Gujarat Titans win IPL title in maiden season

• Gujarat Titans won the Indian Premier League title in their maiden season as they beat Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets in the final in Ahmedabad.

• Gujarat Titans became the first team, since Rajasthan Royals in 2008, to win the tournament in their very first season.

• Rajasthan Royals were restricted to 130 for nine by the Gujarat bowlers. Hardik Pandya bowled brilliantly to finish with figures of 3/17 in his four overs. In reply, Gujarat Titans lost two early wickets but eventually chased down the target of 131 with 11 balls to spare.

• Hardik scored a crucial 34 before Shubman Gill and David Miller remained unbeaten on 45 and 32 to complete an emphatic win for their team.

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Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ wins Cannes Golden Eye

• Shaunak Sen’s ‘All That Breathes’ won the 2022 L’Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) for the best documentary at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.

• ‘All That Breathes’ is about two Delhi brothers Nadeem and Saud who, amid the city’s worsening air and deteriorating social fabric, devote their lives to saving migratory black kites that are at the mercy of mankind’s unthinking ways. The film was screened as part of the festival’s Special Screenings line-up.

• Sen’s win is India’s second in Cannes in two years. In 2021, Payal Kapadia’s ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’, which played in the parallel Semaine de la Critique (Cannes Critics’ Week) took home the L’Oeil d’Or.

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‘Triangle of Sadness’ wins Palme d’Or at Cannes 

• ‘Triangle of Sadness’, a film by Swedish director Ruben Ostlund, won the Palme d’Or for Best Picture at the 75th Cannes Film Festival. 

• Ostlund won the Palme d’Or in 2017 for his film ‘The Square’, a satire about a prestigious art curator. Ostlund is now the ninth director to have won the Palme d’Or twice. He joins a list that has Francis Ford Coppola, Shohei Imamura, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and the Dardenne Brothers.

• The Grand Prix, the prize for the second-best film in Competition, witnessed a tie between 75-year-old French director Claire Denis’ ‘Stars at Noon’, set in mid-1980s Nicaragua, and young Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s sophomore venture ‘Close’, the story of a friendship between two teenage boys.

• The Jury Prize, regarded but not clearly designated as the third prize, went jointly to ‘Le Otto Montagne’ (The Eight Mountains), directed by the Belgian filmmaking couple Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, and and ‘EO’, by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, which is told through the eyes of a donkey.

• South Korean star Song Kang-ho picked up the best actor award for his role in ‘Broker’ while South Korean director Park Chan-wook won the best director prize for his romantic thriller ‘Decision to Leave’.

• Iranian Zar Amir Ebrahimi won best actress for her role as a journalist tracking a serial killer in ‘Holy Spider’. 

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Indian Navy decommissions INS Gomati

• The Indian Navy decommissioned the INS Gomati, a Godavari class guided-missile frigate, after 34 years of service.

• The ship, which had been deployed in Operations Cactus, Parakram and Rainbow, was decommissioned at sunset at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.

• The ship was commissioned on April 16, 1988.

• The third ship of the Godavari class guided-missile frigates, INS Gomati  was also the oldest warrior of the Western Fleet when decommissioned.

• Gomati’s legacy will be kept alive in an open air museum being set up on the banks of the Gomti river (from which the frigate derives her name) in Lucknow where several of her combat systems will be displayed as military and war relics. The Uttar Pradesh government and Indian Navy have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding for this purpose.

• The INS Gomati will be commissioned in a new avatar in the Indian Navy.

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ZSI scientists discover new macaque species in Arunachal Pradesh

• Scientists of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have discovered a new macaque species in Arunachal Pradesh.

• The new species, named ‘Sela Macaque’ (Macaca selai), was found in western and central parts of the state.

• The new species is separated from the Arunachal macaque of Tawang district by Sela Pass.

• The Sela Pass acted as a barrier and prevented migration between the two macaque species for around two million years.

• The Sela macaque is genetically closer to the Arunachal macaque and both species have many similar physical characteristics such as heavy built and long dorsal body hair.

• The Arunachal macaque has a dark face and dark brown colour coat, while the Sela macaque has a pale face and brown colour coat.

• The study on the new macaque species has been published in the Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution journal. 

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North India’s first biotech park inaugurated in J&K’s Kathua

• Union Minister Jitendra Singh inaugurated north India’s first industrial biotech park in Kathua district of Jammu & Kashmir.

• The Indian biotechnology industry is one of the fastest growing knowledge based economies and is expected to play a vital role in shaping India’s economy. 

• The department of biotechnology has established biotechnology parks and incubators across the country to translate research into products and services by providing necessary infrastructure support.

• These biotechnology parks offer facilities to scientists, and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) for technology incubation, technology demonstration and pilot plant studies for accelerated commercial development of biotechnology. 

• This biotech park will carry out research on biodiversity, medicinal and aromatic plants of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, and it will also promote green category businesses.

• The biotech park would act as hub for incubation of new ideas and will act as a robust platform to support the agri-entrepreneurs, startups, farmers, scientists, scholars and students not only from Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh but also from nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

• The park at Kathua has a potential to produce 25 startups in a year.

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