Current Affairs Update – 29th – 30th May, 2016

Hello and welcome to exampundit. Here are the Important Current Affairs of 29th and 30th May, 2016. These are very important for the upcoming UIIC AO 2016, SBI PO & SBI Clerk Mains 2016.

• Yes Bank has partnered with
  Click&Pay, a Hyderabad-based mobile payment solutions enterprise, to
  facilitate cashless, secure and flexible transactions for customers.
• As a part of this alliance
  Click&Pay will issue Yes Bank sponsored mobile wallets and employ the
  bank’s immediate payment service (IMPS) platform which will help Click&Pay
  to process instant proximity transactions with merchants and person to person.
• Last month Yes Bank signed a
  memorandum of understanding with Hyderabad start-up incubation center, T-Hub to
  work with the latter’s portfolio companies, including Click&Pay. This
  mobile payment solutions start-up will reach out to around 1 million users this
  year by issuing the Yes Bank sponsored mobile wallet, according to a statement.

• State Bank of India-country’s
  largest lender-has established the largest network of Point of Sales (PoS)
  machines in the country. With this it has left behind rivals like HDFC Bank,
  Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and other private and foreign lenders behind.
• As per the latest Reserve Bank of
  India data, at the end of March 31st 2015 SBI has 2.96 lakh PoS terminals
  across the country, more than HDFC Bank’s 2.81 lakh, Axis Bank’s 2.58 lakh
  terminals and ICICI Bank’s over 2 lakh PoS machines. These four lenders
  together dominate this space and contribute to more than three fourth of the
  total 13.63 lakh PoS terminals deployed in the country.
• Going ahead SBI plans to keep up
  with the pace of expansion of its merchant acquiring business by deploying more
  machines.
• The lender is not only focusing
  on urban areas but has also been deploying these PoS machines in semi-urban and
  rural area as well.
• This comes at a time when both
  the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India have been asking banks to
  expand the PoS network to ensure a wider card acceptance infrastructure. In
  fact, the finance ministry has recently set up a committee which will focus on
  reducing cash transactions and one of its key focus areas also includes
  expanding the PoS network.

• The government has commissioned
  1,780 km of rail lines and also completed over 6,000 km of highways in 2015-16
  period, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Monday.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi was
  reviewing the progress in the key infrastructure sectors of railways and
  roadways on Monday. The PMO said that 1,730 km of rail links have also been
  electrified in 2015-16.
• In the course of the review of
  the railway sector, it was noted that it had received a capital investment of
  over Rs.93,000 crore in the last financial year.

• Second submarine assembly
  workshop of the Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL) was inaugurated by Defence Minister
  Manohar Parrikar on 28 May 2016.
• After inaugurating the workshop,
  Parrikar said that the level of indigenisation in submarine construction should
  be much higher than the present.
• At present, MDL is building six
  Scorpene class of submarines for the Indian Navy, with around 35% of indigenisation.
• INS Kalvari, the first submarine
  of this class, is expected to join the Indian Navy by end of 2016.

• Nine-coach Spanish train Talgo’s
  trial run was conducted on 29 May 2016 on the Bareilly-Moradabad route of Uttar
  Pradesh. It was conducted as part of the Railways’ strategy to increase the
  speed of trains.
• The trail run was conducted by a
  joint team of the Railway Design Standards Organisation (RDSO) and Spanish
  train manufacturer Talgo.
• The nine-coach Talgo train hauled
  by a 4500 HP diesel engine was tested on the 90-km line as part of the first
  trial run. The 90-km distance was covered in 1 hour 10 minutes.

• Legendary Oscar winning Indian
  music composer A.R. Rahman was on Monday awarded Japan’s Fukuoka prize for
  2016.
• It is reported that Rahman has
  been conferred with the award for his outstanding contribution towards
  creating, preserving and showcasing South Asian traditional fusion music.
• The Fukuoka Prize is an award
  established by the city of Fukuoka and the Yokatopia Foundation to honor the
  outstanding work of individuals or organizations in preserving or creating
  Asian culture. There are three prize categories: Grand Prize, Academic Prize,
  and Arts and Culture Prize.
• Last year, noted Indian Historian
  Ramchandra Guha was conferred with Fukuoka Prize in academic category.
• Rahman was the 1995 recipient of
  the Mauritius National Award and the Malaysian Award for his contributions to
  music. A four-time National Film Award winner and recipient of six Tamil Nadu
  State Film Awards, he has fifteen Filmfare Awards in his kity.
• In 2009, for his Slumdog
  Millionaire score, Rahman won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, the
  Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
  and two Academy Awards (Best Original Score and Best Original Song, the latter
  shared with Gulzar) at the 81st Academy Awards.

• An Indian-American scientist has
  received the prestigious ‘Springer Theses Award’ for his outstanding research
  on developing transgenic mice to study a critical tumor-suppressor.
• Arnab De , who has also developed
  peptide-based prodrugs as therapeutics for diabetes, was nominated by New
  York’s Columbia University for his PhD thesis which he dedicated to legendary
  Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and his alma mater Kolkata’s Presidency
  University .
• De, who has also received the
  ‘Young Investigator Award’ at the American Peptide Symposium , was awarded for
  developing transgenic mice to study a critical tumor-suppressor A20.
• The Springer Theses Award is
  awarded by Springer, a leading global publisher of renowned scientific journals
  and books, to recognise outstanding PhD research.

Aditi Krishnakumar

• Aditi Krishnakumar, an Indian
  woman author in Singapore, in fourth week of May 2016 won the ‘Scholastic Asian
  Book Award’. She was awarded for her 32000-word manuscript “Codex: The
  Lost Treasure of the Indus”.
• She won the 10000 Singapore
  dollar award for her manuscript that carried contemporary feel and roots deep
  into history of India. The manuscript will be published by Scholastic Asia.

• The President of India Pranab
  Mukherjee on 29 May 2016 presented the Malti Gyan Peeth Puraskar for the year
  2016 at a function held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
• The award was conferred upon 15
  teachers from Punjab for their rare contribution in the field of education.
• The awardees were facilitated
  with 1 lakh rupees cash, certificate of excellence, a Robe of Honour and a
  medal.
• The initiative was mainly taken
  to promote the quality teaching in the schools besides encouraging the hundred
  percent attendance of girl students in the government schools.

• Senior IRS officer Pankaj Kumar
  Mishra was appointed chief of Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), tasked with
  checking suspicious bank and cash transactions, as part of a major mid-level
  bureaucratic reshuffle effected today.
• A total of 15 new Joint
  Secretaries, including Mishra, have been appointed to various central
  government ministries. Of them, six are IAS officers and rest from other
  central services.
• The Appointments Committee of
  Cabinet has approved appointment of Mishra as Director, FIU for five years, an
  order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said.
• FIU, which functions under
  Department of Revenue, is mandated to collect, analyse and disseminate
  information related to financial transactions suspected to be black money or
  proceeds of crime.
• He has been appointed in place of
  P K Tiwari, who had completed his tenure in mid-April. Enforcement Director
  Karnal Singh has been looking after the charge of FIU chief.
• Senior IAS officer Rajeev Ranjan
  has been appointed as Joint Secretary in Department of Expenditure in place of
  G C Murmu, who had been earlier made Additional Secretary in Department of
  Financial Services.

• Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on 29
  May 2016 won the ninth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). In the final
  clash played at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore, Sunrisers Hyderabad
  defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by eight runs.
• This was maiden Indian Premier
  League title for Sunrisers Hyderabad, while third final lost for Bangalore in
  the IPL. Earlier, it lost in finals of 2009 and 2011 editions.
• Chasing the target of 209 runs,
  Bangalore got off to a flying start as Chris Gayle (76) and Skipper Virat Kohli
  (54) laid a perfect platform and forged 114-run partnership. But after the fall
  of the openers, no other batsman could contribute much as a result they only
  managed to score 200 runs for seven in 20 overs.

• Player of the match – Ben Cutting
  (Sunrisers Hyderabad)
• Player of the series – Virat
  Kohli (Royal Challengers Bangalore)

• Asian Games discus throw gold
  medal winner Seema Punia on 29 May 2016 qualified for the Rio Olympics with a
  62.62m effort at the Pat Young’s Throwers Classic 2016 at Salinas in the United
  States.
• Punia crossed the Rio Games
  qualification standard of 61.00m at the Hartnell College Throwers Complex.
• The 32-year old discus thrower
  from Haryana defeated 2008 Olympic discus throw champion Stephanie
  Brown-Trafton of United States of America for the gold.
• This will be Punia’s third
  Olympic Games appearance. She took part in the games in 2004 and 2012.

• The International Day of United
  Nations Peacekeepers 2016 was observed on 29 May 2016 with the theme Honouring
  Our Heroes.
• The day offers a chance to pay
  tribute to the Blue Helmets’ invaluable contribution to the work of the
  Organization and to honour more than 3400 peacekeepers who have lost their
  lives serving under the UN flag since 1948, including 128 in 2015.
• On the other hand, the UN Postal
  Administration (UNPA) also issued a set of six new stamps for the occasion.

Regards

Team ExamPundit