The Indian Air Force is set to operationalize its squadron called the Number-18 – Flying Bullets with a fleet of the Light Combat Aircraft, LCA Tejas at its Sulur base near Coimbatore. It will be launched by the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria.

The research and rating agency CRISIL has revised its forecast downwards again and expects Indian economy to contract 5 percent in fiscal 2020-21. This was 1.8 percent in last prediction.
This means India’s GDP growth for FY21 has been estimated to be -5%

Sports Authority of India (SAI) has deposited Rs.30,000 each to 2,749 Khelo India athletes as out of pocket allowance (OPA) amid the COVID-19 lockdown. The total sum of the amount is Rs.8.25 crore in all. The announcement regarding disbursement of the Khelo India allowances was made by Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Kiren Rijiju.

The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) has joined hands with ICICI Bank to offer retail financing schemes to its customers.

Suman Gawani, the Indian Army Major, will be awarded ‘United Nations Military Gender Advocate of the Year Award (2019)’ for her contribution to the United Nations anti-sexual violence campaign. Major Suman Gawani is also the first Indian Peacekeeper to have received the award from the United Nations. The award is also being given to the Brazilian Naval Officer Commander Carla Monteiro de Castro Araujo. This is the first time that two Peacekeepers are being awarded jointly.

Arunachal Pradesh government has initiated the process of getting GI Registration of Khamti Lahi Rice, Tawang Maize and Adi Ginger.

Ministry of Minority Affairs flagship programme ‘Hunar Haat’ will restart from September 2020 with the theme of “Local to Global”.

The Research Centre Imarat (RCI), DRDO, here has developed an AI-based Attendance Application (AINA) that allows non-contact based personnel verification, using facial features of the person, in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic making it unsafe to use contact-based biometric verification for attendance marking systems.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice A K Sikri has inaugurated the Indian Dispute Resolution Centre (IDRC).

Govt allocates Rs 500 crore towards beekeeping under AtmaNirbhar Abhiyan. Government is promoting beekeeping as part of its aim to double farmers’ income and it has allocated 500 crore rupees towards beekeeping under the AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

The northeastern state of Mizoram has accorded ‘industry’ status to sports. The  Cabinet cleared the Sports and Youth Service department’s proposal to recognise sports as an ‘industry’ in the state. This is a historic decision heard by any other state to do this, stated state Sports minister Robert Romawia Royte, adding that the idea was first proposed in 2019 as part of the state sports policy by the ruling Mizo National Front government.

Airtel Payments Bank (APBL) has partnered with Mastercard to develop customized products for the underbanked spectrum including farmers, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and retail customers.
The collaboration aims at building a digital platform which provides farmers with knowledge about advanced farming techniques and connection to marketplaces, while simultaneously enabling them to receive payments directly in their Airtel Payments Bank account.

Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways and MSMEs Nitin Gadkari inaugurated the Chamba Tunnel in Uttarakhand under Chardham Pariyojana through video conference mode on 26 May 2020. The tunnel was constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers announced that HIL INDIA, a PSU under the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, is to produce and supply the pesticides for the farming community, amid the COVID-19 lockdown. HIL is to supply 25 MT Malathion Technical for supply to locust control program to Iran under Government to Government arrangement.

Four Indian cosmonauts, who have been selected for India’s first manned space mission Gaganyaan, have resumed their training in Russia. The training was put on hold due to the lockdown was announced after the outbreak of COVID-19.

Luigi Simoni, a former Inter Milan coach who led the Italian team to the UEFA Cup title in 1998, passed away in May 2020.

The first meeting of the 15th Finance Commission’s (XVFC) committee on Fiscal Consolidation Roadmap was held through video conferencing (VC). The committee headed by Nand Kishore (NK) Singh has recommended the judgement of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on monetisation of fiscal deficit, as RBI is government’s principal debt manager.The Committee also estimated India’s GDP growth to -6% to 1% in the financial year 2020-21.The nominal GDP will accelerate to 4-5% in FY2021-22.

The Indian Association Uganda (IAU), in association with the Indian Military Advisory and Training Team there, handed over a state-of-the-art military training facility to Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF). The war game centre, named ‘INDIA’, was inaugurated by Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda, the Army stated.

An Indian-American inventor Dr. Rajiv Joshi has bagged the prestigious Inventor of the Year award for the year 2020 for his pioneering work in advancing the electronic industry and improving artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
Dr Joshi works at the IBM Thomson Watson Research Center in New York.
The $5,000.00 award is presented every year by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association (NYIPLA) in recognition of the contribution that the invention has and/or will make towards society as a whole.

Power Finance Corporation (PFC), the central PSU under the Ministry of Power and India’s leading NBFC, signed an agreement with Narmada Basin Projects Company Ltd. (NBPCL), a wholly-owned company of Government of Madhya Pradesh on 26 May 2020.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) launched a ‘Cyber Security Handbook’ for students of class 9 to 12. The handbook discussed topics such as digital security, digital rights and responsibilities and digital law. The handbook comes in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent nationwide lockdown that has forced many schools to move their teaching online.

The International Missing Children’s Day is observed on 25 May every year to remember and pay tribute to the children who have gone missing and have been found. The symbol of the International Missing Children’s Day is the forget me not flower. The day was initially proclaimed by the U.S. President Ronald Reagan on 25 May 1983 as the “National Missing Children’s Day” following the disappearance of a six-year-old boy, Etan Patz in 1979, on his way to school in New York City. The International Missing Children’s Day was formally recognized in 2001, by the collaborative efforts of International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children(ICMEC), MEC, Missing Children Europe and the European Commission.

NASA has renamed its next-generation space telescope- Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), after the space agency’s first chief astronomer Nancy Grace Roman. Nancy Grace Roman is considered as the mother of Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched 30 years ago.

Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar has launched NBA-UNDP India’s Biodiversity Samrakshan Internship Programme.

Legendary hockey player and three-time Olympic gold medal-winning legend, Balbir Singh Senior passed away in Mohali, Punjab. He was 95

Sh. Prakash Javadekar inaugurated the first-of-its-kind digital Model Conference of Parties 2020 (MCOP-1) to involve the younger generation in conversations around the impact of humanity’s footprint on biodiversity and also the importance of sustenance of biodiversity for our own survival. It was conducted by World Wide Fund (WWF) India, in partnership with MoEFCC (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change), NBA, UNEP and UNDP on May 22 and 23, as part of the International Day for Biological Diversity.

China’s first unmanned helicopter drone, AR500C unmanned helicopter, made its maiden flight at an AVIC base in Poyang in East China’s Jiangxi Province. The drone was developed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). The helicopter has been designed in plateau areas and capable of firing and conducting reconnaissance from a high altitude.

The Tamil Nadu government has started preliminary works for implementing the unique Solar Fence Farmland Protection Programme, under the Central Agriculture Improvement Scheme.

The Ministry of Finance releases the Government Status Paper on debt. The Ninth Edition of the Status Paper on the Government Debt was released by the Central Government. The status paper provides a detailed analysis of the Overall Debt Position of the Indian Government. The Government of India has been bringing-out a Status Paper on the Debt of Government since the fiscal year 2010-2011. The document is released to provide an improvement in transparency and openness by providing a detailed account of debt operations during the year. The document covers detailed information about the financing operations of the fiscal deficit of the Central Government during the year 2018-19.

Canara Bank, one of the largest public sector banks owned by the Indian government, has announced credit support for all its borrowers, who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bank will provide quick and hassle-free loans to all its borrowers to help them overcome temporary liquidity mismatches.