Lakshadweep became first Union Territory (UT) to sign 24×7 Power for All document. Representative of Government of India and the Administration of Lakshadweep signed the document in presence of P.K. Pujari, Secretary, Ministry of Power.
•    The document chalks out a plan to increase solar capacity of the region from 2.15 MW to 8.45 MW. 
•    At present, 10 inhabited islands of Lakshadweep are being fed by diesel mostly. 
•    The plan also envisions reduction of AT & C losses from current level of 21% to 6.7% till 2019 by increasing the collection efficiency up to 99 %.
•    As a part of energy efficiency measures, 1 lakh LED bulbs will be distributed by UT administration through Energy Efficiency Services (EESL) and Incandescent lamps/CFL bulbs will be replaced with LED bulbs under UJALA programme. Additionally, replacement of 3000 conventional street lights with LED street lights is also being taken up.
•    The ‘Power for All’ programme is a major step in this direction. 
•    Government of India have taken a joint initiative with respective State Governments for preparation of State specific documents for providing 24×7 power supply to all households /homes, industrial & commercial consumers and adequate supply of power to Agricultural consumers as per state policy.

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries leads the pack of 56 Indian firms in Forbes's annual list of the world's 2,000 largest and most powerful public companies,
•    US is leading the list with 586 companies.
•    The 2016 Forbes 'Global 2000', a snapshot of the world's largest companies, shows the dominance of US and China in the current global business landscape.
•    Reliance improved its ranking this year to 121 from 142 last year, with a market value of USD 50.6 billion and assets worth USD 91.5 billion.

•    Reliance is followed by State Bank of India which is ranked 149 and has a 23.3 billion dollar market value.
•    The other Indian companies on the list are Oil and Natural Gas ranked (220), 
•    ICICI Bank (266), 
•    HDFC Bank (275), 
•    Indian Oil (371), 
•    Tata Consultancy Services (385), 
•    NTPC (400), 
•    Bharti Airtel (453), 
•    Axis Bank (484), 
•    Infosys (590), 
•    Bharat Petroleum (650), 
•    Wipro (755, 
•    Tata Steel (1178) 
•    Adani Enterprises (1993)
•    Coal India (465), 
•    Larsen and Toubro (505), 
•    ITC (781), 
•    Kotak Mahindra Bank (899),
•    Mahindra and Mahindra (901) and 
•    HCL Technologies (943).

India’s ace cueist Pankaj Advani on 22 May 2016 won the Asian 6-Red snooker title. 
•    To win this tile for the first time, he defeated Malaysian Keen Hoh Moh 7-5 in the finals held in Abu Dhabi.
•    To reach the finals, he defeated Aditya Mehta, an Indian player, 6-1 in a semi final match.
•    With this win, Advani became the first in the world to hold both world and continental titles in 6-Red snooker at the same time.
•    Earlier, in August 2015, he retained the World 6-Reds Snooker title in Karachi, Pakistan.
•    He has been winning titles like:
•    IBSF World Snooker Championship
•    IBSF World 6-Red Snooker Championship - Gold
•    IBSF World 6-Red Snooker Championship - Gold (a world record of winning world titles in both billiards and snooker in all formats)
•    World Team Billiards Championship - Gold (highest number of world titles by any Indian sportsperson)
•    World Billiards Championship (a record 8 world titles for a 27-year-old)
•    Asian Billiards Championship (a record 5 times)

The world's largest ship which is 330ft longer than the infamous Titanic today set sail from Southampton on its maiden voyage to Rotterdam. 
•    Harmony of the Seas, which cost almost £800million to build and weigh 227,000 tonnes. 
•    The huge ship, which it is claimed burns 1,147 gallons of fuel an hour - equivalent to 376 million cars - will return later this week before heading off to Cherbourg for a three-night cruise, then to Barcelona later this month.
•    The Royal Caribbean ship has capacity for 6,000 people and has facilities including its waterslides, an Ampitheatre, and high-street restaurants.  
•    Harmony of the Seas, which cost almost £800million to build and weigh 227,000 tonnes. sailed past the Isle of Wight last night on its way to the Netherlands on the four-night cruise
•    The ship was carried out of the port by several tugs which had to turn the huge vessel and guide it out to the open sea.
•    There's no passengers on board but the ship which is nearly 330 foot longer than Titanic, has around 500 crew as its continues its sea trial until Sunday

•    The rug was created as a symbol of local culture and tradition, as the Kayan people from Borneo are well known for being skilled rattan mat weavers.•    It was organised by a local women’s organisation called Peng Doh Belaga.
•    The entire rug was expertly hand-woven by women from all over Malaysia, before the individual pieces were gathered and joined together.
•    Guinness World Records adjudicator Rishi Nath confirmed that the enormous mat had broken the previous record - a 797.51 m long rug manufactured in Sweden in 2010.
•    The women began constructing the rug in January this year, and over the past five months they have been filmed for a documentary called ‘Mat Weaver's Tale’. 
•    The film follows their record-breaking journey and celebrates the region’s heritage of mat weaving.

A small city in northwest India scored 51 degrees Celsius on 19th may 2016 afternoon, and broke the country's record for all-time hottest temperature. 
•    The previous record, 50.6 degrees Celsius, was set in 1886.
•    The record was broken in Phalodi, which is just 125 miles away from the city that, up until this afternoon, claimed fame as the hottest location in India - Pachpadra.
•    April and May tend to be the hottest months in northwest India, and this year has been exceptionally so.
•    Christopher C. Burt, a weather historian at Weather Underground, posited that April's heat wave was the most intense ever observed in Southeast Asia.
•    In India it lasted for weeks - but the heat never truly dissipated, dragging on into May. Hundreds of people have died from heat-related illness. 
•    Northern India and Nepal have been battling their worst wildfires in years. Officials have on occasion banned daytime cooking in an attempt to prevent accidental fires that killed nearly 100 people in late April.
•    The India Meteorological Department issued a "severe heat wave warning" for a huge swath of the country on Thursday, which will continue through Saturday. 
•    The department expects temperatures will remain above average through at least May 27.
•    A similar period of extreme heat killed over 2,500 people in 2015.

The world's first artificial intelligence lawyer has been employed by a law firm in the U.S., which will use the robot to assist its various teams in legal research.
•    The robot called 'ROSS' is built upon Watson, IBM's cognitive computer. 
•    With the support of Watson's cognitive computing and natural language processing capabilities, lawyers can ask ROSS their research question and the robot reads through the law, gathers evidence, draws inferences and returns highly relevant, evidence-based answers. 
•    ROSS also monitors the law around the clock to notify users of new court decisions that can affect a case. 
•    ROSS Intelligence, the company that built ROSS, began out of research at the University of Toronto in 2014
•    Robot culture seems to be very vast and clear. This is this reason why team is looking forward to it

World’s largest Single Rooftop Solar Power Plant with capacity of11.5 MegaWatt (MW) was inaugurated at Dera Baba Jaimal Singhat Beas, in Amritsar, Punjab. 
•    It was inaugurated by Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal on 18 May 2016.
•    This is the largest Solar Power Plant spread over 82 acres of rooftop in single campus on multiple roofs with installed capacity of 19.5 MW.
•    The plant has been set up with the cost of 139 crore rupees.
•    The project will generate clean and green energy sufficient to power approximately 8000 homes.
•    This solar power project at Dera Beas will help in abating about 4lakh tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in next 25 years
•    This is equivalent to plant nearly 2 lakh trees.
•    Considering the fact that pollution level and global temperature has gone up like anything, any such initiative is quite commendable.

The Indian 4x100m women's relay team on 18 May 2016 broke the 18-year-old national record to finish in 4th position at the IAAF World Challenge held in Beijing, China.
•    The 4x100m women relay team, included Dutee Chand,     Srabani Nanda, HM Jyoti and Merlin Joseph, clocked 44.03 seconds to finish the race.
•    The clocked time broke the 18-year-old record of 44.43s created by the quartet of Saraswati Dey, Rachita Mistry, EB Shyla and PT Usha on 22 July 1998 in Fukuoka, Japan. 
•    The China A and the China B team grabbed the first and third position respectively while Japan finished second.
•    The China A team clocked 42.65s for the gold medal. 
•    Japan finished the race in 43.81s for the silver medal. 
•    The China B team finished third for the bronze medal by clocking 43.89s.

Surgeons in Boston have performed the first penile transplant in the United States, a procedure that soon could help severely wounded troops, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital .
•    Thomas Manning, 64, whose penis was removed in 2012 due to penile cancer, is recovering well and showing no signs of rejecting the transplant.
•    Manning, a bank courier in Halifax, Mass., underwent the operation on May 8 and 9. 
•    The surgeons who led the 15-hour procedure, Curtis Cetrulo and Dickens Ko, said they were "cautiously optimistic" Manning will regain full urinary and sexual function.
•    Manning has been cancer free for about four years, the physicians said.The surgeons stressed the psychological aspects of such transplants.
•    Team plans to further develop transplant protocols on civilians, noting that Defense officials are hesitant about supporting experimental surgeries for service members.
•    A team of South Africa surgeons performed the world's first successful penis transplant in a nine-hour operation in December 2014.