i. India achieves yet another public health milestone, becomes first country to be declared free of Yaws, an infection of the skin and bones, much ahead of WHO global target year of 2020.
ii. Union Health Minister JP Nadda received an official citation from the World Health Organisation and the UNICEF for Elimination of Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus and for being YAWS-free.
iii. YAWS is a kind of bacterial infection that affects skin, bones and joints, while tetanus, another bacterial infection, leads to muscle spasms that can be fatal.

i. President Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the first edition of India Skills Competition today, on the occasion of the World Youth Skills Day in New Delhi. Skill India will be celebrating its first anniversary on the occasion.
ii. In order to select the best talent to represent India at IndiaSkills, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and National Skill Development Corporation India have completed more than 80 regional competitions in 24 skills and trades.
iii. In these competitions more than four thousand and 800 candidates registered to compete this year.The winners will qualify for the final selection round for participating in WorldSkills International Competition at Abu Dhabi 2017. 

i. Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari has reached Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia. He is leading the India delegation for two days 11th Asia Europe Meeting- ASEM-Summit starting from today.
ii. The theme for the summit is "20 Years of ASEM: Partnership for the Future through Connectivity".
iii. The ASEM summit is a unique platform to bridge the two continents for constructive partnership and exchange through political dialogue, economic collaboration and socio- cultural exchanges.

i. The Congress has announced the Senior Congress leader Sheila Dikshit name as the Chief Ministerial candidate by the party for upcoming Uttar Pradesh Asembly elections.
ii. Party General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi along with Ghulam Nabi Azad has announced Dikshit's name at a press conference in All India Congress Committee headquarters, New Delhi.
iii. Earlier, the Congress had also announced the Raj Babbar name as the president of Uttar Pradesh unit of the party.

i. The Government has revised the time schedule for making payments under Income Declaration Scheme 2016. As per the revised schedule, a minimum amount of 25 % of the tax, surcharge and penalty can be paid by 30th of November this year and further amount of 25 % by 31st of March next year. The balance amount can be paid on or before 30th of September 2017.
ii. The window under the Income Declaration Scheme 2016 opened on June 1 and will close on September 30. Tax and penalty on income declared, as per the original scheme, is to be paid by November. The scheme provide an opportunity to domestic black money holders to come clean by paying tax and penalty of 45 per cent on undisclosed assets.
iii. The decision was taken following practical difficulties expressed by various stakeholders that the time period available under the Scheme up to 30th November, 2016 for making payment of tax, surcharge and penalty is very short. 

i. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money has recommended ban on cash transactions of above 3 lakh rupees in a day and a separate law to declare such transactions as illegal and punishable.
ii. It has also suggested upper ceiling of cash holding at 15 lakh rupees to curb illegal wealth in the economy. The SIT felt that the cash transaction limit can only succeed if there is a limitation on cash holding. The panel said, in case any person or industry required holding more cash, it may obtain necessary permission from the Commissioner of Income Tax of the area.
iii. The SIT headed by retired Justice M B Shah, submitted its fifth report to the Supreme Court. 

i. The Central Government has approved the projects involving an investment of 19 crore 50 lakh rupees for Mewat and Sirsa districts of Haryana, under Multi Sectoral Development Programme (MSDP). These districts include Sirsa, Palwal, Mewat, Yamunanagar, Fatehabad and Kaithal.
ii. According to officials, the share of Central and State Governments would be 11.71 crore and 7.81 crore rupees respectively, for the implementation of projects.
iii. Under this Multi Sectoral Development Programme (MSDP), the class rooms, toilets for students and separate toilets for children with special needs would be constructed.

i. The West Bengal government has set a target to construct toilets across all villages of the state by March 2019 to enable open defecation free (ODF) rural Bengal.
ii. Mr. Dibyendu Sarkar, Commissioner in the State's Panchayat and Rural Development Department, has stated that, by March 2019, his department plans to have toilets across all rural homes in the state.
iii. According to him, Hooghly, East Midnapore and North 24 Parganas districts will be ODF by September this year, while the districts of Burdwan and South 24 Paraganas are working fast and hope to achieve ODF by March 2017. As in 2015, Nadia district became the first to achieve ODF status in the country.

i. Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with non-profit public organization namely Global Village Foundation (GVF) for collaborative studies and research on social and economic public policies.
ii. The MoU was signed by the Registrar of the MDU, Jitender Bhardwaj and Chairman GVF Balram Nandwani in the presence of Haryana CM.
iii. This MoU with GVF will facilitate new knowledge generation, innovative technology development, skill development, inter-disciplinary research, and establish platform for socio-economic public policy formulation. 

i. The government has appointed a 1987- batch IAS officer Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for a 5 year term.
ii. This happened just after the Department of Personnel and Training rejected former Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani's choice Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh for the crucial post and divested the Ministry of the power to send a panel of names for the appointment. The post had been lying vacant from December 2014.
iii. The government appointed IAS officer Vandita Sharma as member (Finance) in the Atomic Energy Commission, Guruprasad Mohapatra as Chairman, Airports Authority of India, BB Mallick as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, and SP Singh Parihar as chairman of Central Pollution Control Board. 

i. Hockey Olympian Joe Antic has passed away in Mumbai. He was 90 years old.
ii. He represented the country in the Rome Games where Pakistan won the final between the arch-foes 1-0. Mr. Antic was also a part of the hockey squad that finished runner-up, again to Pakistan, in the Asian Games which held at Jakarta.
iii. Joseph Anthony Antic was an Indian field hockey player. He was born on 13 March 1931 in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh. He won a silver medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He had retired from Western Railway in the mid-1980s. After his playing days, he took up coaching. He was one of the coaches in the Indian team’s World Cup camp in 1973. Later, he became the national coach of the Oman team that took part in the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi.

i. India's Grand Master Harika Dronavalli has won the Fide Women’s Grand Prix trophy in Chendu in China.
ii. Harika was playing with white against Russia's Olga Girya and made draw to win the title, her maiden career GP title.
iii. Harika finished on 7 points in the round robin tournament featuring the world’s top 12 players to be crowned the champion. Other India Grand Master Koneru Humpy too rounded off her campaign with a victory to also finish on 7 points. Harika, however, was declared winner for finishing with a better tie-break record in the tournament.

i. India made a big leap of 11 places to occupy 152nd spot in the latest world football rankings issued by FIFA. India beat Laos 6-1 and 1-0 in the home and away play-off matches to make it to the 2019 Asian Cup qualifying tournament.
ii. In fact, India is the fourth best positive mover among the Asian countries this month after Tajikistan (up 19 places to 145th), Yemen (up 16 places to 160th) and Turkmenistan (up 14 places to 120th).
iii. Iran (39th) remain Asia's number one ranked team, followed by Korea Republic (48th), Uzbekistan (56th), Japan (57th) and Australia (59th). Overall, Argentina remain on top, despite losing to Chile in the Copa America Centenario summit clash. Belgium,Colombia, Germany and Chile retained their places at second, third, fourth and fifth while UEFA Euro 2016 champions Portugal moved up two places to be at sixth.

i. State-run BHEL has commissioned another 250 MW unit based on eco-friendly Circulating Fluidised Bed Combustion (CFBC) technology, using low-quality coal (lignite) as the primary fuel.
ii. The unit has been commissioned at Bhavnagar Energy Company (BECL) 2x250 MW thermal power project, located at Padva village in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat.
iii. The second unit of this project is also at an advanced stage of completion. This is the third 250 MW unit based on CFBC technology, commissioned by BHEL, with two others commissioned earlier in Tamil Nadu.