Current Affairs Today 12th April 2019 | Current Affairs News

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Daily Current Affairs PDF of 12th April 2019

CURRENT AFFAIRS: IMPORTANT DAYS

International Day of Human Space Flight

• The International Day of Human Space Flight was observed across the world on April 12, 2019.
• The day celebrates the anniversary of the first ever human space flight undertaken by Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet Union citizen then.
• The day was proclaimed at the 65th session of the United Nations General Assembly on April 7, 2011

CURRENT AFFAIRS: INTERNATIONAL

UK, European Union agree to extend Brexit until 31st October

• The UK and the European Union have agreed to extend Brexit until October 31.
• The decision was taken at an emergency meeting in Brussels where the EU leaders agreed to offer British Prime Minister Theresa May a six-month extension.
• In March, British Prime Minister Theresa May had requested the European Union to grant the United Kingdom a short term extension till June 30  to prevent the U.K. leaving the bloc without a deal, because the British Parliament has repeatedly failed to decide on the terms of the exit.
• If United Kingdom stays beyond May 22, it will have to take part in European Parliament elections in May 2019 or else leave the bloc on June 1 without deal.
• If the extension had not been agreed to, Britain would have left the bloc without a deal on April 12.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL

NGT monitoring committee to prepare plan for polluted rivers

• The Nation Green Tribunal (NGT) bench headed by Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, has formed a Central Monitoring Committee that will prepare and implement a national plan to make over 350 river stretches across the country pollution free.
• The committee would comprise a representative of NITI Aayog; Secretaries of Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Urban Development and Ministry of Environment; Director General of National Mission for Clean Ganga and Chairman of Central Pollution Control Board.
• The NGT has directed the Central Monitoring Committee to give its report by July 31, while the first meeting of the Committee may be held by June 30.

India becomes YouTube’s largest and fastest growing market

• India has become YouTube’s largest and fastest growing market with 265 million Indians watching the video-sharing website every month.
• In the last year, YouTube’s consumption on mobile has increased to 85%, with 60% of the watch time coming from outside the six largest metros in India.
• Today, YouTube creators have become effective storytellers, with more than 1,200 Indian creators crossing the million subscriber-milestones, compared to five years ago, when there were only two creators.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATION

Funtasy11 ropes in Murali Kartik as brand ambassador 

• Funtasy11, a fantasy sports platform, has roped in former Indian cricketer Murali Kartik as its brand ambassador.
• After partnering with the recently concluded Premier Badminton League (PBL) as the ‘Official Fan Engagement Partner’, the company believes bringing in Kartik will further strengthen its user base in the rapidly growing fantasy gaming space.
• A classical left-arm spinner, Kartik has represented India across formats between 2000 and 2007.

Shiv Das Meena appointed as NBCC Chairman and Managing Director

• Shiv Das Meena, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has been appointed as the Chairman cum Managing Director (CMD) of National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC).
• Earlier, Meena has served as Joint Secretary, MoHUA and Ministry of Urban Development,Principal Secretary Public & Rehabilitation Department, Tamil Nadu Government and Principal Secretary to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister among others.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: MOU

Google Pay users can now buy gold from app in partnership with MMTC-PAMP India

• Aiming to make Google Pay more useful for Indian users, Google announced its partnership with MMTC-PAMP India for buying and selling of gold through the application.
• MMTC-PAMP India Pvt. Ltd is an internationally recognised metal and mining service provider.
• Google Pay users can purchase gold for any value that will be stored in secure vaults on their behalf by MMTC-PAMP. The users can buy and sell the gold any time at the latest price, refreshed every few minutes, as displayed on the Google Pay app.

India, Sweden ink pact to collaborate on solutions for smart cities, clean tech

• India and Sweden launched a joint programme that will work towards addressing a range of challenges around smart cities and clean technologies among others.
• The programme was co-funded by Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Swedish agency Vinnova.
• Vinnova will provide funding to Swedish participants up to 2,500,000 Swedish Krona (around Rs 1.87 crore) as grant. On the Indian side, conditional grant of up to 50 per cent (with a limit of Rs 1.5 crore) per project will be provided to the Indian partners.

USEFUL INFO
Sweden Capital	Stockholm
Currency	Swedish Krona
President	Stefen Lofven

RBL Bank ties up with CreditVidya for improving customer experience

• RBL Bank has partnered with credit profiler CreditVidya to improve the lender’s customer experience.
• Through this partnership, the private sector lender will be able to gain significant insights into its customer base.
• This in turn will allow it to improve user experience and build customised offerings for over 15 lakh customers.
• The bank had first partnered with CreditVidya in 2018 for instant and automated verification of employment details of salaried card applicants.

USEFUL INFO
RBL Bank CEO	Vishwavir Ahuja
Headquarters	Mumbai

AITA signs MoU with Serbian Tennis Federation to train junior players

• The All India Tennis Association (AITA) has signed an MoU with Serbian Tennis Federation (STF) to train Indian junior players under world renowned Serbian coaches, at the RK Khanna Stadium.
• The two federations expressed their intention to cooperate within the scope of mandates and sphere of competence to work towards the development of junior tennis players in India.
• Both the federations have also agreed to work on the education of officials, coaches and physical trainers and their exchange for tournaments.

USEFUL INFO
Serbia Capital	Belgrade
Currency	Dinar
Prime Minister	Ana Brnabic

SBI and PAISALO Digital Limited enable MSME segment with income generation loans

• PAISALO Digital Limited signed the first co-origination loan agreement with State Bank of India, the first agreement of its kind in the country that State Bank of India has signed.
• Introducing a platform for the last mile customer, the loan ticket is designed at Rs 10,000 to 2 lakh. The company expects to disburse 200,000 loan applications in FY20.
• PAISALO Digital Limited is a leading systemically important non-deposit taking NBFC registered with the Reserve Bank of India, in operations since 1992. The agreement was signed with a vision of empowering the AGRI, MSME segment and small businesses.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: AWARDS AND HONOURS

Telugu poet K Siva Reddy selected for prestigious Saraswati Samman 2018

• Telugu poet K Siva Reddy has been selected for the prestigious Saraswati Samman, 2018 for his collection of poetry titled Pakkaki Ottigilite.
• The award carries a cash prize of  15 lakh rupees, a citation and a plaque.
• The award, instituted by the KK Birla Foundation in 1991, is given annually for an outstanding literary work written in any Indian language and published during the last 10 years.

 Paralympian Deepa Malik named for New Zealand Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship

• Rio Paralympics silver medallist Deepa Malik has been named as the recipient of the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship for 2019.
• The first Indian woman to earn a medal at the Paralympic Games, Deepa has won 58 national and 23 international medals. A recipient of the Padma Shri and Arjuna Award, she has entered the Limca Book of World Records four times.

Indonesian Nuraeni named best athletic coach in Asia 

• Indonesian Eni Nuraeni was named by Asian Athletic Association (AAA) as the best athletic coach in Asia for short-haul run category this year,
• It was announced by Indonesian athletic sports association (PB PASI)
• Eni coaches young sprinter Lalu Muhammad Zohri to win the 100m gold medal in 10.20 seconds in the 2019 Grand Prix Malaysia Open athletics championships.
• Earlier, Zohri won the 100m in 10.18 in the IAAF World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland in 2018, where he also won the gold medal in 10.27 in the Asian Junior Championships in Gifu, Japan.

Namami Gange gets global recognition at world summit

• National Mission for Clean Ganga or Namami Gange was felicitated with the coveted ‘Public Water Agency of the Year’ award at the Global Water Summit in London
• The coveted Global Water Awards are presented by the Global Water Intelligence at the Global Water Summit, the major business conference for the water industry worldwide.
• The Global Water Awards recognise excellence across the entire international water industry and reward those initiatives in the water, wastewater, and desalination sectors which bring remarkable improvements in the lives of people.
• The Namami Gange Mission aims at providing comprehensive and sustainable solutions for major pollution hot spots along the stretch of 97 towns and 4,465 villages on the Ganga stem.
• In Namami Gange programme, a total of 289 projects have so far been sanctioned at a cost of Rs 28,377 crore out of which 87 projects have been completed.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Google Unveils Hybrid Cloud Platform Anthos

• Google launched Anthos, a new open platform from Google Cloud, that lets users run applications from anywhere.
• Anthos allows users to run applications, unmodified, on existing on-premise hardware or on the public cloud, and is based on the Cloud Services Platform that Google announced last year.

First-ever real image of a black hole released

• Scientists have captured the first direct image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87 (Messier 87), 55 million light-years from the Earth.
• The image which has been captured by a network of eight telescopes across the world
• The image shows the event horizon, a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around the black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: OBITUARY

India’s ace Motorsport Photographer George Francis passed away

• Veteran Indian motorsport photographer George Francis has passed away
• He was attended first race in 1984 at Sholavaram while his last major assignment was the MRF Challenge in February 2019 at the MMRT, Chennai.

‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’ actor Navtej Hundal passed away 

• Actor Navtej Hundal, who most recently appeared in Aditya Dhar’s ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’, is dead. He is 86. Navtej had acted in Bollywood films like Khalnayak (1993), Tere Mere Sapne (1996) and The Whispers (2009) and did TV show Bharat Ek Khoj.