GK and Current Affairs Updates

The founder chairman of Bharti Enterprises Sunil Mittal was on 15 June 2016 elected as the chairman of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The voting for the election of chairman was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
•    With this, he became the 51st chairman of the ICC and the third Indian business leader to be elected as the chief of the ICC in its near 100-year history.
•    Mittal succeed Terry McGraw, Chairman Emeritus of S&P Global, who becomes ICC's Honorary Chairman.
•    ICC also announced that John Denton, Partner and CEO of Corrs Chambers Westgarth, has been elected succeed Mittal as the organisation's First Vice-Chair.
•    The International Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business organisation with over 6.5 million members in over 130 countries.
•    It was founded in 1919 under the leadership of its first president Etienne Clementel, a former French minister of commerce. Clementel was also instrumental in creating the ICC International Court of Arbitration in 1923.
•    ICC was awarded the highest level consultative status with the United Nations (UN) in 1946,
•    ICC was instrumental in drawing up international treaty of war reparations in 1924 which was drawn up on the recommendations of Dawes Commission.

Indian-origin diplomat Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir was on 17 June 2016 nominated as the next American Ambassador to Malaysia by US President Barack Obama.
•    Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir served as the Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2011 to 2015.  
•    She served as the US Consul General in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom from 2009 to 2011. 
•    She previously worked in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs as the Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia from 2007 to 2009.
•    From 2001 to 2005, Lakhdhir was a Political Officer at the US Embassy in Beijing, China.  
•    From 1998 to 2000, Lakhdhir was Deputy Coordinator of the Taiwan Coordination Staff in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.  
•    Since joining the Foreign Service in 1991, Lakhdhir served as a Political Officer in Indonesia and as a Consular Officer in Saudi Arabia.  
•    She received a BA from Harvard College and an MS from the National War College.

Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) President Anjan Dutta passed away on 16 June 2016 following cardiac arrest at the AIIMS hospital, New Delhi. He was 64.
Dutta donned many hats in his eventful political career.
•    Born in 1952, Dutta started his political career at an early age.
•    He was handpicked by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to lead the state Youth Congress in 1988 and then his son Rahul Gandhi to lead Assam PCC in December 2014.
•    The three-time legislator from Amguri in Sivasagar district, Dutta had literally worked overtime during the tenure of Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi.
•    Dutta was a leading light of the state unit and the Opposition when the Congress lost elections in 1985 and 1996. 
•    He was also the chairperson of the Northeast Youth Congress Coordination Committee. 
•    He was credited with reviving the declining Assam State Transport Corporation when he was Minister in the first Tarun Gogoi cabinet (2001-2006).
•    He was also a Minister in the Hiteswar Saikia-led Congress government in 1991.
•    He also had an interest in writing, which led him to start a monthly magazine Anubhuti and a daily newspaper Ajir Dainik Batori.

Baltimore’s National Aquarium on 15 June 2016 announced its plan to create an Oceanside dolphin sanctuary. This will be first of its kind sanctuary for the marine mammals in North America.
The aquarium will move its colony of eight Atlantic bottlenose dolphins to an outdoor facility with natural seawater by 2020. Of the eight bottlenose dolphins (six female and two male), only one has ever lived in the open ocean.
•    Decided venue for the dolphins will be a protected coastal habitat, where the animals will continue to live under human care.
•    The venue will lie in a tropical or subtropical location will also contain natural stimuli for the dolphins, such as fish and sea plants.
•    Bottlenose dolphins are the one of the most common species of marine mammals, with colors ranging from light gray to black.
•    They range in size from 6 feet (1.8 meters) to more than 12 feet (3.6 meters) in length, and adults can weigh up to 1,400 pounds (635 kg).
•    Of the eight bottlenose dolphins, only one dolphin, female named Nani, has ever lived in the open ocean as she was born in wild in 1972.
•    They have never felt the rain on their dorsal fins, neither they ever chased a mullet along a mangrove shore or teased a startled crab.
•    These dolphins will have to learn the acts of being ocean-dwelling dolphins with its sets of skills to fight against problems like pollution, noise, jellyfish and red tides.
•    They will have to learn to survive in the new habitat that will be much larger than their current habitat.
•    The new habitat will also have more fish and marine plants as compared to the present habitat.

Senior IAS officer Supriya Sahu was appointed as Director General of Doordarshan on 15 June 2016. She will be the full-time director general of the state-run broadcaster after two year as the post was lying vacant since July 2014.
•    The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) approved to appoint Sahu for the post.
•    She would replace Aparna Vaish who was acting head of Doordharsan. She was appointed after the board decided to appoint the senior-most additional director general (ADG) at Doordarshan.
•    Tripurari Sharan was the last full-time director general at Doordarshan who stepped down in July 2014.
•    She is a 1991 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer.
•    At the time of the appointment, she is working in her cadre state Tamil Nadu.
•    She was the power behind the Say no to plastics campaign to protect the eco-system of the hill station, Ooty, during her tenure as District Collector of the Nilgiris district.
•    She has also worked as Joint Secretary for Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB).

The Rio 2016 organizing committee on 14 June 2016 revealed the official slogan, A New World, for the first Olympic and Paralympic Games in South America.
•    The slogan was unveiled by Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), at a special ceremony held at Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca, Brazil.
•    Besides, the organising committee also unveiled the designs for the 2488 gold, silver and bronze medals that ten thousand athletes will soon be competing for.
•    A new world will be the front and center message that will be transmitted around the world in the lead-up to and during the 2016 Games.
•    The slogan was chosen to show the desire of Rio 2016 for a better world.
•    The creation of a slogan is a tradition of each Olympic Games. Previous Olympic mottos included Welcome home for Athens in 2004, One world, one dream for Beijing in 2008, and Inspire a Generation for London in 2012.

The Union Cabinet on 15 June 2016 gave its approval for signing of a 15 years contract by the Ministry of Earth Sciences with the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
•    The contract seeks to undertake exploration and other developmental activities related to Polymetallic Sulphides in the allotted area of 10000 sq km.
•    Under the contract, exploration will be done in parts of Central and South - West Indian Ridges (SWIR), located in the Indian Ocean.
•    India's exclusive rights for exploration of Polymetallic Sulphides in the allotted area will be formalized.
•    It will enhance India's presence in the Indian Ocean where other players like China, Korea and Germany are active.
•    The exploration program will be implemented by the Ministry of Earth Sciences with the participation from various national institutes and research laboratories and scientific establishments.
•    Deep seabed Poly-Metallic Sulphides (PMS) contain iron, copper, zinc, silver, gold, platinum in variable constitutions.
•    They are precipitates of hot fluids from upwelling hot magma from deep interior of the oceanic crust discharged through mineralized chimneys.
•    PMS in the Ocean Ridges have attracted worldwide attention for their long term commercial as well as strategic values.
•    It is an autonomous international organization that governs non-¬living resources of seabed lying in international waters.
•    It was set up under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1994 Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
•    It primarily regulates deep seabed mining and gives special emphasis to ensuring that the marine environment is protected from any harmful effects which may arise during mining activities, including exploration.
•    It formulates regulations for prospecting and exploration for Polymetallic Nodules in order to ensure environmentally sustainable development of the precious resources.
•    Its headquarters is located in Kingston, Jamaica. Nii Allotey Odunton of Ghana is the Secretary-General of the authority.
•    It encourages marine scientific research in the international seabed area through its Endowment Fund. The fund supports the participation of qualified scientists and technical personnel from developing countries.

The Union Cabinet under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has been apprised of the Memorandum of Understanding between Department of Space / Indian Space Research Organization (DOS/ISRO) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) on cooperation in the field of outer space. 
•    The MoU was signed in Ottawa, Canada on 15th April 2015. 
•    The MoU would lead to establishment of joint team, drawing members from ISRO and CSA, which will further work out the plan of action including examination and defining cooperative projects and the time-frame. 
•    This will also provide opportunities for diverse research in the field of peaceful uses of space technologies. 
•    The successful space cooperation is being pursued through two Implementing Arrangements in the field of Satellite Tracking Network Operations, and in the field of the ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) Detector Subsystem, in support of the ASTROSAT astronomy mission in December 2003 and June 2004, respectively.
•    It is aimed at future cooperation in and use of outer space for peaceful purposes to reinforce scientific and technological development and the ties between two countries at government, industrial and academic levels.

The Union Cabinet on 15 June 2016 gave its ex-post facto approval to the MoU for the cooperation in the field of agriculture and allied sector. Besides, the cabinet also gave its nod to the signing of Air Services Agreement between both the countries.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in India and India Taipei Association in Taipei, Taiwan.
•    It provides for cooperation in the fields of Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Aquaculture and Food Processing, Genetic Resources as well as Environmental Sustainability.
•    Both the signatories will encourage the private sector in both countries to enter into cooperation in these areas.
•    The cooperation between the two sides involves exchange of visits, information, technology and training and also expansion of agricultural trade while reducing trade barriers.
•    A Joint Working Committee will be constituted to identify priority areas of mutual interest and follow up on the progress of implementation of the activities identified by both sides.
•    The MoU will be initially signed for a period of five years and shall be automatically renewed for a subsequent periods of five years unless either party expresses its desire/intention to terminate it.
•    It will signed by India-Taipei Association in Taipei (India’s representative office in Taiwan) and Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India (Taiwan’s representative office in India).
•    The agreement signifies an important landmark in the civil aviation relations between India and Taiwan.
•    It has the potential to spur greater trade, investment, tourism and cultural exchanges between the two parties.
•    At present, there is no formal air services agreement between both the countries.
•    The air services are governed by an MoU exchanged between Air India Charters Limited (AIRL) and Taipei Airlines Associations (TAA).

Scientists have discovered a Jupiter-like planet, Kepler-1647b, orbiting a system of two stars, making it the largest such cosmic body ever found.
•    The planet Kepler-1647b, located in the constellation Cygnus, was discovered by astronomers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre and San Diego State University (SDSU) in the US.
•    Researchers said that the Kepler-1647 is 3700 light-years away and about 4.4 billion years old, roughly the same age as the Earth.
•    The planet was discovered by using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, an instrument launched in 2009 to look for potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system.
•    The stars are similar to the Sun, with one slightly larger than our home star and the other slightly smaller.
•    The planet has a mass and radius nearly identical to that of Jupiter, making it the largest transiting circumbinary planet ever found. Planets that orbit two stars are known as circumbinary planets.
•    It takes 1107 days (over three years) to orbit its host stars, which is the longest period of any confirmed transiting exoplanet found so far.
•    Orbit of the planet puts it within the so-called habitable zone, which means the range of distances from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.
•    Like Jupiter, it is also a gas giant, making the planet unlikely to host life.
•    The study was published in the Astrophysical Journal.