Current Affairs - May 17, 2017 Current Affairs

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani has topped a Forbes list of 'Global Game Changers' who are transforming their industries and changing the lives of billions of people around the globe.

Paytm has also announced that its long time executive and vice president Renu Satti will be the CEO of the payments bank. It also has received the final licence from the Reserve Bank of India for its payments bank entity. Paytm Payments Bank Limited will begin its banking operations from May 23rd, 2017.

Ovais Sarmad was appointed to the post at the assistant secretary-general level by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The appointment has been made after consultation with the Conference of Parties through its Bureau. Sarmad will succeed Richard Kinley of Canada.

HDFC Life has entered into a bancassurance (the selling of life assurance and other insurance products and services by banking institutions) tie-up with Catholic Syrian Bank to distribute its individual life insurance products to the private lender's customers. It will offer its leading range of individual life insurance, health and pension products to the Catholic Syrian Bank's 1.5 million customer base across all its branches over a period of time.

World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) is celebrated annually on 17 May. The theme for WTISD-2017 is "Big Data for Big Impact". The purpose of WTISD is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other Information and Communication technologies (ICT) can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide.

GVK group's Mumbai airport has been crowned the world's busiest among the single-runway facilities which handle 757 flights a day. Mumbai airport flew 45.2 million people in 2017. Of this, 12.4 million were international travellers. Mumbai handled only 18.6% of total air traffic in the country.

French President Emmanuel Macron appointed Edouard Philippe as the new Prime Minister of France. He is the second-youngest Prime Minister of France after Laurent Fabius.

Indian Navy and the Space Application Centre has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Data Sharing and Scientific cooperation in the field of Meteorology and Oceanology. As per the MoU, the scientific advancements and expertise achieved by Space Application Center (SAC) would be synergised into the Indian Naval efforts in order to keep the Indian Navy with rapid developments that have taken place in the field of Environment Sciences and Satellite Data acquisition technology.

Riftah Sharook who hails from Tamil Nadu's who hails from Tamil Nadu's has created the world's smallest satellite, naming it 'KalamSat'. It weighs only 64 grams and is named after former President APJ Abdul Kalam. The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre. It will be launched by NASA on June 21 from Wallops Island. KalamSat was selected through a competition, 'Cubes in Space,' which was jointly organised by NASA and an organisation, 'I Doodle Learning'.

Anshu Jamsenpa was the first Indian woman to scale Mount Everest four times and she will attempt a double ascent to climb the world's highest peak for a fifth time.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) predicted India's gross domestic product (GDP) growth will be around 7.4% for fiscal 2017-18. The industrial and services sector are expected to grow by 6.9% and 8.4% respectively and the agriculture sector is estimated to reach 3.5 per cent growth and improvement in 2017-18.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has collaborated with the British Geological Survey (BGS) to turn Varanasi into a smart city. The project includes application of geo-scientific methods like drilling, geological, geophysical, tectonics, hydrogeological and remote sensing. It would be the first major 3D subsurface urban study and planning of its kind in India, with the ultimate aim of developing methodologies and input of suburban geology for planning and hazard risk assessment. The purpose of the project is to develop the methodologies and approaches of urban geosciences and engineering of Varanasi as a pilot for other Indian cities.

India has been placed in the second spot in the renewable energy country attractiveness index by EY. The country has added over 10 gigawatt (Gw) of solar power was added between 2015 and 2017 and wind energy capacity grew to 5.4 Gw in 2017-18. This growth is in the context of the government's ambitious targets - 175 Gw of renewables by 2022, with 40 per cent installed capacity from renewables by 2030.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has launched the 'Operation Clean Money' portal that aims "to create a tax-compliant society". It will identify those who have made deposits or purchases not in line with the declared income and also enable transparent Tax Administration by sharing status reports, including an explanation of verification issues.

Aravind Kumar Rengan, a professor at Indian Institute of Technology - Hyderabad has been awarded the prestigious Indian National Science Academy (INSA) award in the Young Scientist category for 2017. He is an assistant professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering, he is being recognized for having devised a novel way of nano delivery using liposomes and gold nanoparticles. This is useful for both imaging and therapeutics, IIT-Hyderabad said in a statement.