Current Affairs 17th July 2017

Current Affairs 17th July 2017 - Important Points

• 2017 IIFA awards ceremony held on - 15th July 2017
• NASA’s Juno Spacecraft to flyby Jupiter's Great Red Spot on - 10th July 2017
• Who has been appointed UNICEF’s Global Goodwill Ambassador?- Lilly Singh
• Former Sikkim CM Nar Bahadur Bhandari passed away on - 16th July 2017
• Maryam Mirzakhani, Fields Medal winner, passed away on - 15th July 2017
• NASA's New Horizons spacecraft unveils new maps of Pluto, Charon on - 14th July 2017
• 8th Wimbledon title record beating Marin Cilic in Men's singles by - Roger Federer
• Farooq Abdullah, PK Kunhalikutty took oath as Member of Lok Sabha on - 17th July 2017
• Galaxy 1000 times brighter than Milky Way discovered by - Scientists
• Wimbledon Women’s Singles title clinched by - Garbine Muguruza
• Millions of precious minerals under Indian seabed discovered by - Geological team

Current Affairs 17th July 2017 - Details

2017 IIFA awards ceremony held on - 15th July 2017

The 18th edition of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards was announced on 15th July 2017 at MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
The Hindi films of 2016 were awarded by the International Indian Film Academy on this occasion.
Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt bagged the Best Actors for Udta Punjab, where as the best film award was given to film Neerja.

Awards and awardees list

• Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury bagged for Best Director for movie Pink and Anupam Kher for M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story While Shabana Azmi awarded with Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Neerja

More about IIFA awards

• The awards are presented by the International Indian Film Academy to honor both artistic and technical excellence of professionals in Bollywood, the Hindi language film industry every year.
• The ceremony of the awards, instituted in 2000, is held in different countries around the world every year with the most recent was held in New Rutherford Jersey on 14th -15th July 2017.

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft to flyby Jupiter's Great Red Spot on - 10th July 2017

NASA’s unmanned spacecraft Juno became the first space probe to complete flyby of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot on 10 July 2017. The spacecraft peered into the Jupiter’s giant storm known as the Great Red Spot. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a massive storm or cyclone measuring about 16000 km in diameter.

Key Highlights

• The Great Red Spot which is the largest known storm in the solar system has possibly existed for more than 350 years.
• This spot has been under the observations since 1830.
• The spot appears as a deep red sphere surrounded by layers of orange, pale yellow and white.
• The storm is shrunk in the recent years.
• This spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program in August 2011, named from Greco-Roman mythology.
• Juno has been orbiting solar system’s largest planet Jupiter since July 2016 around Jupiter pole to pole from 5000 kilometers above planet’s cloud tops.
• Juno's mission is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter and also to investigate the existence of its core.
• Juno has the mission life till February 2018.

Who has been appointed UNICEF’s Global Goodwill Ambassador?- Lilly Singh

Indian-origin Canadian YouTuber Lilly Singh has been appointed by UNICEF as its newest Global Goodwill Ambassador on 15th July 2017.
As the UNICEF ambassador, Singh will be using her channel to showcase the organisation’s work and urge millions of her followers to work for children’s rights.

Important Highlights

• Born on 26th September 1988, Lilly Singh is a Canadian YouTube personality with channel’s name is IISuperwomanII, comedian, vlogger, writer and actress.
• She started her channel in October 2010, her videos have received over 2 billion views, and her channel has over 11.9 million subscribers.
• She was ranked 3rd on the Forbes list of the world's highest paid YouTube stars in 2016.
• She ranked 1st on Forbes Top Influencers List in entertainment category in 2017.
• As a goodwill ambassador she will advocate for a specific cause on the basis of their notability.
• Headquartered in New York City UNICEF is a United Nations program that providing humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries.
• The UNICEF was created by the United Nations General Assembly on 11th December 1946.
• UNICEF was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

Former Sikkim CM Nar Bahadur Bhandari passed away on - 16th July 2017

Nar Bahadur Bhandari, the former chief minister of Sikkim who served the state from 1979 to 1994, died at a Delhi hospital on 16th July 2017. He was 77 at the time of death.

Important Highlights

• Born on 5th October 1940 at Malbasey in Sikkim, Bhandari was serving a government school as a teacher before joining the active politics.
• He became the Chief Minister of Sikkim for the first time in 1979 on a Sikkim Janata Parishad ticket,It was the same party, he founded in 1977.
• He dissolved the Sikkim Janata Parishad and formed a new party known as Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP) in 1984.
• He was also the former president of Sikkim Pradesh Congress Committee.
• Bhandari was the first Gorkha to ever hold the office of a Chief Minister in the history of Indian Politics after taking the oath as the Chief Minister of Sikkim on 18th of October 1979.

Maryam Mirzakhani, Fields Medal winner, passed away on - 15th July 2017

Maryam Mirzakhani, the first and only woman to receive the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics, died on 15th July 2017 after battling with breast cancer.
The Tehran-born Mirzakhani is the first and to-date only female winner of the Fields Medal since its starting in 1936.
The mathematician had received the medal for her work for understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces.
More about Maryam Mirzakhani

• Born on 3rd May 1977, Maryam Mirzakhani was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University.
• She grew up in Iran and attended an all-girls high school and gained recognition as a teenager in the 1994 and 1995 competitions of the International Mathematical Olympiad.
• She did her graduation from Sharif University in Tehran later on and then went to Harvard University in Massachusetts to get her doctorate in maths.
• Her research topics included Teichmuller theory,ergodic theory,hyperbolic geometry and symplectic geometry.
• On 13th August 2014, she became both the first woman and the first Iranian to be honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. The award committee cited her work in "the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces".

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft unveils new maps of Pluto, Charon on - 14th July 2017

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft unveiled a set of detailed and high-quality global maps of Pluto and its largest moon Charon on the occasion of the two year anniversary of the flyby on 14th July 2017.
These new maps from the landmark exploration of Pluto by NASA’s New Horizons mission will going to help unravel the mysteries associated with Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft made its historic flight through the Pluto system on 14th July 2015. It provided the first close-up images of Pluto and its moons and collected other data for deeper understanding of these mysterious worlds on the outer frontier of solar system.
More about New Horizons Mission

• The purpose of New Horizons mission is to study Pluto, its moons and the Kuiper Belt and to perform flybys of the Pluto system along with one or more Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs).
• It was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program into an Earth-and-solar-escape trajectory with Earth-relative speed of about 16.26 km per second.
• This spacecraft made the closest approach to Jupiter in February 2007.
• Scientists are still uncovering and analyzing the data that New Horizons recorded and provided after the encounter.

Google Maps now tells you best time of day to travel

Google Maps in July 2017 launched a new feature in its App for Android users where users can see a graph on the best time to travel.

Important Details

• It is available in the United States and Britain presently, the new travel time graph has bars for half an hour before and a few hours after the current time.
• There’s also a dotted line just above the bars with a time indicated.
• This will going to help users to know how to get somewhere or how long the trip should take along with green, yellow, or red highlights to indicate current traffic conditions.
• The new feature pops up when you input directions.
• The bar graph will also be showing an estimation of how long it would have taken a half hour earlier and how long it will take in the next few hours.
• Going forward, when users open Google Maps app, they will be able to see a directions card instantly with different modes of transportation.
• If users like to access a certain route while on the go without using data, they can save the route before starting the travel to be used offline.
• Moreover, the home screen of the Maps also shows shortcuts that will help users to explore the app in just a few quick taps.

8th Wimbledon title record beating Marin Cilic in Men's singles by - Roger Federer

Roger Federer won a record eighth Wimbledon title with a straight-sets victory over Marin Cilic on 16th July 2017.
36-year old Federer also became the tournament’s oldest champion after this win.
Federer defeated Marin Cilic 6-3, 6-1, 6-4 in the finals , he played in Wimbledon, London.
It was his 19th Grand Slam title and it was Swiss superstar's 11th Wimbledon final and 29th title at the majors.
Federer also became the first player since Bjorn Borg in 1976 to win Wimbledon without dropping a set in the tournament, after this victory.

In addition to that, the women’s singles title of the Wimbledon went to Garbine Muguruza.

 To win the title, Muguruza defeated Venus Williams 7-5 6-0 in the finals, ending her hopes to become the oldest women’s Wimbledon champion in the open era.

Farooq Abdullah, PK Kunhalikutty took oath as Member of Lok Sabha on - 17th July 2017

National Conference patron and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and Indian Union Muslim League’s PK Kunhalikutty  on 17th July 2017 took oath as the Member of Parliament (MP) in the Lok Sabha.

Abdullah took the oath in Kashmiri and elected to the lower house of Parliament, while Kunhalikutty opted for English.

Abdullah defeated his People Democratic Party rival Nazir Ahmed Khan by more than
10000 votes from the Srinagar-Budgam parliamentary constituency. Also, Kunhalikutty was elected after winning the Malappuram by-poll in Kerala. He defeated Communist Party of youth leader MB Faisal and India-Marxist candidate.

Galaxy 1000 times brighter than Milky Way discovered by - Scientists

A group of researchers discovered a very distant galaxy, which is about a thousand times brighter than the Milky Way.
Researchers say that it is the brightest of the sub millimeter galaxies, a class of ultra luminous infrared galaxies. This discovery was published recently in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Key Highlights

• The researchers used the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma) in Spain to measure this galaxy.
• In order to search the brightest sub millimeter galaxies, researchers carried out the complete sky search, combined the data bases of NASA's WISE satellite and European Space Agency's Planck satellite.
• The galaxy's light, amplified by a much nearer galaxy cluster acts as a lens, forming an image that appears much bigger than it should be, and it is due to this effect that the researchers could characterize its properties and nature spectroscopically using the GTC.
• Gravitational lensing phenomenon is comparable to that produced by lenses on light rays, and acts as a magnifier, intensity of the apparent image and changing the size of the original object.
• Due to the gravitational lens produced by a cluster of galaxies between them and the source,that acts as if it was a telescope, the galaxy appears 11 times bigger and brighter than it really is.
• The galaxy is notable to have a high rate of star formation. It forms stars at a rate of 1000 solar masses per year as compared to the Milky Way, which forms stars at a rate of some twice a solar mass yearly.

Wimbledon Women’s Singles title clinched by - Garbine Muguruza

Spanish Garbine Muguruza defeated Venus Williams 7-5 6-0 grab the Wimbledon Women’s Singles title on 15th July 2017. Muguruza is the second Spanish woman to claim the world’s most important title.
After this she joined her current coach Conchita Martinez, who won the title in 1994, on the honor roll. Along with that, Muguruza is the only woman in history to have beaten both Venus Williams and Serena in a grand slam final.

More about Garbine Muguruza

• Born on 8th October 1993, Garbine Muguruza is a Venezuelan-born Spanish professional tennis player.
• She became professional in 2012.
• She has won four singles titles, including two majors: the 2016 French Open, and the 2017 Wimbledon Championships.
• She achieved her career-high ranking of world no. 2 in 2016 after her French Open victory.
  As of 17th July 2017, WTA ranks her as World Number 5.
• The Wimbledon Championships is the oldest tennis tournament in the world.
• It is widely regarded as the most important tournament.
• It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877 and is played on outdoor grass courts.
• It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments,the French Open, the others being the Australian Open and the US Open.
• Andy Murray was the defending champion in the Gentleman's singles in the Wimbledon Championships 2017 however, he lost to Sam Querrey in the quarter-finals.
• Serena Williams did not defend her title during the 2017 championships due to pregnancy.

Millions of precious minerals under Indian seabed discovered by - Geological team

Scientists from the Geological Survey of India discovered millions of tonnes of metals and precious minerals deep under the waters surrounding the Indian peninsula.
The GSI compiled the data after surveying 181025 square kilometers of seabed.
Indian research vessels Samudra Ratnakar, Samudra Kaustabh and Samudra Saudikama carried out the exploration, named Natural Resource Evaluation and High Resolution Seabed Mapping.
The main objectives of the exploration were to identify potential zones of evaluate marine mineral resources and favorable mineralisation.
The presence of lime mud, phosphate-rich sediments was discovered off Karwar, Mangaluru and Chennai coasts, icro-manganese nodules around Lakshadweep Sea, gas hydrate in the channel-levee system of Mannar Basin off the Tamil Nadu coast and cobalt-bearing ferro-manganese crust from the Andaman Sea.

Key Highlights

• The Geological Survey of India first identified the presence of large amount of marine resources off the coasts of Mangaluru, Chennai, Mannar Basin, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and around Lakshadweep in early 2014.
• After three years of exploration, it had generated 181,025 square kilometers of high-resolution seabed morphological data and established the occurrence of over 10,000 million tonnes of lime mud within the EEZ of India.
• The GSI has also confirmed the presence of phosphate sediment off Karwar, Mangaluru and Chennai coasts, gas hydrate in the Mannar Basin off the Tamil Nadu coast, ferro-manganese crust from the Andaman Sea and micro-manganese around Lakshwadweep Sea.
• The Geological Survey of India was established in 1851.
• It is a government organization in India for conducting geological surveys and studies.
• It is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and the second oldest survey in the country.
• It is the prime provider of basic earth science information to the government, industry and the general public, as well as responsive participant in international geoscientific fora, the vibrant steel, coal, metals, cement and power industries.