CHHATTISGARH

Preserving Chhattisgarh’s tribal culture through dolls
The women folk of Chhattisgarh craft doll and toys recently organised an event depicting handmade dolls made by the tribal s of Bastar region. The dolls were exhibited at Haat Bazar which was open for the public. The dolls are generally hollow and does not involve use of any tools. Whistle toys resembling the Bastar and tribal art , are very popular among the locals and tourists. Figures of farmers, birds, animals, dogs, deer, etc are specially designed for the children and has a wheel as a attachment to these toys.

INTERNATIONAL

The Government of India has decided to nominate Professor J S Rajput, former Director NCERT, as India’s representative to the Executive Board (EXB) of UNESCO.

Professor J S Rajput is an eminent educationist with rich experience in various fields including UNESCO.

The executive board is one of the constitutional organs of UNESCO and is elected by the General Conference.

· India U-16 Win Hong Kong Football Tournament

The India U-16 team emerged champions in the Jockey Cup International Youth Invitational Football Tournamentwith a victory over Hong Kong U-17 in the final in Hong Kong.
The tournament was a U-17 event where India fielded their U-16 National Team.
This was the team’s third consecutive victory in as many days. The team was coached by Bibiano Fernandes.

· SWIFT Introduces Universal Real-Time Payment Tracking

SWIFTannounces the extension of its GPI Tracker to cover all payment instructions sent across the network, enabling GPI banks to track all their SWIFT payment instructions at all times, and giving them full visibility over all their payments activity.
The Tracker, which has been available since May 2017, enables banks that have signed up to the service to track their GPI payments in real-time.

NATIONAL

The government has come out with the total number of beggars in the country. As per the data released by Union ministry of Social Justice, there are around 4 lakh beggars in total.

West Bengal is followed by Uttar Pradesh and Bihar at number two and three respectively.

Lakshadweep, a union territory, has only two people begging for their livelihood.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is all set to make face authentication available alongside iris or fingerprint scan as means of verifying Aadhaar users from July 1, 2018.

The UIDAI, which is in-charge of the 12-digit identifier Aadhaar, in January had announced that it will introduce face authentication feature to help those who run into problems in biometric authentication due to old age, hardwork or worn-out fingerprints.

Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden was opened for visitors in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir.
It is recognized as the Asia’s largest tulip garden.
This year, 12.5 lakh tulip bulbs of 48 varieties were sown in the garden by the floriculture department.
Apart from the tulips, 40,000 hyacinth bulbs have also been planted.

Maize production in India has seen a boom in recent years which has been possible due to increase in area as well as productivity.

This was stated by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shri Radha Mohan Singh at the inaugural event of the 5th India Maize Summit 2018 at FICCI, New Delhi.

Delivering the inaugural address, Shri Singh said that during 1950-51, India produced only 1.73 MT, which has reached 25.89 MT in 2016-17 and is expected to cross 27 MT in 2017-18.