Current affairs notes on 15/06/2018

1.Mr J P Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare exchanged the MoU with the State Health Ministers of 20 States marking their commitment towards the launch of the Ayushman Bharat - National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM). Smt. Anupriya Patel, Ministers of State for Health and Family Welfare and Amitabh Kant, CEO NITI Aayog were also present at the function.

2.NSE launched a 'Tri-party Repo Market Platform' for repurchase of corporate debt security. It is a repo contract where a third entity, apart from the borrower and lender, called tri-party agent acts as an intermediary to facilitate services like collateral selection, payment and settlement, custody and management during the life of the transaction. It provides opportunity to borrow against the securities and provides short-term liquidity to participants.

3.The Maharashtra government and Canada's Quebec province have signed a pact to increase the economic cooperation, especially in areas of information technology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and welfare of the tribal community. 

4.Minister for Water Resources Nitin Gadkari released Niti Aayog's composite water management index report in New Delhi. Gujarat topped the list while Jharkhand was adjudged as the worst performer. Gujarat is followed by Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

5.Oracle has announced the availability of the Internet Intelligence Map, providing users with a simple, graphical way to track the health of the internet and gain insight into the impact of events such as natural disasters or state-imposed interruptions.

6.Poland set a new Guinness World record for the largest number of people juggling footballs at the same time for 10 seconds. The new record was set by 1,444 Polish football lovers who dressed in neon yellow to juggle soccer balls of the same colour in the southern city of Krakow. 

7.The 106th Indian Science Congress (ISC-2019) will be held at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Jalandhar, Punjab from 3rd to 7th January 2019. The theme of the 5-day science congress is ‘Future India: Science & Technology’. 

8.Anil Kumar from Madhya Pradesh has clinched the gold in the 10m Air Rifle event at the 18th KSS Memorial Shooting Championship 2018 

9.S Sundari Nanda, a 1988 AGMU cadre Indian Police Service officer in the rank of ADGP, has been posted as the first woman Director General of Police (DGP) of Union Territory of Puducherry. 

10.Dhivya Suryadevara, an Indian-American woman, has been named the Chief Finance Officer (CFO) of the US’ largest automaker, General Motors (GM). With this, she will become the first woman CFO in the auto industry. 

11.India will host the 23rd European Union Film Festival (EUFF-2018) at the Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi from 18 – 24 June. The festival will improve cultural ties between India and European countries.

12.Around 20 states have so far signed memoranda of understanding to implement Ayushman Bharat National Health Protection Mission which aims to provide health protection to around 10 crore poor families in the country.The scheme has the benefit cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year. To ensure that nobody is left out (especially women, children and elderly) there will be no cap on family size and age in the scheme. The benefit cover will also include pre and post-hospitalisation expenses.

13.The government recently launched Swajal schemes in 115 aspirational districts of the country.Swajal is a community owned drinking water programme for sustained drinking water supply.

14.An all women Naval mountaineering team recently summited Mount Deotibba.Mt Deotibba is the second highest peak (6001M) in the Pir-Panjal range in Himachal Pradesh.

15.The US has approved a deal to sell six AH-64E Apache helicopters to India for $930 million as well as Hellfire and Stinger missiles to bolster the country’s ability to defend its homeland and deter “regional threats”.

16.The indigenous Pinaka rocket system of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is being evolved into a precision-guided missile, with enhanced range and accuracy to hit its targets. Pinaka is capable of working in different modes – autonomous mode, stand-alone mode, remote mode and manual mode.The second variant of Pinaka, known as Mark-II, has a maximum range of 75 km.