Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan as its brand Ambassador. PhonePe is the official co-presenting sponsor for VIVO IPL 2019. It is planning to launch a series of new advertisements with a mass appeal by its ambassador on the benefits of digital payments. It will help PhonePe to create awareness about the benefits of digital payments across India. It will simplify digital payments for millions of Indians with innovation and trust in a very short span of time.

A Pune-based IT firm is developing software for the world's largest ground-based telescope, the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), which is likely to come up on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The telescope is being constructed jointly by India, US, China, Japan and Canada and is likely to become operational in the mid-2020s. India is building the telescope's complex optical structure, called the Segment Support Assembly (SSA), which will comprise 492 hexagonal mirror segments, collectively forming the primary mirror. An eight-member team at the IT firm, ThoughtWorks, is designing three different software - Common Software Services (CSS), Data Management Services(DMS) and Executive Software (ES) - to deal with the control systems to manoeuvre the telescope and manage the big data that will be generated once it becomes operational.

Japanese unmanned spacecraft, Hayabusa2 reached Asteriod Ryugu on June,2018. Since then, the spacecraft landed multiple robotic probes on its rocky terrain of the Asteroid Ryugu.The spacecraft had surveyed 69,000 locations covering almost 90 percent of Asteroid Ryugu by using a near-infrared spectrometer capable of detecting hydrated minerals.According to its study published in U.S. Journal Science,the spacecraft probed and found the small amounts of minerals containing water on the surface of the asteroid.A part of the water might be from asteroids and comets.

A wholly owned Subsidiary of National Stock Exchange of India NSEIT decided to acquire a global cyber security company Aujas Networks for an undisclosed sum. It will help Aujas to improve its services and capabilities with a strong focus on helping customers with security challenges. Aujas which is founded in 2008 is operational in the Middle East, North America and India. NSEIT is the IT focused Subsidiary of National Stock Exchange (NSE) which provides technology solutions across industries such as financial markets, capital markets, banking and insurance.