GK and Current Affairs Updates

While the Swachh Bharat target for the country is October 2019, the State of Chhattisgarh will become Open Defecation Free (ODF) by the end of 2018 itself. 
•    This was announced by the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Dr Raman Singh in Raipur. 
•    He was speaking at a 2-day Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) National Conclave organized by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Raipur for District Collectors and officers from the Phase 1 focus districts for SBM.
•    The Chief Minister went on to stress the importance of involving women and children as the ambassadors for SBM, adding that girls in Chhattisgarh have started keeping the presence of a toilet as a pre-condition for marriage into a family. 
•    On its part, the Government of Chhattisgarh has decided to give preference to its ODF blocks in schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) for distribution of LPG connections, he added, to incentivize more blocks and districts to achieve ODF status.
•    One of the highlighted activities undertaken during the workshop was a #MySBMidea contest. 
•    Districts shared best practices and innovative ideas deployed by them in sanitation, and the best idea was selected by means of a Twitter contest using the hashtag #MySBMidea. 
•    The workshop was a highly interactive exercise, with extensive sharing of ideas and best practices. 
•    In particular, several districts of Chhattisgarh made presentations to share their behavior change innovations in general and the community incentive approach adopted in the State in particular. 

The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated a smart model village pilot project today (July 2, 2016) at Rashtrapati Bhavan. 

•    Speaking on the occasion, the President said that in the last nearly four years of his Presidency this was the first time that he was having the privilege of interacting with Sarpanchs and village level functionaries in Rashtrapati Bhavan. 
•    Since assuming office, he had been emphasizing on the opening of the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the people. 
•    The President said that this is a landmark initiative for us as we seek to replicate the experience in transforming the President’s Estate into a smart model township, in five selected villages in Haryana. 
•    The five villages which will be developed into the smart villages under this pilot project are Dhaula, Alipur, Harichandpur and Taj Nagar from Gurgaon district and Rojka Meo from Mewat district of Haryana. 
•    Among the dignitaries present on the occasion were Chief Minister of Haryana, Shri Manohar Lal, Union Minister for Rural Development, Shri Chaudhary Birender Singh, Minster of Development and Panchayat, Government of Haryana, Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Chief Secretary of Haryana, other senior officers of Government of Haryana and Union Government, MLAs of Haryana, community and panchayat leaders and other peoples representatives/stakeholders.

India will be hosting the world’s first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) ‘Super Fight League’ from August 26 to October 1. 

•    The franchise-based league will feature eight teams – Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai, Haryana, Bangalore, Punjab, Pune and Goa. 
•    The league will be a platform for Indian MMA players like Anup Kumar, CJ Singh, Amit Roy, Dhruv Chaudhary to showcase their skills. 
•    Each team will constitute nine Indian fighters and three international ones.
•    The championship will have an equal stage for women as a total of 96 fighters will be involved in both men and women combined. 
•    Renowned British boxer Amir Khan, who is the chairman of the league, said he wished to bring the ‘spice’ of MMA to India. 
•    A total of 72 bouts will be played in the league stage which will be followed by two semi-finals, third place and the final bout.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate passed away on 2 July 2016 in New York, U.S. He was 87.
•    In his first book, Night, Wiesel gave an account of his family being sent to the Nazi concentration camps.
•    Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor and political activist.
•    He wrote mostly in French and English.
•    He was the author of 57 books, including Night, in which he shared his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
•    He was also involved with Jewish causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
•    He had been described as the most important Jew in America by the Los Angeles Times.
•    In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
•    Elie Wiesel was only 15 years old when he was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland with his family in 1944.
•    After they were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were killed.
•    Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
•    After they were taken to Buchenwald, his father only survived for eight months, dying just a few weeks before the camp was liberated.
•    In his book Night, Wiesel recalled the shame he felt when he heard his father being beaten and was unable to help.
•    He was tattooed with inmate number A-7713 on his left arm.
•    The camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army on 11 April 1945.

Lewis Hamilton on 3 July 2016 won the 2016 Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria.

•    Hamilton started the race from pole and went on to win the race after colliding with Nico Rosberg on the final lap. 
•    As a result, Rosberg finished fourth behind Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.
•    The Austrian Grand Prix is a Formula One motor race.
•    It has been held at two different locations in the Zeltweg area located in Spielberg in southeastern Austria.
•    It was first held at an airfield there for two years. Then, a permanent race track called the Österreichring was built in 1969 and Formula One first raced there in 1970.
•    Each subsequent race has been held there in three distinct periods as the circuit has been redeveloped and sold.
•    Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg was the winner of the 2015 Austrian Grand Prix.

China has finished the installation of the world's largest radio telescope, according to reports from state media. 

•    The last of the telescope's 4,450 triangular panels was fitted into the dish this weekend, ahead of the telescope's planned launch in September. 
•    The Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (or FAST) is the size of 30 soccer fields, and has taken over five years and $180 million to build.
•    FAST is nearly twice as big as the next largest radio telescope — the 300-meter-wide Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. 
•    One of the scientists involved in building FAST said that if it the telescope's dish was filled with wine, there would be enough to give five bottles of the stuff to each of the Earth's 7 billion inhabitants.
•    The telescope will be put to more serious uses: searching for extraterrestrial life and exotica of the Universe such as pulsars, quasars, and gravitational waves. 
•    More than 9,000 residents living within a 5 kilometer distance of FAST were relocated during the telescope's construction. 
•    Each received 12,000 yuan ($1,800) in compensation from the Chinese government.

Kerala Government has banned ‘electronic cigarette’ alias ‘e-cigarette’ as its use can cause various health issues, including cancer and heart ailments.
Kerala Government recently banned ‘electronic cigarette’ alias ‘e-cigarette’.
•    This has been done considering the fact that its use can cause various health issues, including cancer and heart ailments. 
•    In this regard, an order was issued that banned the production, sale and advertisement of e-cigarettes in the state. 
•    With this, Kerala becomes fourth state in India to ban e-cigarette. 
•    Punjab was the first state to ban e-cigarettes in November 2014 under the provisions of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003. It was followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka. 
•    E-cigarettes are handy battery-powered devices that emit doses of vaporised nicotine. 
•    It produces the feel of tobacco smoking. Unlike regular cigarette, e-cigarettes do not produce smoke but produces an aerosol (mist), which is inaccurately referred to as vapor. 
•    E-cigarettes have a heating element that atomizes a liquid solution known as e-liquid which usually is a mixture of propylene glycol, glycerin, nicotine, and flavorings. 

In the recently released bi-annual Logistics Performance Index (LPI) 2016 of World Bank Group, India ranked 35th among 160 countries.
India has improved its ranking in the World Bank Group's bi-annual "Logistics Performance Index 2016", jumping from 54th in 2014 to 35th in 2016. 
•    This was announced by the World Bank Group in its recent launch of the report. 
•    In the latest ranking India has gone past countries like New Zealand, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, Latvia and Indonesia who were ahead of it in the index. India's jump of 19 positions in the ranking demonstrates the commitment of various Ministries and agencies of Government of India to make it easy to do business in India.
•    Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of World Bank met the Prime Minister of India recently and congratulated him on this achievement. 
•    The World Bank studies the policy regulation as well as supply chain performance outcomes across six sub-indices of the Logistics Performance Index and ranks countries based on their performance in all the indices. 
•    It is a perception survey based on the feedback of operators on the ground as they are the people who can best assess the aspects of logistics performance.
•    Feedback of companies responsible for moving goods around the world like multinational freight forwarders and express carriers is taken on a structured online survey. 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) on 28 June 2016 released the Human Capital Report 2016.
•    The WEF prepared the report in collaboration with Mercer, an American global human resource and related financial services consulting firm.
•    The report presents an analysis by focusing on a number of key issues that can support better design of education policy and future workforce planning.
•    The Human Capital Index 2016 ranks 130 countries on how well they are developing and deploying their human capital potential.
Top ten Countries in the Human Capital Index are:
•    Finland (1)
•    Norway (2)
•    Switzerland (3)
•    Japan (4)
•    Sweden (5)
•    New Zealand (6)
•    Denmark (7)
•    The Netherlands (8)
•    Canada (9)
•    Belgium (10)
Bottom ten Countries in the Human Capital Index are:
•    Lesotho (121)
•    Senega (122)
•    Côte d'Ivoire (123)
•    Burundi (124)
•    Guinea (125)
•    Mali (126)
•    Nigeria (127)
•    Chad (128)
•    Yemen (129)
•    Mauritania (130)

India occupied the 105th position among the 130 countries surveyed in the Index. In 2015, India's position was 100th among the 124 countries surveyed in the Index.
Telecom-to-energy conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) and India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) have signed Subscription and Shareholders’ Agreement to set up payments bank.
Telecom-to-energy conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) and India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) have signed Subscription and Shareholders’ Agreement to set up payments bank. 
•    As per the agreement, RIL will be the promoter with a 70 per cent equity contribution in the payments bank and SBI as joint venture will have 30 per cent equity contribution. 
•    RIL-SBI combine was among the 11 entities that were in August 2015 were given licence by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to start a payments bank. 
•    So far two of these – Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co and Sun Pharma, IDFC Bank and telecom operator Telenor have decided to shelve plans of launching payments bank. 
•    Payments banks are small deposit-taking institutions that can accept deposits (initially up to 1 lakh rupees per individual). 
•    Besides, they will offer Internet banking, facilitate money transfers and sell insurance and mutual funds by piggy-backing on existing retail or other networks. 
•    They can also issue ATM/debit cards, but not credit cards. However, they are also not allowed to lend. 
•    Instead, they can invest 75% of their deposits in short-term government bonds.

President Pranab Mukherjee on 1 July 2016 presented the Dr. B. C. Roy National Awards for 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The awards were presented at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi on the occasion of Doctors' Day.
Awardees for the year 2008
•    Dr. Mammen Chandy
•    Prof. Rajeshwar Dayal
•    Dr. Rohit V. Bhatt
•    Dr. Neelam Mohan
•    Prof. Mohan Kameswaran
•    Dr. Harsha Jauhari
•    Dr. Gopal H. Badlani
•    Dr. Yash Gulati
Awardees for the year 2009
•    Dr. KH Sancheti
•    Dr. Atul Kumar
•    Dr. Renu Saxena
•    Dr. Kanan A. Yelikar
•    Dr. A.K. Kriplani
•    Dr. G.V. Rao
•    Dr. H.S. Bhanushali
•    Dr. Moti Lal Singh
•    Dr. C.N. Purandare
•    Dr. C.V. Hari Narayan
Awardees for the year 2010
•    Dr. Nikhil C. Munshi
•    Dr. Tejinder Singh
•    Prof. O.P. Kalra
•    Dr. Amrinder Jit Kanwar
•    Dr. Subash Gupta
•    Dr. Rajendra Prasad
•    Dr. Glory Alexander
•    The B.C. Roy Awards were instituted by the Medical Council of India in 1976.
•    The award was instituted in memory of renowned physician and former West Bengal Chief Minister Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy.
•    Bidhan Chandra Roy was the second Chief Minister of West Bengal.
•    He remained in his post for 14 years as an Indian National Congress candidate, from 1948 until his death in 1962.
•    He was a highly respected physician and a renowned freedom fighter.
•    Dr. Roy is often considered the great architect of West Bengal.
•    He founded five eminent cities, Durgapur, Kalyani, Bidhannagar, Ashokenagar and Habra.
•    He was an alumnus of the Medical College Calcutta of the University of Calcutta.