Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2017

Notes:
India’s first-ever floating elementary school “Loktak Elementary Floating School” has started at Langolsabi Leikai of Champu Khangpok floating village on Loktak Lake in Manipur. The school has been opened under the initiative undertaken by All Loktak Lake Fisherman’s Union with the support of an NGO – People Resources Development Association (PRDA). The school will not only cater to the need of the children but for the illiterate adults as well. The Loktak Lake is referred as the “lifeline of Manipur” as it is highly productive and many lives depend on the lake for endurance. The lake is also an Important Bird Area as it’s a potential breeding site for waterfowl and is a staging site for migratory birds.

Notes:
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 International Monetary Fund (IMF) has opened South Asia Training and Technical Assistance Center (SARTTAC) in New Delhi for economic capacity building in South Asia. The center is a collaborative venture between the IMF, the member countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and development partners. It was officially inaugurated by Shaktikanta Das, Secretary of Department of Economic Affairs, on February 13, 2017. The SARTTAC is IMF’s first fully-integrated capacity development center, which has strategic goal to help its member countries strengthen their institutional and human capacity to design and implement macroeconomic and financial policies that promote growth and reduce poverty.

Notes:
The 3rd edition of the annual LIC Gateway LitFest will be held in Mumbai, Maharashtra on February 25 and 26, 2017. The 2017 theme is ‘the contemporary face of Indian literature’, which focuses on five languages – Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi and Tamil. There will be a discussion for writers from script-free languages such as Ahirani, Bhojpuri, Khasi, Konkani, Kosli and Santhali. In the Litfest, approx 50 writers from 15 languages, including National Award winner K R
Meera, script-writer Anjali Menon and ace filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan will participate. Apart from this, Kosli poet Haldhar Nag will be bestowed with the first Gateway LitFest Lifetime Achievement Award.

Notes:
The political satire Indian film “Newton” has won the International Federation of Art Cinemas (CICAE) award at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival-2017 in Berlin, Germany. The film was directed by Amit Masurkar, which received a standing ovation at the festival, with a long and engaging Q and A post the screening. The film deals with the various issues of democracy and the fight for it during the elections in India. Apart from this, Indian short film “Aaba” has also won the Special Prize in the Generation Kplus International Jury section at the fest. The movie produced by filmmaker Onir and directed by Amar Kaushik. The movie has been co-produced by director Raj Kumar Gupta.

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.

Notes:
Indian grandmaster Harika Dronavalli has won a bronze medal at the 2017 Women’s World Chess Championship in Tehran. This is Harika’s 3rd bronze medal at the World Championship level. The first two were in Khanty-Mansiysk in 2012 and Sochi in 2015. Harika has won the World Juniors in 2008, Commonwealth women’s title in 2010, Asian Championship in 2011 as well as World Online Blitz Championship in 2015. She received the Arjuna Award in 2008.

Notes:
The 10th edition of International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV) will be held in New Delhi from March 7th to 9th, 2017. The 3-day ICEGOV conference will be organized by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in collaboration with United Nations University and UNESCO. The key purpose of the conference is to explore how digital government can lead to digital empowerment by local knowledge. The conclave will focus on the use of technology to transform relationships between government and citizens, businesses, civil society. It will bring together academia, governments, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector to share the insights and experiences in theory and practice of digital Government. The programme also includes digital exhibition and special events highlighting the Indian experience and achievements in digital governance.

Notes:
India will attend the meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), which is scheduled to be held in Lahore, Pakistan on March 2017. The PIC is a bilateral commission of officials from India-Pakistan, created to implement and manage goals of Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Under the IWT treaty, it is required that India and Pakistan meet every financial year. As per the provisions in the treaty, India can use only 20% of the total water carried by the Indus River. The treaty which was signed in 1960 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan President Ayub Khan, gives India control over the three eastern rivers of the Indus basin, the Beas, the Ravi and the Sutlej, while Pakistan has the three western rivers, the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum.

Notes:
Dr. Thomas Earl Starzl (90), the renowned American surgeon and expert on organ transplants, has recently passed away Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He performed the world’s first human liver transplant and has often been referred to as “the father of modern transplantation”. Since then, thousands of lives have been saved by the procedure. Beside this, he was also the driving force behind the world’s first baboon-to-human liver transplants and research on anti-rejection drugs.