Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - May, 2017

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Mark Lowcock, the head of Britain’s international development department, will be the new Under-secretary General of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). He will succeed Stephen O’Brien, who held the post for two years. He will be tasked with leading the UN’s struggling relief efforts in Syria along with major aid operations in South Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, the Central African Republic and the Lake Chad region.

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Dr. Hubert Minnis has been elected as the new Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, after delivering a crushing defeat to Perry Christie’s Progressive Liberal Party in a 34-5 parliamentary split.

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The Indian Army has decided to re-introduce Cordon and Search Operations (CASO) as a “permanent feature” of its campaign against militants after a gap of 15 years. The CASO will be carried out in a major way in militancy-hit areas of Kulgam, Pulwama, Tral, Budgam and Shopian in south Kashmir. The Army had discontinued CASO following stiff opposition from the local population and after 2001 launched CASO only on specific intelligence-based inputs. The security establishment felt that CASO had alienated the local population from the armed forces due to difficulties people faced during such operations. The decision to re-introduce CASO as a major feature of the counter-terror operations comes against the backdrop of anger over the recent killing of young and unarmed Kashmiri Army officer Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz in Shopian by militants.

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The 14th edition of United Nations International Day of Vesak has started at Colombo in Sri Lanka from May 12-14, 2017 under the theme “Buddhist Teachings for Social Justice and Sustainable World Peace”. The events include an International Buddhist Symposium the participation of over 400 delegates from 100 countries. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is the chief guest for UN Vesak Day. The significance of Vesak lies with the Buddha’s teaching of cessation of suffering and universal peace to all humankind. It is a message to urge followers to do that which is good and to turn away from evil. It is a message of peace and perfect harmony between human beings and nature.

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Chanda Kochhar, the chairman of ICICI Bank, has become the first Indian woman to be conferred with the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Award for Global Corporate Citizenship from the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC on May 10, 2017. With this, she has joined the league of former Indian recipients– former President and space scientist APJ Abdul Kalam and IT honcho Narayana Murthy. The annual award was instituted in 1998 by the prestigious Wilson Center to felicitate individuals whose actions and accomplishments, either in their careers or through service.

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Indian scientist Shrinivas Kulkarni has won the prestigious 2017 Dan David prize in the “Future” category for his contribution in the field of astronomy. The “Future” category for 2017 is being shared by Kulkarni with two other recipients — Andrej Udalski of the University of Warsaw and Neil Gehrels of NASA — for their discoveries on time-domain astrophysics at festive awards ceremony in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 21, 2017. Kulkarni is a professor of astrophysics and planetary science at California Institute of Technology in Pasadenan, United States. The three Dan David prizes of $1 million each are given every year in the categories of “Past”, “Present” and “Future” to people around the world who have made outstanding contributions to humanity in the sciences, humanities, or through their work in civil society.

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The 24th edition of bilateral maritime exercise “SIMBEX-17” has started between Navies of the Republic of Singapore and India in the South China Sea from May 18 and will continue to May 21, 2017. The purpose of the exercise is to increase interoperability between the two navies as well as to develop common understanding and procedures for maritime security operations. SIMBEX is an acronym for “Singapore-India Maritime Bilateral Exercises”.

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India’s first Aquatic Rainbow Technology Park (ARTP) will be set up in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The park will have an ultra-modern exclusive facility for ornamental fish equipped with multi-species hatchery and live feed culture units. The facility is being developed by Fisheries College and Research Institute (FCRI), Ponneri in Tamil Nadu. The ARTP will have an advanced infrastructure and technical expertise to boost production of high value ornamental fish species for both indigenous and exotic. It will also develop breeding technologies for high value indigenous ornamental fish species and ensure quality fish seeds in bulk quantities.

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Indian teenager Prashant Ranganathan from Jamshedpurhas won the 2017 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) award worth $5,000 in the environmental engineering category for his innovation for fighting against pesticide and getting rid of its side effects through biodegradable use at the Los Angeles in California. Beside this, the topmost Gordon E Moore Award of $75,000 went to Ivo Zell of Germany for designing and constructing a remote-control prototype of a new flying wing.

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Sweden has won the 2017 Ice Hockey World Championship by defeating Canada 2-1 after a penaly shoot-out. With this win, Sweden has won its 10th ice hockey world title. The 2017 tournament was hosted by Paris, France, and Germany from May 5 to 21, 2017. The official tournament mascots were Asterix and Obelix, the main characters from the popular French comic book series “The Adventures of Asterix”.