Current Affairs - September 4, 2019 Current Affairs

The Bangladesh government has signed an agreement with Reliance Power of India. As per the agreement, they will set up a 750 MW gas-based power plant in Meghnahat near Dhaka. The construction of the plant will be completed by 2022.

Two Indian Navy Warships- INS Sahyadri and Kiltan visited Laem Chabang, Bangkok,Thailand for a port call which is scheduled till September 3, 2019, as a part of the Navy's Overseas Deployment to South East Asia and Western Pacific. Both ships represent the 'coming of age' of India's warship building capabilities.

The 4th South-Asian Speaker's Summit was recently held in Male, Maldives. The summit was meant to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) but Pakistan tried to raise the issue of abrogation of Article 370 provisions on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) despite not being part of the agenda. The Indian delegation in the summit was represented by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Harivansh Narayan Singh. Though, India maintained that J&K is an internal matter. The summit adopted the Male Declaration & ignored Pakistan's concern on Kashmir.

The original type of sushi was first developed in Southeast Asia and spread to south China before being introduced to Japan sometime around the 8th century. Fish was salted and wrapped in fermented rice, a traditional lacto-fermented rice dish.

A police academy of international standards will be set up very soon in Lucknow for training cops which will be the first of its kind of institute in the state. State Police Headquarter's 'Signature' building in Lucknow was inaugurated on 2 September 2019. It was running from a camp office established as make-shift arrangement in 1937.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River.

The Joint Naval Annual Quality Conclave (JNAQC) will be hosted by the Naval Quality Assurance Establishments under the aegis of Director General Quality Assurance (DGQA), Ministry of Defence in Visakhapatnam on September 5, 2019. Its theme would be 'Transformation of QA Paradigm: Opportunities and Challenges'. Vice Admiral Atul Kumar Jain will be the Chief Guest for the annual event.

Shri SanjivRanjan, who is the present Indian Ambassador to the Republic of Colombia, has been concurrently accredited as the next Ambassador of India to the Republic of Ecuador, with residence in Bogota(high altitude capital of Columbia). Sanjiv who is a 1993 batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer, previously served as Deputy high commissioner of India to Mauritius from 2006 till 2009.

ICRA Limited (ICRA) is an Indian independent and professional investment information and credit rating agency headquartered in Gurugram.

Lt General Anil Chauhan took over as Eastern Army commander replacing ManojMukundNaravane who took over as vice chief of the army staff(VCOAS). Anil Chauhan was given a traditional Guard of Honour at Fort William, Kolkata and he took charge with a wreath laying ceremony at Eastern Command War memorial at Kolkata's fort William paying tribute to the fallen soldiers.

Former India women's cricket team captain Mithali Raj has announced her retirement from T20(twenty-twenty) International inorder to focus on the upcoming 2021, 50 over World Cup hosted by New Zealand. She represented India in 89 matches in the shortest format, scoring 2,364 runs which is the highest by any Indian Women to date. Leading India into 32 matches and three World Cups, Rajasthan born Mithali made her debut in T20 international, in Derby in 2006, and has last played T20 international in March against England in Guwahati, Assam. Mithali has also played in 203 ODIs and 10 Tests scoring 6720 runs with 7 centuries and 663 runs with one century respectively.

Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) Regime between Switzerland and India kicked off from September 1, 2019. Under this mechanism, India will start receiving information on all financial accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland, for the year 2018.

The Punjab Employment Generation Department (PEGD) has decided to play the role of a recruitment agency for the youth wanting to go abroad for studies and work. It will also set up a special cell to send the youth for studies abroad. The move came after regular complaints of fraud by travel agents. The special cell will have a tie-up with foreign public universities which offer education at reasonable rates. This will not only save students from frauds but also help them financially as the commission which foreign institutes pay to the agents would be returned to them. This facility is already available in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Telangana.

The Vice President of India, Shri Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the longest electrified railway tunnel (6.7km) between Cherlopalli and Rapuru costing Rs 437 crores, and the electrified railway line (112km) between Venkatachalam (Krishnapatnam) and Obulavaripalli costing Rs 1,993 crores in Andhra Pradesh.

IIT Kharagpur has collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP) to promote learning and development in the artificial intelligence (AI). The aim of the portal is to make the search for AI learning resources simpler and more accessible to learners, practitioners and researchers in India. The initiative has got funding from the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MoHRD), as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) project which is being spearheaded by the premier institute. NAIRP will index a wide variety of AI-specific learning materials and allow interested candidates access to different resources for converting concepts into working modules.

On August 27, 2019, cultural event 'Namaste Pacific' was organised in Delhi jointly by the high commissions of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji to showcase pacific region cultures in India.

Megasthenes was a Greek citizen, who visited India during the reign of the emperor Chandragupta Maurya, in the 4th century B.C.

Varun Dhawan's upcoming movie 'Coolie No. 1' has become the first Bollywood film to go plastic-free. The environmental friendly initiative was taken by director of movie David Dhawan and its producers Vashu Bhagnani, Jackky Bhagnani and Deepshikha Deshmukh. The movie is all set to release on May 1, 2020. Their decision comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, urged people to shun single-use plastic and encouraged usage of jute and cloth bags to protect the environment.

Indian Army successfully summited Mount Leo Pargyil (6773M). This summit took place on 20th August 2019 in harsh weather hoisting the National Flag atop Mt Leo Pargyil. The expedition flagged in by Lieutenant General PM Bali, AVSM, VSM, COS, Western Command on 31 Aug 2019 at Jhakri near Rampur Bushar. Leo Pargyil Mount Leo Pargyil is the third highest peak in Himachal Pradesh.

Shweta Ratanpura became the first Indian woman to get a medal a the World Skills event. The event was held in Russia and was attended by 63 countries. India ended on number 13 with 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals. Apart from Shweta's bronze in graphic designing, Indian won silver in web technologies, another bronze in jewellery and gold in water technology.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Google have signed a statement of intent to roll-out 'Build for Digital India' programme. The programme will give engineering students a platform to develop market-ready, technology-based solutions that address key social problems.

Bandaru Dattatreya: He is appointed as the governor of Himachal Pradesh replacing Kalraj Mishra. He previously served as the national vice-president of the BJP, labour&employment minister, and also as a Member of Parliament.

Ukrainian parliament of the 9th convocation appointed Oleksiy Honcharuk, a 35-year-old practicing lawyer, of the political party Servant of the People, as the 17th Prime Minister of Ukraine. His nomination was presented to the Ukrainian Parliament by its President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Mr Honcharuk, Ukraine's youngest ever head of government, succeeded Volodymyr Borysovych Groysman.

The World Bank(WB) announced its partnership to fund the Uttar Pradesh(UP) government's 'pro-poor tourism' (PPT) development projects with funding worth more than $57 million. PPT project is a poverty alleviation concept by the UP government in tourism hubs with 70% funding from the WB and the remaining by the UP government. In the project signed by the WB and union Finance Ministry(FM), top tourist spots of the Agra and Braj-Mathura regions will be aimed. UP ranked second after tamilnadu in attracting high no. of tourists in the country as of 2017 and also ranked third after maharashtra and TamilNadu in terms of attracting high no. of foreign tourists in the country as of 2017.

Iranian Army has unveiled a high-precision jet-propelled drone called "Kian", which has the capacity of carrying long-time surveillance missions and attack the targets far from the country's borders. The unmanned military drone has been developed in two models & was fully developed by Iranian technicians of the Army within about a year. The new drone comes at a time increasing tensions between Iran the United States(US) since US President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal -2015 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. Earlier in August 2019, It has unveiled its new home-grown air defense system called "Bavar-373".

Chandrayaan 2's rover is a 6-wheeled robotic vehicle named Pragyan, which translates to 'wisdom' in Sanskrit. It can travel up to 500 m and leverages solar energy for its functioning. It can only communicate with the Lander.

Mumbai has been ranked as the 45th safest city on the Safe Cities Index (SCI) 2019, Tokyo taking the top spot, While Singapore and Osaka came 2nd and 3rd in the list.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be honoured with an award by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for his work in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. PM Modi will be receiving the award in the United States.

India announced a contribution of 22 million US Dollars to the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFTAM) for the 6th replenishment cycle.

The Nankana Sahib railway station in Pakistan's Punjab province will be named after Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism. It will be one of the best stations in Pakistan and will play a vital role in promoting religious tourism in the country. A new train, namely Baba Guru Nanak train, would also be started from Lahore to Nankana soon.

Ranthambore National Park is a vast wildlife reserve near the town of Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan, northern India. It is spread over an area of 392 sq km. along with its nearby sanctuaries like - the Mansingh Sanctuary and the Kaila Devi Sanctuary. The park is majorly famous for its tigers and is one of the best locations in India to see the majestic predators in its natural habitat.

Chief Minister of Meghalaya launched the 'Walk to Work' campaign in the state. The campaign is a part of Fit India Movement which has been launched in the country by the Prime Minister. The campaign comes with the multiple benefits like cost cutting of fuel including reduction of CO2 emission, reduction in congestion in the city and the most important "health and fitness" for the citizens.

Rishabh Pant has broken MS Dhoni's wicket-keeping record for India by becoming the fastest Indian wicket-keeper to claim 50 dismissals in Test cricket. Rishabh Pant claimed his 50th test dismissal in his 11th test during India vs West Indies on September 1, 2019.