Daily Current Affairs Quiz: August 11, 2023

World Lion Day is celebrated on August 10 every year. It is a day dedicated to the majestic king of the jungle and aims to raise awareness of the beautiful and big cat species.
The day is observed on a global scale to raise awareness about their declining population.
The history of World Lion Day started in 2013 when two filmmakers, Dereck and Beverly Joubert, founded the Big Cat Initiative, a global campaign to shine a light on the critical issues facing the planet’s lion populations.
Recognising that lions were facing a potential crisis, they sought to alert the world to the plight of these big cats.

Status in India: India is home to the majestic Asiatic Lion, which inhabits the protected territory of Sasan-Gir National Park (Gujarat).
According to the data from 2020, there are 674 lions in India, which was 523 in 2015.
The Lion census is conducted once every five years.

Ace director Siddique Ismail passed away on Tuesday in Kochi. He was admitted to Amrita Hospital in Kochi last month following a liver ailment.
Siddique experienced a heart attack and was subsequently placed on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) support.

He was known for making movies like Friends (2001), Engal Anna (2004), Sadhu Miranda (2008), Kaalavan (2011), and Bhaskar Oru Rascal (2018).

Nation-wide “Meri Mati Mera Desh” Campaign has been launched on 9 August by Narendra Modi to pay tribute to the ‘Veers’ who sacrificed their lives for the country.

From 9 to 30 August this year, the ‘Meri Maati Mera Desh’ campaign will include programs at the village, and block levels, by local urban bodies, as well as state and national levels.

India on Sunday committed USD 700,000 in funding support from its UN Development Partnership (UNDP) funds for clean water initiatives and community development in schools of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.

In the only public school in Tuvalu, the proposed concrete water cistern, with a capacity of 760 m3, will store and provide clean water to students, teachers, and school staff, promoting hygiene and reducing water-borne diseases.
Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, is an independent island nation within the British Commonwealth.
Its 9 islands comprise small, thinly populated atolls and reef islands with palm-fringed beaches and WWII sites. Off Funafuti, the capital, the Funafuti Conservation Area offers calm waters for diving.

The third and final meeting of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG) under India’s Presidency will be held from 9 to 11 August 2023 in Kolkata.
Over 154 delegates from G20 Members, 10 invitee countries, and various international organizations will be attending the meeting.
It will be followed by the G20 Anti-Corruption Ministerial Meeting on 12th August 2023, which will be chaired by Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Science and Technology, Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Space of Government of India.
This will be the second ever Ministerial meeting of the G20 ACWG and the first in-person ACWG Ministerial meeting.

India won 26 medals – 11 gold, five silver and 10 bronze – at the FISU World University Games 2023 in Chengdu (China) to finish seventh in the World University Games 2023 medals table. China topped the table with 178 medals, including 103 gold.

This was India’s best-ever performance at the Universiade, eclipsing the five medals – one gold, one silver and three bronze – Indian athletes won at Gwangju 2015.

Amlan Borgohain, Priyanka Goswami, Tejaswin Shankar, and Srihari Nataraj were among the other high-profile names representing India at the multi-sport meet. Badminton player Tanisha Singh, 18, is the youngest member of the contingent.

Russia is set to launch Luna-25, its first lunar landing mission in 47 years, and it might land on the Moon’s lunar south pole ahead of Chandrayaan-3, which launched nearly a month earlier.

Luna-25 will launch from the Vosthochny cosmodrome in the Russian Far East less than a month after Chandrayaan-3 launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, reports Reuters.
The Russian mission will try to land on the lunar south pole just like the Indian mission, aiming for a prized destination that may hold significant quantities of ice that could be used to extract oxygen and fuel in the future.
Russia Capital: Moscow
Russia President: Vladimir Putin
Russia Currency: Ruble

Iraq’s official media regulator on Tuesday ordered all media and social media companies operating in the Arab state not to use the term “homosexuality” and instead to say “sexual deviance,” a government spokesperson said and a document from the regulator shows.

The Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC) document said that the use of the term “gender” was also banned. It prohibited all phone and internet companies licensed by it from using the terms in any of their mobile applications.

Iraq Capital: Baghdad
Iraq Currency: Iraqi Dinar
Iraq President: Abdul Latif Rashid

Cyrus Poonawalla Group has announced the appointment of Keki Mistry, former CEO & Vice Chairman of HDFC Ltd., as the Strategic Adviser to all the financial services ventures of the group. Adar Poonawalla, Chairman, of Poonawalla Fincorp and CEO, of Serum Institute of India said, “Keki’s unparalleled operating and boardroom experience in the Indian financial services sector will act as the perfect sounding board for all financial services business management teams to scale their profitability through prudent risk management while managing business volatility.”

The Padma Bhushan awardee and IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre, 1960 batch, N Vittal passed away in Chennai. With the passing of N Vittal, 85, former Telecom Secretary and Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) on Thursday, the country has lost the person who had sown the seeds for the growth of the information technology sector four decades ago.

His experience of more than 40 years covered a wide spectrum with a focus on industrial administration, science and technology and security.
As Secretary of the Department of Electronics (1990-1996), he initiated policies for boosting software.

The CBI, which is a nodal body for all matters related to Interpol, conducts several international training programmes through its academy based in Ghaziabad, neighbouring Delhi.
Several programmes have been conducted in collaboration with foreign agencies like US Homeland, French Embassy, FBI, NCCU UK, NCA UK, and RCMP Canada along with four Interpol Global Programmes.

India achieved an overall score of 43 percent on the Internet Resilience Index (IRI), ranking sixth in the South Asian region.

According to the global non-profit organization Internet Society, India’s security is ranked above average, attributed to having the highest IPv6 (the newest Internet Protocol to accommodate growing networks) adoption globally.
Counties like Bhutan (58 percent), Bangladesh (51 percent), Maldives (50 percent), Sri Lanka (47 percent), and Nepal (43 percent) are ahead of India in the IRI ranking.
In terms of market readiness — the ability of India’s Internet market to self-regulate and provide affordability is ranked comparatively poorly.

In the June 2023 quarter i.e., Q1FY24, SBI has reported profits more than Reliance Industries.
For the quarter, Q1FY24, Reliance had reported net profits of ₹16,011 crores while SBI had reported net profits of ₹ 18,537 crores, a full 15.8% higher than the profits reported by Reliance Industries.
It is not just the latest quarter. Even if you look at the four rolling quarters from September 2022 to June 2023, then Reliance Industries has reported net profits of ₹64,758 crore while the 4 quarter rolling net profits of SBI is 3.25% higher at ₹66,860 crore.

SBI HQ: Mumbai,1955
SBI MD: Dinesh Kumar Khara

World Biofuel Day is observed every year on 10th August to create awareness about the importance of non-fossil fuels as an alternative to conventional fossil fuels and to highlight the various efforts.
This day also honors the research experiments by Sir Rudolf Diesel who ran an engine with peanut oil in the year 1893.
World Biofuel Day is being observed by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas since 2015.
Biofuels have the benefits of reducing import dependency on crude oil, a cleaner environment, additional income to farmers and employment generation in rural areas.

An Ecuadorian presidential candidate known for speaking up against corruption was shot and killed at a political rally in the capital amid a wave of startling violence in the South American country
President Guillermo Lasso confirmed the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio and suggested organized crime was behind his slaying. Villavicencio was one of eight candidates in the Aug. 20 presidential vote, though not the frontrunner. The politician, 59, was the candidate for the Build Ecuador Movement.

Ecuador is a country straddling the equator on South America’s west coast. Its diverse landscape encompasses the Amazon jungle, Andean highlands, and the wildlife-rich Galápagos Islands. In the Andean foothills at an elevation of 2,850m, Quito, the capital, is known for its largely intact Spanish colonial center.