Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2017

Notes:
Asim Basu (81), the renowned theatre artiste and director, art director, painter and playwright, has recently passed away in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He was known for his set design work in Ollywood movies and designing Oriya book covers and movie posters. He directed around 200 plays and did stage designing for over 500 plays and was the art director for several Odia films. Some of his major works are Indradhanura Chhai, Dadagiri and apana Banika.

Notes:
Sir Peter Mansfield (83), MRI pioneer and Nobel laureate, has recently passed away in London, England. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2003, along with late US chemist Paul Lauterbur, for discovering Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MIR), a technique used by medical specialists to generate images of the human body’s anatomy. MRI uses magnetic fields, radio waves and field gradients to detect damage such as cancer, in various parts of the body.

Notes:
Ajay Tyagi, a 1984 batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, has been appointed the new chief of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Currently, Tyagi is an additional secretary at the finance ministry’s economic affairs department and will succeed U.K. Sinha, who retires from the post on March 1, 2017. The chairman of SEBI receives a consolidated pay package of Rs 4.5 lakh per month.

Notes:
Veteran journalist T V Parasuram (93), a former correspondent of the Press Trust of India (PTI), has recently passed away in United States. He began his stint in the US as the PTI correspondent at United Nations in the 50s. The veteran journalist, who won a Harvard Niemen Fellowship in journalism, served as the correspondent for The Indian Express for two decades till his retirement at age 58. Parasuram then became the PTI’s Washington correspondent till he quit journalism at age 82. He was a regular at the press conferences of US presidents during his over five-decade stay in America. He authored two books, ‘A Medal for Kashmir – a first hand account of the Indian Army’s operations in 1947-48 in Jammu and Kashmir – and ‘India’s Jewish Heritage’.

Notes:
The book “Jobless Clueless Reckless” has been authored by Revathi Suresh. It’s a novel about teenagers that gives an insight into what happens in the minds and lives of teenagers in an upper middle class, urban society.

Notes:
The ‘Mile Banche Madhya Pradesh (or Let us read together) programme has been held in all government schools of Madhya Pradesh. As part of the programme, over 1.26 lakh volunteers including MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan besides pensioners, mediapersons, homemakers and other professionals played the role of a ‘teacher’ for a day in government-run schools on February 18, 2017. They read out a portion of any Hindi book. Along with this, they motivate children to read out any portion of their interest from any other book.

Notes:
The Maharashtra government has approved Rs. 250-crore cloud seeding programme to produce adequate rain because of droughts over the Vidarbha region. The programme would be coordinated by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. It will be the first controlled experiment to quantify the extent to which clouds form water drops large enough to make rain. For their experiment, weather scientists will fly will fly two aircraft and spray dry ice and silver iodide on 100 clouds and compare them with 100 unseeded clouds. Ground radar will track the clouds and verify which ones contributed rain and by how much. The programme will account for the natural variability of the monsoon.

Notes:
The Ahmedabad-based Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) has won the prestigious International Mercury Awards for the year 2016-17 for the best overall presentation of its 2015-2016 annual report. The EDII is an autonomous and not-for-profit national resource institute for entrepreneurship education, research, training and institution-building. The Mercury Awards, founded in 1987, promote excellence, quality and performance in the various fields of public relations. The award entertains participation from agencies, associations, corporations, government agencies, nonprofit groups, and organizations from around 80 countries worldwide every year.

Notes:
Hassan Ali Khayre, a former aid worker and oil executive, has been appointed the new Prime Minister of Federal Republic of Somalia. He succeeded Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. Prior to this appointment, Khayre had never held public office, although over the course of his career he has worked with a range of high-level executives and government officials in various capacities.

Notes:
Sumit Mullick, the 1982 batch IAS officer, has been appointed as new Chief Secretary of Maharashtra. He succeeded Swadheen Kshatriya, who was due for retirement on 31st of January, but was given a month’s extension. Prior to this appointment, he was serving as the Chief Protocol Officer in the General Administration department. He had earlier served as the Divisional Commissioner of Amravati and worked as Secretary of School Education. He was also Secretary to the Governor.