GK and Current Affairs Updates

President Pranab Mukherjee on 14 June 2016 was accorded with Grand Cross National Order of the Republic of Cote D'Ivoirie in a simple ceremony at the President's Palace in Abidjan. It is the highest civilian award of Ivory Coast.
•    He received many honorary degrees but, it is the first such honour accorded to him by a country.
•    The President was honoured during his two days visit to the Country from 14 June to 15 June 2016.
•    It was the first visit of any Indian President to Ivory Coast. In fact, it is the first ever high level visit from India to Ivory Coast.
•    Both the countries signed headquarters agreement for re-establishment of Exim bank regional head quarters in the Ivory Coast.
•    The Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces highlighted the common concerns of both the countries to combat international terrorism and other key issues including disarmament, climate change and sustainable development.
•    The Head of the State reiterated the commitment of India towards the South-South Cooperation through developmental assistance and sharing resources for the development in Africa.
•    He appreciated the naming of an information technology park in Abidjan after Mahatma Gandhi calling him as a true son of India as well as Africa.
•    The President also promised that India will remain a steadfast partner in assisting Cote D'Ivoirie (Ivory Coast) in its economic development and growth and trade between the two nations is expected to touch 1 billion US dollars in few years.

Renowned Hindi novelist and critique Mudrarakshas passed away due to old age related causes in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Distinguished Hindi writer, activist, thinker and cultural personality Mudrarakshasa passed away on 13 June 2016 following a prolonged illness in Lucknow. He was 82.
•    Born in Behta near Lucknow in 1931, He graduated from Lucknow University and was then employed as Assistant Editor of Gyanodaya that was published from Calcutta from 1955 to 1958.
•    He was the editor of Anuvrata, a Calcutta based magazine.
•    He worked as Editor at All India Radio from 1962 to 1976.
•    His works of theatrical criticism includes Rang Bhumikayen and a book on Nemichandra Jain.
•    He has about thirty stage productions to his credit.
•    Loved as he was for his iconoclastic ideals, well wishers, friends, fans and public gathered at Baikunth Dham for the last rites of the acclaimed writer after he passed away at his home in Khurshaed Bagh. 
•    A memorial service for the writer will be held at 4 pm on Wednesday at the Ambedkar Mahasabha office on Vidhan Sabha Marg followed by another one at Press Club at 5.30pm.

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on 15 June 2016 appointed Anne Hathaway as global Goodwill Ambassador.
The Academy Award-winning actor will advocate for the adoption and implementation of policies worldwide to bring change at both government and corporate levels.
Hathaway has previously served as an advocate for Nike Foundation. She travelled to Kenya and Ethiopia to raise awareness on child marriage.
•    Anne Hathaway is an American actress and singer.
•    She made her professional screen debut in the Fox television series Get Real.
•    She appeared in the lead role of Mia Thermopolis in the Disney comedy film The Princess Diaries.
•    In 2005, she starred alongside Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Ang Lee's drama Brokeback Mountain.
•    In 2006, she was seen as an assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor in the movie The Devil Wears Prada.
•    In 2006, she appeared on People magazine's list of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People.
•    In 2012, she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film Les Misérables.
•    The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women is a United Nations entity working for the empowerment of women.
•    UN Women became operational in January 2011.
•    Former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet was the inaugural Executive Director of the entity.

The Union Cabinet on 15 June 2016 gave its approval for Indian membership of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) consortium.
The approval clears the path for signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the GFZ - Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (German Research Centre for geosciences). The GFZ is a government-funded, Public Law Foundation of the State of Brandenburg, Germany.
•    The MoU, which will be in force for 5 years, will enable India in engaging internationally renowned experts with profound expertise in different aspects of scientific drilling.
•    The deep drilling and associated investigations will be conducted in Koyna region in Maharashtra.
•    As a part of the membership agreement, India will get a seat on two ICDP panels - Executive Committee (EC) and Assembly of Governors (AOG).
•    ICDP will provide technical / operational support, facilitate capacity building in terms of manpower training in key scientific areas, sample and data management
•    The ICDP will also support workshops for the Koyna scientific deep drilling project undertaken by Ministry of Earth Sciences.
•    As a member of ICDP, scientists/engineers from India would have right to submit proposals, to participate in all ICDP co-funded workshops and drilling projects.
•    They will get access to all data results from ICDP projects. This will shed new light on the genesis of seismicity and better understanding of earthquake processes.
•    It was founded in February 1996 in the German Embassy in Tokyo as a result of the German Continental Deep Drilling Program.
•    It is a multinational program to further and fund geosciences in the field of Continental Scientific Drilling.
•    The research findings will provide direct insight into Earth processes by testing geological models.
•    The GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences serves as the headquarters for the ICDP.
•    Members of ICDP: Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and UNESCO.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 13 June 2016 elected Peter Thomson, Permanent Representative of Fiji, as President of its upcoming 71st session. Thomson was elected in a rare secret ballot vote. He defeated Andreas Mavroyiannis of Cyprus by a secret-ballot vote of 94 to 90, with one abstention.The Fiji representative will replace current General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft.
Thomson will begin his tenure in September 2016 at the commencement of the 71st General Assembly session.
•    Peter Thomson is a Fijian diplomat.
•    He has served as Fiji's Permanent Representative to the United Nations since February 2010.
•    For the year 2014, he was elected President of the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS).
•    He was the architect of the name-change of the UN's Group of Asian States to the new name of the Asia-Pacific Group, effective 2011.
•    The President of Fiji conferred on Peter Thomson the award of Officer of the Order of Fiji in 2014.
•    The United Nations General Assembly is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations.
•    It is the only organ in which all member nations have equal representation.
•    Its powers are to oversee the budget of the UN, appoint the non-permanent members to the Security Council, receive reports from other parts of the UN and make recommendations in the form of General Assembly Resolutions.
•    The General Assembly meets under its president or Secretary-General in regular yearly sessions.
•    The first UNGA session was convened on 10 January 1946 in the Westminster Central Hall in London. It included representatives of 51 nations.

India on 16 June 2016 won the three-match One Day International (ODI) series against Zimbabwe 3-0.
In the third and final match played at Harare, India defeated Zimbabwe by 10 wickets.
Winning the toss and electing to bat first, Zimbabwe was bundled out for 124 runs in 42.2 over. In the second innings of the match, India chased the paltry target of 125 in 21.5 at the loss of no wicket.
•    1st Match: It was played at Hazare sports club, Harare, Zimbabwe on 11 June 2016. India defeated Zimbabwe by nine wickets. Lokesh Rahul was adjudged as the Man of the Match.
•    2nd Match: It was played at Hazare sports club, Harare, Zimbabwe on 13 June 2016. India defeated Zimbabwe by eightwickets. Yazvendra Chahl was adjudged as the Man of the Match.
•    3rd Match: It was played at Hazare sports club, Harare, Zimbabwe on 15 June 2016. India defeated Zimbabwe by ten wickets. Lokesh Rahul was adjudged as the Man of the Match.
With this win, India got it’s a third successive series clean-sweep in Zimbabwe after the triumphs in 2013 and 2015. The ODI series will be followed by 3 Twenty-20 matches that will begin on 18 June 2016.

Canadian poet, novelist and environmental activist Margaret Atwood on 16 June 2016 was awarded the 2016 PEN Pinter Prize.
Atwood will receive her award at a public event at the British Library on 13 October 2016.
Atwood was chosen by judges Vicky Featherstone, Zia Haider Rahman, Peter Stothard, Antonia Fraser and President of English 

PEN and Chair of Judges, Maureen Freely.
•    Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist.
•    She is also the inventor and developer of the LongPen and associated technologies that facilitate the remote robotic writing of documents.
•    She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.
•    She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once for her novel The Blind Assassin.
•    In 2001, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
•    A few of her best novels are The Handmaid's Tale, The Robber Bride, The Year of the Flood among others.
•    The PEN Pinter Prize is an annual literary award launched in 2009 by English PEN.
•    It was launched in honour of the late Nobel Literature Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter.
•    The award is given to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who casts an unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world.
•    The PEN Pinter Prize is one of the many PEN literary awards sponsored by PEN International affiliates.
•    The 2015 PEN Pinter Prize was awarded to James Fenton, who shared the prize with Raif Badawi as the International Writer of Courage.

Scientists in June 2016 declared Bramble Cay melomys found only on a tiny island on the Great Barrier Reef as extinct.
It is the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-induced climate change.
The news was revealed in the report of a survey led by Ian Gynther from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection in partnership with the University of Queensland.
•    The root cause of the extinction was reported to be high tides and surging seawater, which has travelled inland across the island.
•    As a result of rising seas, the island was inundated on multiple occasions killing the animals. The rising seas also destroyed their habitat.
•    The Bramble Cay melomys are also known as Australian Great Barrier Reef rodent or Bramble Cay mosaic-tailed rat.
•    It was a species of rodent in the family Muridae.
•    It was similar to the Cape York melomys except that it had some protein differences and a coarser tail caused by elevated scales.
•    It was prominent in herdfields and strandline vegetation where it built burrows.
•    It was Australia's most isolated mammal.
•    The Bramble Cay melomys was first discovered by Europeans in April 1845.
•    The species was then apparently in high densities.
•    It was not until the first part of the following century that the species was formally described as Melomys rubicola based on a specimen collected by MacGillivray.

The Union cabinet on 15 June 2016 approved the merger of the State Bank of India (SBI) with the five subsidiaries of Bank.
The cabinet approved the merger of the following subsidiaries- 
•    State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur
•    State Bank of Hyderabad
•    State Bank of Mysore
•    State Bank of Patiala
•    State Bank of Travancore 
•    Apart from this, the Bharatiya Mahila Bank will also be merged with the SBI and the cabinet had cleared this proposal too.
•    The merger will create a behemoth with an asset base of 37 lakh crore rupees with 22500 branches and nearly 60000 automated teller machines.
•    The merger necessitates changes in various acts that govern the functioning of the SBI and its subsidiary banks - which require further cabinet approval.
•    The merger will make SBI as one of the top 50 banks in the world as currently no Indian bank features in the top 50 banks of the world.
•    SBI had seven associate banks, of which it has merged State Bank of Saurashtra and State Bank of Indore with itself over the last 10 years. The parent bank had advances of 15.09 trillion rupees and deposits of 17.31 trillion rupees as of the end of the March quarter.
Bank consolidation was proposed by the Union Government in March 2016 at a congregation of bankers and government officials where various issues pertaining to banks were discussed

The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) released National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) 2016 on 15 June 2016. The policy’s mission is to  provide  safe,  secure,  affordable  and  sustainable air travel  for passengers  and  air  transportation  of  cargo  with  access to various parts of India and the world.
•    Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS): It will not allow the airlines to charge more than 2500 rupees for one hour flight between two small cities. The RCS will come into effect in the second quarter of 2016-17.
•    Code-share agreements: Indian carriers will be free to enter into code-share agreements with foreign carriers for any destination within India on a reciprocal basis. Indian carriers need to simply inform Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA)30 days prior to starting the code-share flights.
•    Encourage Private Security: The Government will encourage use of private security agencies at airports for non-core security functions. The private security agencies will comprise retired personnel from military and para-military forces.
•    No-Frills Airports: They will be built at an indicative cost of 50 crore to 100 crore rupees.
•    Viability Gap Funding (VGF): It will be shared between MoCA and the State Government in the ratio of 80:20 while it is 90:10 for the North Eastern States.
•    The payment of the full amount of VGF will be made to the airline operator from the Regional Connectivity Fund (RCF) and the State Governments will be subsequently asked reimbursement.
•    MoCA’s share of VGF will be provided through the RCF, which will be collected and operated by Airport Authority of India (AAI) or any other entity identified by MoCA.
•    MoCA will persuade State Governments to make Value Added Tax (VAT) zero-rated on MRO activities to develop India asan MRO hub in Asia.
•    5/20 Rule: The requirement for 5/20 is modified and all airlines can commence international operations provided that they deploy 20 aircraft or 20 percent of total capacity (in term of average number of seats on all epartures put together), whichever is higher for domestic operations.
•    Bilateral Traffic Rights: Under this, government will enter into an ‘Open sky’ ASA on a reciprocal basis with SAARC countries and countries with territory located entirely beyond a 5000 kilometers radius from New Delhi.
•    India has Air Service Agreements (ASA) with 109 countries covering aspects relating to the number of flights, seats, landing points and code-share.  
•    • Upgradation of Airports: Airport Authority of India (AAI) will continue to modernize the existing airports and upgrade quality of services.    It will also maintain an ASQ  rating  of  4.5  or  more  across all airports  which  have  a throughput above 1.5  mppa and ASQ rating  of 4.0 or more for the rest.
•    Ground Handling Agencies (GHA): The airport operator will ensure that there will be three Ground Handling Agencies (GHA) including Air India's subsidiary/JV at all major airports as defined in AERA Act 2008 to ensure fair competition. 
•    Advanced Cargo Information system: It will be implemented in a phased manner after a universally accepted international template has emerged.
•    MoCA will be nodal agency for developing commercial aero-related manufacturing and its eco-system in India in line with Aeronautical Make in India.
•    Growth of helicopters: Government will support growth of helicopters for remote area connectivity and separate regulations for helicopters will be notified by DGCA.