Renowned Indian-American soil scientist Rattan Lal was on 11th June entitled this year’s winner of USD 250,000 World Food Prize, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admiring his research in soil science, saying he is serving millions of small farmers around the world with his work on rising food production and recycling of nutrients.

Madhya Pradesh is set to bounce in around Rs 25,000 crore into its rural economy by the time its all-time high wheat procurement brings to a close. This has made the state the country’s largest wheat buyer in 2020-21.

The global economy is on way to drop by 5.2 % this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the deepest recession since the Second World War, the World Bank Group stated in its latest Global Economic Prospects.

Renjith Kumar, Engineer from Kerala and Indian Entrepreneur based in Virginia is respected with NASA’s highest form of recognition for a non-governmental individual “NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal” for his work to NASA through executive leadership, engineering contribution, technical excellence and customer satisfaction.

• Memorandum of Understanding between India and Bhutan for environment security and cooperation in the areas involving air quality, waste, chemical management and climate variation.

• The Punjab government on 12^th June started a mobile application named “Ghar Ghar Nigrani”.
• Purpose: Undertaking house to house monitoring to check the spread of COVID-19. The application is to be utilized as a tool for early detection and testing of COVID-19 and stop community spread.

• Every year, the International Albinism Awareness Day is observed on June 13. The day is marked to commemorate the human rights of the persons affected by Albinism worldwide.
• Theme 2020: Made to Shine

• Odisha has become the first state in the country to obtain International Organization for Standardization(ISO) certification for hostels for tribal students.
• The ST&SC Welfare Department had earlier began the ‘Mission Suvidya’ project to give all the tribal hostels of the state uniform standards of infrastructure, amenities and human resources.

Denmark topped and India has stood on 168th out of 180 countries in the 2020 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), according to researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, who state that India’s decarbonization agenda requires to expedite, and the country suffers a number of serious environmental health risks, including poor air quality.

Google is making a change in its Google Cloud managerial division. It has selected Anil Valluri as the Senior Director for Google Cloud India. Valluri has over 30 years of knowledge in sales and marketing in the hi-tech industry.

• India’s financial capital Mumbai has appeared as the most expensive city in the country for expatriates in terms of the value of living.
• According to Mercer’s ‘2020 Cost of Living Survey’, Mumbai is the 60th most valuable city for expatriates globally, while it ranks 19th in Asia.

India football team maintained its 108th spot in the latest FIFA rankings. While Belgium ranked first and world champion France is in 2nd place and Brazil is at the 3rd spot.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday (13 June) started the ‘Bal Shramik Vidya Yojana’, a scheme to educate child laborers in the state. The scheme’s release coincides with the ‘World Day Against Child Labour’.

World Day Against Child Labour is commemorated on June 12. The day is considered each year to highlight the barbarous practice of child labour.

• In chess, the final of the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge moved all the way to a tie-breaking Armageddon match from which Russian Daniil Dubov become the champion after beating Hikaru Nakamura of the United States.

• World Blood Donor Day is celebrated every year on 14 June. So that people get conscious of donating blood.
• Theme 2020: ‘Safe Blood Saves Lives’
• Slogan: ‘Give blood and make the world a healthy place.’

• Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, on 9th June, started the “Panchavati Yojana” for senior citizens of rural areas in the state.
• In this scheme, parks and gardens will be made in all the development blocks with essential facilities under the MNREGA scheme of the Rural Development Department.

In a bid to assist and empower women against domestic violence and abuse, the Hyderabad City Security Council (HCSC) in association with Hyderabad City Police has started the ‘STREE’ programme. The name shows the vision – “She Triumphs through Respect, Equality, and Empowerment” (STREE).

• The Gargo International, the Delhi based lubricant company under the RG group selects Sonu Sood as the brand ambassador in January 2020 and adored him now for his support service for the migrants and went live with their TVC starring Sonu Sood.

In order to exclude the use of the physical card or touch an ATM PIN pad, amid the expanse of coronavirus from contaminated surfaces, Empays Payment Systems has tied hands with Mastercard to begin “Cardless ATM powered by Mastercard” in India based on the standards of EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa).

In the Largest States, Gujarat is in the first place, following by Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra food safety in 2019-20, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) announced on 7th June.

In Madhya Pradesh, a plantation drive called “Thank Mom” has been commenced on the axioms of Social Justice and Disabled Welfare Directorate from today on World Environment Day.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh began Street Vendor Registration Portal http://www.mpurban.gov.in/and “Mukhyamantri Shahri Path Vyavasayi Utthan Yojana” and transferred Rs 300 crore to the urban local bodies.

• Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who has been launching welfare schemes for the prosperity of the poor, has embarked on another scheme. He started the Jagananna Chedodu scheme on Wednesday.
• Goal:  Rs. 10,000 to Nayi Brahmins, Laundrymen and Tailors as financial support.

• The Andhra Pradesh government on 12th June inked a concession agreement with GMR Airports Ltd for making a greenfield international airport at Bhogapuram in Vizianagaram district which will be ready by 2023.

• June 8th is observed as World Oceans Day to aware everyone of the significance of oceans’ role in our everyday life.
• Theme 2020: ‘Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean’.

• Russian high jumper Alexander Shustov, the 2010 European champion, has got a four-year ban for anti-doping violations.
• Shustov, who withdrew from the competition in 2017, has been suspended until 2024 for “usage or attempted usage of a banned material or prohibited method”.

• India’s Gomathi Marimuthu will be stripped off her 2019 Asian Athletics Championships gold medal after she was given a four-year ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit for testing positive of doping.

• Minister for primary and secondary education S Suresh Kumar on 10th June announced that online classes cannot be carried out for the kids from LKG to class V.
• He also said that severe action will be taken against the schools charging additional fees in the name of online classes.

Expert Urdu poet Anand Mohan Zutshi Gulzar Dehlvi passed away 12th June, less than a week after healing from the novel COVID-19. He was 93.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) declared India’s growth at -3.7% for the ongoing fiscal with a rider that growth could decline further to -7.3% in the event of a second COVID-19 outbreak, according to its Economic Outlook (EO) published on 10th June.

The World Bank assumes India’s economy to contract 3.2% in the current fiscal year (2020-21), a sharp downgrade from its April projection of 1.5%-2.8% growth, citing rigorous lockdown and spillovers from weaker global growth.

Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister released a “Sahakar Mitra” Scheme Internship Program (SIP)of the NCDC(National Cooperative Development Corporation ) to give paid internship to the Youth

Indian Musician Shobha Sekhar, the founder of Kalakruthi a music organization in Australia gets the Medal of the Order of Australia(OAM) in the Queen’s Birthday 2020 for her contribution to Indian music and dance.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore has appeared as the best university in India accompanied by the Jawaharlal National University (JNU) and Banaras Hindu University (BHU), according to the National Indian Ranking Framework (NIRF) Ranking 2020.

• Fitch Ratings has oozed confidence that the Indian economy will spring back from the prevailing contraction and slowdown mainly on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic and projected India’s GDP to rise at a healthy rate in the next fiscal year.
• The credit rating agency has predicted India’s GDP to increase at 9.5 percent in FY 2021-22 after a contraction of 5% (means -5%) fiscal year 2020-21.

• The Odisha Cabinet on 7th June recommended a proposal to give state anthem status of Odisha to ”Bande Utkala Janani”.
• Parliamentary Affairs Minister Bikram Keshari Arukh said that the Cabinet led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik agreed with state anthem status to ”Bande Utkala Janani”.

• Previous NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan became the first woman to reach Challenger Deep, the deepest point in the ocean. Sullivan was also the first American woman to perform a spacewalk over 36 years ago. So right now, she’s the first human to have done both.

National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) under Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has turned ‘Fully Digital’, with the start of unique cloud-based and Artificial Intelligence-powered Big Data Analytics platform – Data Lake and Project Management Software.