Current Affairs - June 9, 2019 Current Affairs

Girish Karnad, veteran bollywood and theatre personality, died on June 10, 2019 in Bengaluru. He was 81. Girish Karnad was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India. One of his latest famous movies was Salman Khan starrer Tiger Zinda Hai as Raw Chief Dr. Shenoy. He served as director of the Film and Television Institute of India (1974-1975) and chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the National Academy of the Performing Arts (1988-93).

The Jammu and Kashmir government has removed J&K Bank Chairman Parvez Ahmad and appointed RK Chibber as interim chairman of the lender. Parvez Ahmad, Chairman cum Managing Director, shall cease to be Director on the Board of Directors of the Bank and consequently be no longer the Chairman cum Managing Director of the board.

The Minister of State for Culture & Tourism, Shri Prahalad Singh Patel inaugurated exhibition "Unknown Masterpieces of Himachal Folk Art", at National Museum, New Delhi. The exhibition is organized by the National Museum, New Delhi and Home of Folk Art of Tribal, Gurugram. More than 240 artifacts will be displayed. Out of this 230 objects belong to the personal lifetime collection of Late K.C. Aryan.

IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) had signed a joint venture in New Delhi for Kandla-Gorakhpur LPG Pipeline Project. They will be laying the world's longest LPG pipeline from Kandla (Gujarat) to Gorakhpur (UP).

The United States has approved the sale of armed drones to India also offered integrated air and missile defence systems. Its objective is to improve India's military capabilities and to protect Indo-Pacific region. NASAMS-II is an upgraded version of the NASAMS developed by Raytheon in partnership with KONGSBERG Defence and Aerospace of Norway. NASAMS-II is highly adaptable mid-range solution for any operational air defence requirement.

Haryana government has issued an order to withdraw Economically Backward Persons in General Caste Category (EBPG) reservation since Economically Weaker Sections reservation (EWS) came into effect. EWS comes under Constitution 124th Amendment Bill, 2019 passed by the parliament to allow 10% reservation for economically backward sections in the general category in government jobs and academic institutions in January 2019.

US Novelist Tayari Jones received Women's Prize for Fiction worth $40,000 for her novel An American Marriage. The novel was praised by Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey. This is her fourth novel based on a middle-class black couple torn apart by injustice. She also received Aspen Words Literary Prize for the same novel in April 2019.

Indian-American Pramila Jayapal of age 53, a Democrat from Washington DC set a record by becoming first South Asian American woman to preside over the US House of Representatives as a temporary speaker. She was first elected in 2016. The Congress holds about 17 Asian Americans, with 14 in the House and three in the Senate.

Singer Rihanna of age 31 is named as the world's richest female according to the Forbes magazine with an estimated fortune of $600 million. She overtook Madonna and Beyonce who topped the list previously. She is from Barbados. She is the owner of Fenty Beauty, a cosmetics brand. She is also the first woman to have a clothing range with French company Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH).

In French Open Tennis, Australian Ashleigh Barty won her first Grand Slam singles title after easing past Czech teenager Marketa Vondrousova in straight sets in the women's final.

The RBI has slapped a penalty of Rs. 2 crores on Kotak Mahindra Bank for the non-state lender's failure to adhere to the regulator's diktat on promoter shareholding. The central bank has been engaged in a dispute with Kotak Mahindra since 2014 over its failure to meet the milestone for stake reduction by Uday Kotak, the billionaire promoter of the bank.

Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs will have Shri Rajnath Singh Minister of Defence; Shri Amit Shah, Minister of Home Affairs. Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance; Minister of Corporate Affairs; Shri Ramvilas Paswan, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution; Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of Agriculture &Farmer Welfare, Minister of Rural Development, and Minister of Panchayati Raj; Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology and Minister of Law and Justice; Shri Thawar Chand Gehlot, Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment; Shri Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Environment, Forest & Climate Change; Minister of Information & Broadcasting; Shri Prahlad Joshi, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Minister of Coal and Mines. It will be headed by Rajnath Singh. The Special Invitees are Arjun Ram Meghwal and V Muraleedharan.

Thailand Parliament elected Prayuth Chan-ocha as the Prime Minister of the country. This will be the second term of Prayuth. Prayuth is the candidate of the military-backed Palang Pracharath party.

Indian Army launched an online platform, Retired Officers Digital Records Archive (RODRA), https://rodra.gov.in with an aim to have a better connection with armed forces veteran officers and family pensioners. The website provides facilities such as updating records, registration, and tracking of documents and pension-related grievances and communicating regarding various issues. It will act as an interface between the custodian of officers' records, AG/MP 5&6 and veteran officers, next of kin (NOK). The website saves manpower, stationery, and postal charges by discontinuing Pension Payment Order (PPOs), which is now available in the website itself.

India will tour New Zealand in 2020 to play in all three formats - T20 Internationals, One-Day Internationals and Test matches, beginning January 24, 2020.