Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2017

Notes:
Anish Kapoor, the well-known Indian-origin British sculptor, has won the prestigious $1 million Genesis Prize 2017 by Israel for his commitment to Jewish values. Kapoor’s work include ‘Turning the World Upside Down’ at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, ‘Cloud Gate’ in Chicago’s Millennium Park and the ‘Orbit’ in London. The Genesis Prize is also regarded as Jewish Nobel Prize and is given annually to those who have attained excellence and international renown in their chosen professional fields, and who inspire others through their engagement and dedication to the Jewish community and/or the State of Israel.

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The ‘Parents’ Worship Day’ (or ‘Matru-Pitru Diwas’ ) is celebrated every year by the Chhattisgarh government on February 14 at all schools in the state to teach ‘Bharatiya sanskriti’ to students.

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The Gateway House and the Ministry of External Affairs has co-hosted the 2017’s edition of ‘The Gateway of India Geo-economic Dialogue’ in Mumbai, Maharashtra on February 13-14, 2017.This is India’s premier geo-economics conference on the theme ‘Where Geopolitics meets Business’ focused on building synergies between business and foreign policy. There were panel discussions that cover topics like Sovereign Funds, Global Taxation and Digital Economy.

Notes:
The book “Hema Malini: Beyond the Dream Girl” has been penned by author-columnist Ram Kamal Mukherjee. It’s about actress achievement as a politician apart from her sojourn as an actor, danseuse and filmmaker. It will offer a new perspective on Bollywood’s first female superstar.

Notes:
The National Biodiversity Congress (NBC) 2017 will be held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala from February 22. The event is hosted by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board from Feb 22nd to 26th and the focal theme is “Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Sustainable Development”. The present edition of the event comprises an array of programmes including conference, exhibition, capacity building workshops and Children’s Biodiversity Congress.

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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:
The Andhra Pradesh government has signed MoU with Visa to transform Vishakhapatnam into India’s first ‘less cash’ city. As per MoU, this initiative is designed to provide the foundation for the city to emerge as India’s ‘Fintech Valley’. For this, Visa will focus on driving payments digitisation, and work with the city to help build the talent pool required in city organisations and in academia on emerging technologies like blockchain. Visa will also provide support to FinTech start-ups by providing access to Visa’s APIs, providing subject matter expertise, and participating in boot camps and hackathons. The state government has also signed a MoU with Thomson Reuters for cooperation in Fintech initiatives in the state.

Notes:
The Haryana government has launched an online system “Sex Ratio Monitoring Dashboard” for Panipat to monitor the sex-ratio in the district as part of the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ programme. The dashboard had been developed in association with National Informatics Centre (NIC) as a pilot project. The online system will have the data of child sex-ratio collected from all villages by the Health and Women and Child Welfare Departments every month. It will also have the data on critical villages where more attention was required towards skewed child sex-ratio and steps needed to taken to set up the efforts accordingly.

Notes:
Nand Kumar Sai, the senior tribal BJP leader from Chhattisgarh and ex parliamentarian, has recently taken charge as new chairman of National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) in Delhi. NCST investigates and monitors all matters related to safeguards provided for Scheduled Tribes under the constitution or under law or under any order of the Government. It also evaluates the working of the safeguards and proper their implementation. The Commission is also authorized to inquire into specific complaints relating to rights and safeguards of STs and to participate and advise in the Planning Process relating to socio-economic development of STs and to evaluate the progress of their development under the Union and States.

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.