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AWARDS AND HONOURS

NAME OF THE AWARD	AWARD WINNER	KEY POINTS TO NOTE
USIBC Award	Chandrababu Naidu	He is selected for the Transformative Chief Minister Award
National Award	Akshay Kumar	He was conferred for the movie ‘Rustom
Order of Diplomatic Service Merit Sungnye Medal of the Republic of Korea	Rajive Kaul	Chairman of Nicco group
2016 Wisden-MCC Cricket ‘Photograph of the Year’ Award	Saqib Majeed	He is hailing from Srinagar, J&K
Genderless Best Actor award	Emma Watson	Best Actor category at the MTV Movie and TV Awards.
Fellowship Award in UK	Sachin Tendulkar	He is India’s Cricket icon
New York Indian Film Festival	Konkona Sensharma	For her directorial debut “A Death in the Gunj”
Fellows of Royal Society	Krishna Chatterjee Subhash Khot Yadvinder Malhi	For their outstanding contributions to science

 APPOINTMENTS

NAME	DEPT/FIELD
Braj Bihari Kumar	Chairman Of ICSSR
Mallikarjun Kharge	Chairman Of PAC
Anthony Lianzuala	New Controller General of Accounts
Shobana Kamineni	Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) President
R Subramania kumar	MD and CEO of the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB).
Rajkiran Rai G	MD and CEO of Union Bank of India.
Sunil Mehta	MD and CEO of Punjab National Bank
Usha Ananthasubramanian	MD and CEO of Allahabad Bank
Dinabandhu Mohapatra	MD and CEO of the Bank of India
M O Rego	MD and CEO of Syndicate Bank
R A Sankara Narayanan	MD and CEO of Vijaya Bank.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta	Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University
Emmanuel Macron	President of France
Prabhat Kamal Bezboruah	Chairman of the Tea Board of India

 INDIAN AFFAIRS

• Madhya Pradesh has become the first state to adopt a January to December fiscal year.
• On August 15, as the country will celebrate its 71st Independence Day, the northern state of Haryana would become stray cattle-free.
• Fadnavis hoisted a 303-feet high national flag — considered the second-tallest flag in the country — in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.
• For the first time since Independence, scores of state government officials are being sent to collect data and talk to local population in the heart of India’s Maoist-hit territory in Chhattisgarh’s Abujhmad.
• The Indian Railways will use radio-frequency identification tags for tracking of wagons, coaches and locomotives to ensure effective and transparent functioning.
• Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has inaugurated the state’s first automatic weather station at Dongargaon in Nagpur.
• Ending the nine year long wait, regulation of real estate sector involving over 76,000 companies across the county becomes a reality from May 1, 2017 with the Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016 coming into force.
• Union Minister of Human Resource Development Shri Prakash Javadekar has launched the VIDYA VEERTA ABHIYAN in New Delhi.
• Department of Telecom (DoT), Ministry of Communications has launched Tarang Sanchar, a web portal for Information sharing on Mobile Towers and EMF Emission Compliances.
• Madhya Pradesh Assembly has passed Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill unanimously, becoming the fourth state to have done so.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the Patanjali Research Institute in the presence of Yoga guru Baba Ramdev.
• The Indian Army has successfully test-fired the advanced BrahMos Block III land attack cruise missile in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the second consecutive day.
• Indore has emerged as the India’s Cleanest City in the Swachh Survekshan-2017 conducted in 434 cities and towns
• The Union Cabinet chaired has given its approval for the declaration of Vijayawada Airport as International Airport, as per the provisions of Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.
• Madhya Pradesh government has passed a resolution granting river Narmada the status of a living entity and committed itself to the protection of its legal rights.
• The Union Cabinet has given its approval for National Steel Policy (NSP) 2017. The new Steel Policy enshrines the long term vision of the Government to give impetus to the steel sector.
• The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for re-structuring the schemes of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) under new Central Sector Scheme SAMPADA (Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters) for the period 2016-20 coterminous with the 14th Finance Commission cycle.
• The ‘mycall’ app would be available by the end of this month, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman RS Sharma said at ‘Digital Broadcasting in India Way Forward
• An IT services arm of Reliance Industries and business software provider SAP have signed an agreement to jointly launch ‘Saral GST’ solution to serve taxpayers under the goods and services tax (GST) regime.
• Punj Lloyd in collaboration with Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) was inaugurated India’s first private sector small arms manufacturing plant at Malanpur in Madhya Pradesh.
• Haryana government will offer food at subsidised rates to registered construction workers soon.
• Punjab government has made Aadhaar Cards mandatory in place of Ration Cards for all Financial Assistance scheme besides introducing new forms to get the benefit of old age pensions.
• The Centre has declared the entire Assam as a “disturbed” area under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act — the AFSPA — for three more months.
• Social media giant Facebook has partnered with country’s largest telecom player Airtel to deploy 20,000 internet hotspots through Facebook’s Express Wi-Fi service in India.
• A village of books in Maharashtra, called ‘Pustakanche Gaon’ in Marathi, is set to open on 4 May 2017.
• The Uttar Pradesh Board of Secondary Education has amended its curriculum which will enable senior students enrolled in schools affiliated with the Board to get lessons in banking to equip them with skills and knowledge to use in real life.
• Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways inaugurated India’s first bio refinery plant that produces ethanol from a variety of biomass in Pune on 7 May 2017.
• India now has the third-highest number of startup incubators and accelerators in the world after China and the US, says a report by IT industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Zinnov Consulting.
• The Chenab river in Jammu and Kashmir will be spanned by the world’s highest railway bridge that is expected to be 35 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower.
• The global best practice of eVIN (electronic vaccine intelligence network) project of the Health Ministry and to understand how it is being implemented in the country and the ways in which it be replicated in their own countries.
• Union Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises has inaugurated the three day long CSR Fair 2017 at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.
• The Haryana State Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill was passed unanimously by the state Assembly.

BANKING AND FINANCE

• The Reserve Bank has said all the existing Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) must have a minimum net-owned corpus of Rs 100 crore by March 2019.
• Country’s largest lender State Bank of India has cut its term deposit rates by up to 50 basis points for various maturities.
• NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said that the RBI and other commercial banks spend Rs 21,000 crore every year on currency management operations
• India is expected to clock 7.1% growth this year before edging up to 7.5% in 2018, according to a UN report
• The Income Tax department has activated the e-filing facility for all categories of income tax returns (ITRs) for the assessment year 2017-18.
• The Cabinet recommended an ordinance empowering the Reserve Bank of India to instruct banks to act against top 20-25 loan defaulters as part of a series of steps aimed at helping lenders get bad debt off their books.
• President Pranab Mukherjee has given his nod to the ordinance dealing with the banking sector’s non-performing loans and the amendment to the Banking Act.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY AFFAIRS

• The trade market closed with shares of Maruti Suzuki coming closer to Rs 6,000 mark, making its market capitalisation (m-cap) standing above Rs 1.8 lakh crore.
• Samsung has received the green light to start testing a self-driving vehicle in South Korea.
• Apple has a new milestone to boast of. The tech major has reported over $256 billion in cash and marketable securities.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

• China plans to launch its own online encyclopaedia next year, hoping to build a “cultural Great Wall” that can rival Wikipedia as a go-to information source for Chinese Internet users who Beijing fears are being corrupted by foreign influences.
• The United Nations owes a total of $55 million to India for its contribution to the world body’s peacekeeping operations, the second highest outstanding payment to any member country.
• The presidents of Russia and Turkey have said they support the creation of safe-zones in war-torn Syria as a delegation of Syrian rebels walked out of cease- fire talks with the Damascus government underway in Kazakhstan, citing repeated violations of a similar truce agreed on in December.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

• Online classifieds company Quikr has announced the acquisition of Zimmber, an on-demand household services provider, to further scale its hyperlocal household services business.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• SpaceX successfully launched and landed its Falcon 9 rocket in the fifth of 20 scheduled launches in 2017.
• Dubai has become the first city in the world to get its own Microsoft font. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum,
• US researchers have successfully removed HIV DNA from the genomes of living animals using a gene-editing tool, boosting the confidence of scientists to eliminate the AIDS virus infection in humans.
• India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F09) successfully launched the 2230 kg South |Asia Satellite (GSAT-9) into its planned Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) on May 05, 2017.
• A synthetic, soft tissue retina developed by an Oxford University student could offer fresh hope to visually impaired people.
• The United Kingdom switched on its newest fusion reactor. The reactor, created by Tokamak Energy, should heat plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius (or 180 million degrees Fahrenheit) by 2018.
• The world’s biggest X-ray laser has generated its first beam of light that will allow scientists to get a glimpse of new materials, drugs and chemical reactions at the atomic level.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) recently demonstrated a solar hybrid electric car, designed and developed using in-house resources, at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvanathanapuram.

SPORTS

WINNER	TITLE	SPORT/ VENUE
John Higgins	Betfred World Snooker Championship	Theatre in Sheffield, England
Leander Paes	Tallahassee Challenger Title	Tennis
Joshna Chinappa	Asian Squash title	First player from India to win
Soumyajit Ghosh	2017 ITTF Challenge Chile Open	Santiago
Shiva Thapa	Asian Boxing Championship (silver medal)	Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Great Britain	Sultan Azlan Shah Cup	Hockey
Michelle Skeries (Germany) Heena Sidhu (India-Bronze)	48th Grand Prix of Liberation Plzen Shooting championships	New Delhi

• Odisha capital is gearing up for hosting the 22nd Asian Athletics Championship at the Kalinga Stadium scheduled in July, the endangered Olive Ridley turtle will enhance the attraction of the mega event.

OBITUARY

NAME OF THE PERSON	FIELD
Ueli Steck	Swiss Mountain  climber
Justice Leila Seth	India’s first woman chief judge of a High Court
Adolph Kiefer	American Swimmer
Ustad Raees Khan	Pakistani sitarist

OBSERVED DAYS IN FEBRUARY

DATE OBSERVED	DAY OBSERVED	Theme / Purpose
May 01	International Labour day
May 02	World Asthama day	Asthma: Better Air, Better Breathing
May 03	World Press Freedom Day	Critical Minds for Critical Times
May 03	International Energy day	Forests and Energy
May 04	International Firefighters Day	January 4, 1999 due to the deaths of five firefighters in tragic circumstances in a wildfire in Australia.
May 07	World Athletics day	For Popularize sports among the youth
May 07	World Laughter Day	Celebrate World Peace Through Laughter
May 07	Rabindra Natha Tagore Remembrance day
May 08	World Red Cross day	Less Known Red Cross Stories