30 March 2019 - Daily Current Affairs

1. Maruti Suzuki re-appoints Kenichi Ayukawa as MD & CEO

The country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) has re-appointed Kenichi Ayukawa as Managing Director (MD)and CEO for three years.
The company's board appointed Ayukawa on the existing terms and conditions including remuneration.
This would be Ayukawa's third three-year term (first time -March 2013) as MD and CEO of Maruti Suzuki India.

Note:

Maruti Suzuki India Limited is an automobile manufacturer in India.
Maruti Suzuki manufactures and sells popular cars such as the Ciaz, Ertiga, Wagon R, Alto K10, Swift, Celerio, Swift Dzire, Baleno and Baleno RS, Omni, Alto 800, Eeco, Ignis, S-Cross.
It is a 56.21% owned subsidiary of the Japanese car and motorcycle manufacturer Suzuki Motor Corporation.

2. Rima Das becomes Ambassador of Toronto International Film Festival

Rima Das joined Toronto International Film Festival's Share Her Journey as their official ambassador.
TIFF launched the 5-year campaign in 2017 with a view to increase participation, skills, and opportunities for women behind and in front of the camera.
The woman behind 'Village Rockstars', India's Official Entry to Oscars 2019 would like to see more and more women in the industry break the glass ceiling.

Honours & Awards

3. Amartya Sen Awarded Oxford University’s Bodley Medal

Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen (85-years) has been awarded the prestigious Bodley Medal, the highest honour bestowed by the University of Oxford's world-famous Bodleian Libraries.
The Medal is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the fields in which the Bodleian is active, including literature, culture, science and communication.
Mr. Amartya Sen is the Thomas W Lamont University Professor at Harvard University and a member of faculty at Harvard Law School, received the Medal from Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Bodley's Librarian Richard Ovenden.

Note:

Amartya Sen was born in a Hindu family in Bengal, British India, in the district of Manikganj (modern-day Bangladesh).
He is the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University and member of faculty at Harvard Law School.

4. Turing Award honours pioneers of AI

Three trailblazers in artificial intelligence have been honoured with the 2018 Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Yoshua Bengio (Element AI founder and University of Montreal professor), Geoffrey Hinton (University of Toronto faculty member and Google Brain researcher) and Yann LeCun (Facebook chief AI scientist and NYU professor) were named the recipients of the award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
The three developed conceptual and engineering foundations for AI by making deep neural networks a critical component of computing.
The recipients will be awarded a USD1 million prize, with financial support provided by Google.

Books & Authors

5. Rajan’s Book titled ‘The Third Pillar -How Markets and the State leave the Community Behind’ ‘‘launched’

Mr. Rajan was in conversation with N. Ram, Chairman, The Hindu Publishing Group, after the launch of his book The Third Pillar — How Markets and the State leave the Community Behind.
The Third Pillar is an important contribution to understanding why, a decade after the crisis, the world’s politics and economics remain so brittle.
Mr Rajan was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016.
Currently, Mr. Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in the U.S.

Obituaries

6. Pioneering Russian cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky passes away

Pioneering Soviet-era cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky (84-years) passed away.
Valery Bykovsky, who was the 11th person to venture into space and who held the unbroken record for the longest solo spaceflight.
Over his career, Bykovsky spent a total of nearly 21 days in space.
Bykovsky was one of 20 Soviet military pilots in the first group picked to prepare for space.
He first flew to space in June 1963 as a member of the Vostok-5 crew.
He left the cosmonaut corps in 1982 and later worked in several roles at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City near Moscow.

Note:

Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky was born on the 2 August 1934 in Pavlovsky Posad, near Moscow.

National Affairs

7. IIT-Delhi develops an AI-based system to detect malaria and other diseases

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi have developed an Artificial Intelligence-based electronic hardware system to detect malaria, tuberculosis, an intestinal parasite, and cervical cancer in milliseconds.
The IITD researchers have demonstrated a proof-of-concept (PoC) low-power rapid AI hardware implementation-based microscopy diagnostic support system for four different diseases: Malaria, Tuberculosis, Cervical Cancer and Intestinal Parasite Infection.
According to researchers, their system can be used for healthcare access in resource-constrained areas with limited access to human specialists.
The work was showcased at Rashtrapati Bhawan and received the prestigious Gandhian Young Technology Innovation Award (GYTI) in 2018.

Banking and Finance

8. ICICI Bank launches digital home loan products up to Rs 1 cr

ICICI Bank has launched two instant home loan products (up to Rs 1 crore).
The instantaneous home loan facility enables customers to get final sanction letter for new home loans as well as for a top-up the loan in a fully-digital way.
'Instant Home Loan' enables pre-approved salaried customers of the bank to avail loans up to Rs 1 crore for a tenure of up to 30 years using internet banking facility.
The facility helps the customers get the top up amount disbursed immediately in their account as compared to the industry practice of approving and disbursing a top-up a home loan in a few working days.

International Affairs

9. India & Bolivia sign 8 MoUs in various fields including culture, mining, space

India and Bolivia have signed eight MoUs in the fields of culture, Visa waiver arrangement for diplomats, the exchange between diplomatic academies, mining, space, traditional medicine, the establishment of Centre of Excellence in IT and Bi-Oceanic Railway project.
Mr Kovind was also conferred with the highest State honour of Bolivia, “Condor de Los Andes en el Grado de Gran Collar” during his visit to Bolivia.
President of Bolivia Evo Morales awarded him the Honour at a function held in Santa Cruz.
India offered 100 million US Dollar Line of Credit to Bolivia for financing development projects.
President is on a three-nation visit to Croatia, Bolivia and Chile from March 25th to April 4th.

10. India, Australia to hold a joint exercise on maritime security from 2nd April

India and Australia are set to further deepen defence and strategic relationship with the third edition of the biennial, bilateral exercise AUSINDEX 19 from April 2 to April 16 at Vishakhapatnam.
The upcoming exercise will focus on anti-submarine warfare and will see Australia's largest defence force deployment in India.
This exercise is part of the strong and growing Australia-India strategic partnership.
More than 1,000 Australian defence force personnel comprising Navy, Army and Air force assets will work together with their Indian counterparts in military training activities.

Sports

11. Asian Airgun C'ship: Manu Bhaker, Saurabh Chaudhary clinch gold

Young pistol shooters Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary has clinched a gold medal each, their second in the competition, as India continued their domination at the 12th Asian Airgun Championships in Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei.
Manu Bhaker has won the women's 10 metre Air Pistol at the 12th Asian Airgun Championships in Taoyuan, Chinese Taipei.
Saurabh Chaudhary has clinched a team gold medal in the men's event.
Abhishek Verma also won individual silver in the men's 10-metre Air Pistol.
The women's pistol team also won a bronze to further bolster India's tally to five gold, three silver and one bronze medals.