Current affairs notes on 18/08/2018-19/08/2018

1.Amnesty International India launched a new campaign named 'Our Safety, Our Rights', among children against sexual abuse. The campaign will culminate on October 11 - International Day of the Girl Child.

2.Indian Government released additional NPR 470 million for the Postal Highway being constructed in Southern Plains of Nepal.This amount has been released for the ongoing construction of 14 road packages under Postal Highway Project. 

3.The World Humanitarian Day (WHD) is held every year on August 19 to pay tribute to aid workers who risk their lives in humanitarian service, and to rally support for people affected by crises around the world. The campaign theme of 2018 WHD is #NotATarget. 

4.The deadly agricultural insect-pest “Fall Armyworm (FAW)” has been recently spotted at a few places in the districts of Karimnagar, Kamareddy, Sangareddy, Medak and Gadwal in Telangana. It is known to attack and destroy several varieties of crops, but it prefers maize and sorghum crops mainly.The worm was first found in Karnataka in the country and later spread to Tamil Nadu.

5.Kofi Annan (80), the former UN secretary-general and a Ghanaian diplomat, has passed away in Switzerland on August 18, 2018. He served two terms as UN chief from 1997 to 2006. Mr Annan was the first black African to become UN secretary-general. 

6.On August 19, Wrestler Bajrang Punia clinched India’s first gold medal in the 18th Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia.

7.The “Panini Language Laboratory” has been inaugurated by Sushma Swaraj, the Union Minister of External Affairs (MEA), during the 11th World Hindi Conference (WHC) 2018 at Port Louis in Mauritius on August 19. It has been gifted by Government of India (GoI) to Mauritius.

8.For the first time, the International team of scientists including 18 from India cracked the genetic code of wheat, the world’s most widely cultivated crop. The information generated will help to identify genes controlling complex agronomic traits such as yield, grain quality, resistance to diseases etc.

9.India won the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Under-15 Women's Championship in Thimpu, Bhutan defeating Bangladesh.

10.ISRO's Aditya-L1 mission, India's first mission to study the solar corona, is planned to be launched in 2019-2020, by Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL) from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.Solar corona is the outer layers of the Sun. 

11.To achieve greater heights in the field of mountaineering, Indian Army is planning to attempt fifth highest mountain peak in the world - Mt Makalu (8,485 metres) in 2019.Mount Kamet is the third highest peak of India after Kanchanjunga and Nandadevi and the only highest peak available to climb within the country.

12.RBI Governor Urjit Patel unveiled UPI version 2.0. The new version has been developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). It will allow the customers to use overdraft limit for making payments for merchants.

13.India successfully test-fired its indigenously developed HeliNa anti-tank missile at the Pokhran Range in Rajasthan. The HeliNa stands for Helicopter-launched Nag, and is a variant of the land-launched Nag anti-tank guided missile. 

14.Pitch Black - 18 (PB-18), biennia multinational air exercise hosted by Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) concluded recently Darwin, Australia. The participating nations include Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, and the US amongst others.

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