Daily Current Affairs, 22nd April 2019

1) Earth Day: April 22

•Earth Day is an annual event celebrated on April 22 Worldwide. It was first celebrated in 1970. The theme for Earth Day 2019 is to ‘Protect Our Species.’ This theme is created to focus on the destruction caused to plants and wildlife populations mainly due to human activity.

2) Volodymyr Zelenskiy Wins Landslide Victory In Ukrainian Presidential Election

•Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an actor and comedian has won a landslide victory in Ukraine’spresidential election. The incumbent, Petro Poroshenko conceded defeat. He is best known for his role in the long-running Ukrainian television series Servant of the People,where he played the role of president.

3) Asian Tea Alliance Launched In China

•To boost tea trade, cultural and technical exchanges as well as the global promotion of tea, the Asian Tea Alliance (ATA), a union of five tea-growing and consuming countries, was launched in Guizhou, China.

•The members of the alliance are the Indian Tea Association, China Tea Marketing Association, Indonesian Tea Marketing Association, Sri Lanka Tea Board and Japan Tea Association.

4) Sunil Kumar Gautam Bestowed With ‘Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Award’

•Sunil Kumar Gautam, Special Commissioner of Police (Operations) was honoured with ‘Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Award‘ for his book titled ‘Samvidhan Kavya‘.

•He was awarded by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) under the Ministry of Home Affairs.  The book presents the provisions of the Constitution in a simple and poetic form.

5) Navy Chief Launches New Guided Missile Destroyer ‘INS Imphal’

•Indigenously designed ‘INS Imphal’ a guided missile destroyer was launched by Navy Chief Sunil Lanba at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) in Mumbai. This ship is designed by the Indian Navy’s Directorate of Naval Designs, New Delhi.

•It is the third ship under Project 15B. The first ship of this project, a guided missile destroyer INS Visakhapatnam, was launched on in April 2015.

6) Twitter Appoints Manish Maheshwari As India MD

 

•Twitter has appointed Manish Maheshwari as the Managing Director of its India operations. In 2018, Taranjeet Singh had stepped down as the India Country Director and Balaji Krish was given charge of leading the country’s operations in the interim period.

•Maheshwari has previously served as the CEO of Network18 Digital. Maheshwari will report to Twitter Vice President and Managing Director of Asia Pacific Maya Hari and will be based in Delhi.

7) India Ranks 17th In Global Startup Ecosystem

•India was ranked 17th position among 100 countries in Startup Ecosystem Ranking for 2019 released by StartupBlink. It was ranked 37th spot last year. The report ranks countries based on the strength of its startup ecosystem.

•It takes into consideration startup ecosystems of 1,000 cities and 100 countries for the ranking. China was ranked 27th. Bangalore, New Delhi, and Mumbai were the top cities in the Indian startup ecosystem.