24th May 2015 - Important Current Affairs updates

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International Affairs

• Iran has agreed to grant United Nations inspectors “managed access” to military sites as part of a future deal over its contested nuclear programme.
• About Iran :
• Capital : Tehran
• Currency : Iranian rial
• Supreme leader : Ali Khamenei
• President : Hassan Rouhani
• Vice President  :  Eshaq Jahangiri
• Official language : Persian
• Ireland‬ voted overwhelmingly to legalise the same-sex marriage.
• It has become the first country in the world to approve gay marriage by a popular vote in a move that depicts a rapid social change in this traditionally Catholic nation.
• India is planning to ask Pakistan to seize assets of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and most wanted terrorists Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, as all the three are in the UNSC’s al-Qaeda sanctions list that makes it incumbent upon Islamabad to freeze their holdings.

National Affairs

• Centre launches a comprehensive plan to provide 'Soil Health Card' to all farmers across the country.
• The card will carry crop-wise recommendations of nutrients / fertilizers required for farms, making it possible for farmers to improve productivity by wisely using the inputs.
• Pressing for 5 percent reservation, Gujjars today intensified their agitation by blocking highways in parts of Rajasthan and threatening to expand it across the state as they alleged that the state government had failed to offer any concrete proposal to meet their demand.
• Government is likely to make psychometric test mandatory for assessing the mental health of pilots of domestic carriers.
• This move came against the backdrop of a Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crashing a plane in the Alps in March.
• Minister of State for Civil Aviation : Mahesh Sharma

Deaths

• John Nash‬ (13th June 1928 — 23rd May 2015), the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician
  
  whose life story inspired the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, has died in a car crash with his wife Alicia Nash.
• Nash is best known for the Nash Equilibrium, on the subject of game theory, that won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences in the year 1994.
• In 1978, he was awarded the John von Neumann Theory prize for the Nash Equilibrium.
• He was awarded the Abel Prize in 2015 for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations.
• About A Beautiful Mind
• This film was based on the John Nash's biography written by Sylvia Nasar.
• Directed by Ron Howard
• Russell Crowe portrayed John Nash in the film.
• In the year 2002 the film was awarded four Academy Awards, for Best Adapted Screenplay (Akiva Goldsman), Best Picture (Brian Grazer and Ron Howard), Best Director (Ron Howard) and Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Connelly).

Awards & Honors

• Indian film Masaan has won the prestigious critics prize in the Un Certain Regard category at the 68th Cannes Film Festival.
• Masaan, a joint production of Manish Mundra, Macassar Productions, Arte France Cinema, Sikhya Entertainment & Phantom Films, stars newcomers like Vicky Kaushal and Shweta Tripathi, along with Sanjay Mishra and Richa Chadda.
• Note : The film received a five-minute standing ovation at the festival where it premiered on May 20.

Business & Economy

• RBI to soon set up a Central Fraud Registry for quick sharing of information about unscrupulous borrowers.
• The idea is to set up a structure for quick sharing of information about unscrupulous borrowers and help banks fight bad loans. 
• The Registry will work under the supervision of the RBI.
• Note : Currently, there is no single database that lenders can access for all relevant details of previously reported frauds. 
• Government will soon privatise eight loss-making hotels run by ITDC as it plans to "offload" all the sick units.
• The eight hotels which are likely to go under the hammer include those at Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Jammu, Guwahati, Ranchi, Pondicherry and the Lalitha Mahal hotel in Mysore, all of which are loss-making.  
• ITDC : India Tourism Development Corporation
• Tourism Minister : Mahesh Sharma

Sports

• 8th IPL Final between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians has started in Kolkata this evening.
• Indian boxers round off  Doha International Tournament with 4 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronze.
• Commonwealth Games silver medalist L Devendro Singh (49kg), Shiva Thapa (56kg), Manish Kaushik (60kg), and Manoj Kumar (64kg) won the gold medals.
• The silver medal went to Gaurav Bidhuri (52kg)
• Mandeep Jangra (69kg) and Vikas Krishan (75kg) bagged bronze medals.

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