Abdelilah Bekirane, leader of Morocco's Islamic Justice and Development Party (PJD), was appointed as country's Prime Minister on 10 October 2016. 
●    This will be his second term as Prime Minister of Morocco.
●    Mohammed VI, the king of Morocco, made the announcement after Benkirane's PJD party emerged with the most number of seats in the 395-seat lower house of parliament.
●    In the election held on 7 October 2016, the PJD party, which has been running a coalition government since 2011, won 125 seats. 
●    The opposition Authenticity and Modernity Party came second with 102 seats. 
●    The country’s oldest party Istiqlal (Independence) Party stood third with 46 seats.
●    Benkirane has been serving as Prime Minister in a coalition government since November 2011.
●    Of the 395 members of the lower house, 305 are elected in multi-seat constituencies from electoral lists put together by the parties, while 60 seats of the remaining 90 are reserved for a national list of women and the rest 30 seats are set aside for candidates under the age of 35.

The Union Government in the first week of October 2016 appointed Indian Revenue Service officer Sushil Chandra as the Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
●    Chandra will take over from the current CBDT Chairperson Rani Singh Nair, who will retire on 31 October 2016.
●    Chandra is currently posted as Member, CBDT.
●    The Central Board of Direct Taxes provides essential inputs for policy and planning of direct taxes in India.
●    It is the policy-making body of the Income Tax Department under the Union Finance Ministry.
●    It is a statutory authority functioning under the Central Board of Revenue Act, 1963.
●    The Chairperson of the CBDT is the senior-most IRS civil servant in the Government of India.
●    The Chairperson of Central Board of Direct Taxes is the ex officio Special Secretary to the Government of India and also cadre controlling authority of the Indian Revenue Service.
●    The CBDT Chairperson is placed above the officers of the rank of Lieutenant-General, Vice-Admiral or Air Marshal, CBI Director and Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General in the Order of Precedence.

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres on 5 October 2016 was unanimously selected by the UN Security Council as the next UN Secretary-General.
●    Guterres will succeed Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2017.
●    The 15-nation Security Council's decision will be sent, following the formal approval, to the 193-member General Assembly for final formal approval.
●    Antonio Manuel de Oliveira Guterres is a Portuguese politician.
●    He served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002.
●    He also served for a time as President of the Socialist International.
●    He served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015.
●    The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the United Nations Secretariat.
●    The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations.
●    Their role is laid out by Chapter XV (Articles 97 to 101) of the United Nations Charter.
●    The Secretary-General was envisioned by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a world moderator.

MS Sahoo on 1 October 2016 assumed charge as Chairman of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI). 
●    The oath of the office was administered by Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley.
●    Sahoo was recently serving as a member of anti-trust regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) and was earlier a member at capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
●    IBBI is a four-member Board. The members of the IBBI are Ajay Tyagi, Amardeep Singh Bhatia, GS Yadav and Unnikrishnan.
●    The main activity of IBBI is to regulate the functioning of insolvency professionals, insolvency professional agencies and information utilities under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016.
●    The Board will be expanded to 10 Members (including the Chairman) in the future.
 

S. Sivakumar, professor at Indian Law Institute (ILI), in the last week of September 2016 was appointed as full-time member of the 21st Law Commission of India.
●    Earlier, Rajkot-based lawyer Abhay Bhardwaj, who had represented the accused in the 2002 Gulbarg Society Massacre case, had been selected as part-time member of the 21st Law Commission of India.
●    In March 2016, former Supreme Court judge Justice Balbir Singh Chauhan was appointed as the new Chairman of Law Commission of India.
●    Former Gujarat High Court judge Justice Ravi R Tripathi was also appointed as a member of the Commission.
●    In June 2016, Bimal Patel, Director, Gujarat National Law University was appointed as a part-time member of the 21st Law Commission of India.
●    The Law Commission of India is an executive body established by an order of the Government of India.
●    Its major function is to work for legal reform.

IT services provider Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp said it was conducting an internal investigation into possible violations of U.S. anti-corrupt practices laws related to payments in India, sending its shares tumbling on Friday. 
●    The company also said President Gordon Coburn had resigned and would be replaced by Rajeev Mehta, the head of IT services.
●    Cognizant, which gave no reason for Coburn’s departure, did not respond to a query on whether it was linked to the probe. 
●    The company’s shares closed down 13.4 percent at $47.63 on Friday, wiping out about $4.5 billion of market value.
●    They fell as much as 17.4 percent to $45.44, their lowest in more than two years. 
●    Cognizant is based in Teaneck, New Jersey but about three-quarters of its employees are in India. 

Executive Directors of the World Bank on 27 September 2016 agreed unanimously to reappoint Jim Yong Kim to a second five-year term as President of the World Bank Group, beginning 1 July 2017.
•    Jim Yong Kim is a South Korean-American physician and anthropologist.
•    He has been serving as the 12th President of the World Bank since 1 July 2012.
•    He was formerly the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
•    He also holds the honour to become the first Asian American president of an Ivy League institution.
•    He was named the world's 50th most powerful person by Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People in 2013.
 

Senior IAS officer Arun Goyal has been appointed Additional Secretary in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council. 
•    He will be the first Additional Secretary of GST Council Secretariat. The GST Council headed by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. 
•    It is mandated to decide on tax rate exempted goods and the threshold limit. Arun Goyal is IAS officer of 1985 batch of Union Territory cadre. 
•    Prior to this appointment he was working as Additional Secretary, Project Monitoring Group in Union Cabinet Secretariat. 
•    The GST Council was constituted as per the Article 279A of the Constitution after the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016 was notified. 
•    The Union Cabinet had recently approved appointment of the Secretary (Revenue) as the ex-officio Secretary to the GST council. 

Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar was sworn in as Chief Justice of Kerala High Court as per Article 219 of the Constitution. 
•    He was administered oath to office by the Governor Justice (Retd) P. Sathasivam at a function held at Raj Bhavan. 
•    He was born on 5 May 1958 in Chikkerur, Haveri District, Karnataka.
•    Initially, he had practiced at the Karnataka High Court as an advocate, later appointed as the Additional Judge in 2003. 
•    Justice G C Gupta has sworn-in as Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court. 
•    He was administered oath by West Bengal governor Kesari Nath Tripathi as per Article 219 of Constitution. 
•    Justice G C Gupta was born on December one, 1954. He was enrolled as an Advocate in September, 1982. 
•    He had practiced in the Calcutta High Court for 17 years in civil, constitutional, company, arbitration and commercial matters.

An Indian-origin South African Ravi Reddy was on 18 September 2016 appointed as the Head of International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT), headquartered in Amsterdam.
•    With this, Reddy became the first person from the African continent to head ISBT.
•    The ISBT, now with 100 member countries, was established in 1935 as a platform for exchanging knowledge and advancing the blood-transfusion practice.
•    He is currently serving as the Chief Operations Officer of the South African National Blood Service (SANBS).
•    He has served in various capacities for more than three decades after starting out as a volunteer at the age of 16 at SANBS.
•    He subsequently qualified as a medical technologist with an MBA from the University of Natal in South Africa.
•    He represented the African region on the board of the ISBT between 2006 and 2012, and is also a member of the Working Party on Transfusion and Transmissible Infections. 
•    He has presented and published a large number of scientific papers.