• Spain’s Rafael Nadal has won the men’s single title in the Italian Open Tennis Tournament 2021.

• He defeated t world number one Novak Djokovic in the final.

• Djokovic and Nadal were facing each other for the 57th time, having last played in the 2020 French Open final which the Spaniard won in straight sets.

• Y The pair have won 15 of the last 17 Rome titles between them, while Nadal leads their head-to-head in finals in the Italian capital 4-2.

• India’s Tejaswini Shankar won back-to-back men’s high jump titles in the Big 12 Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Manhattan, USA.

• Shankar cleared the bar at 2.28m to win high jump gold, but his efforts fell short of Tokyo Olympic Games qualification standard of 2.33m.

• Shankar had also won the men’s high jump title in the 2019 edition of the Big 12 Outdoor Track and Field Championships while the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

• The Delhi-based national record in men’s high jump is studying business administration at Kansas State University.

• He is on a four-year athletics scholarship since 2017.

• The Uttarakhand Police has launched a drive called “Mission Hausla” to help people get oxygen, beds and plasma for COVID-19 patients.

• Besides this, the police are also helping the public in getting ration, ambulance, cremation of bodies as part of the mission.

• China will become the world’s first country to ban all synthetic cannabinoid substances.

• The ban is likely to come into effect on July 1.

• The move comes as China tries to curb the manufacturing and trafficking of the drug.

• To ensure the availability of fresh vegetables for day to day consumption and reduce the distress sale of farm produce during the pandemic Manipur state government has launched the MOMA Market Mobile application to solve the issues of home delivery of fresh vegetables.

• The application was introduced by the Manipur Organic Mission Agency (MOMA), Department of Horticulture and Soil Conservation, Manipur.

• MOMA is assigned to channelize the farm producers to consumers through home delivery.

• Under this initiative the vegetables from various farms will be collected by the Farmers Producer Companies (FPCs) working with MOMA.

• The collected farm produce will be disbursed to the registered marketing agencies.

• An environmentalist from Nagaland’s remote Longleng district Y Nuklu Phom has won this year’s Whitley Awards 2021, also known as the Green Oscar.

• His name, along with that of five others, was announced in a virtual award ceremony organised by the UK-based Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN).

• Worth £40,000, the award is for creating a new network of community-owned forests to protect Amur Falcons and increase biodiversity in Nagaland.

• He is the only Indian to win the prestigious award.

• The award to Y Nuklu Phom was donated by the MAVA Foundation.

• The Whitley Award is also known as the ‘Green Oscar’.

• Andrea Meza from Mexico was crowned as the 69th Miss Universe.

• The pageant that was held on May 16, in the Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood Hotel.

• Meza was preceded by Miss Universe Zozobini Tunzi of South Africa.

• Miss India’s Adline Quadros Castelino made it to the Top 4.

• Brazil’s Julia Gama is the first runner-up, Peru’s Janick Maceta is the second runner-up while India’s Adline Castelino and Dominican Republic’s Kimberly Perez are third runner-up and fourth runner-up, respectively.

• The Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), an arm of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is building a next-generation Digital Financial Infrastructure named National Digital Financial Infrastructure (NADI).

• NADI will be owned by the Government of India, with NADI’s high-speed network, the government could monitor and control all financial activity, and it will also make security easier.

• Its modern network infrastructure includes 5G/Edge Cloud with SDNs (software-defined networking) for connecting to the critical data centre infrastructure at the back-end.

• It could protect the network from outside elements and quickly isolate the network in the event of counter-attacks by separating financial network traffic from other traffic with clear entry points.

• According to the ‘Environmental Risk Outlook 2021’ released by Verisk Maplecroft, India has 43 of the World’s 100 most environmentally riskiest cities and China has 37 most environmentally riskiest cities.

• Jakarta in Indonesia was ranked as the riskiest city in the world, followed by Delhi and Chennai.

• 99 of the World’s 100 riskiest cities are in Asia.

• Lima, Peru is the only non-Asian city to be listed in the World’s 100 Riskiest cities.
Glasgow, Scotland was ranked as the safest city in the report.

• The Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance and the New Development Bank jointly organized a virtual seminar on Social Infrastructure Financing and the use of Digital Technologies.

• This is a part of the Economic and Financial Cooperation Agenda under the Indian BRICS Chairship 2021.

• High-level participants from both the public and private sector were engaged in the seminar.

• Important issues regarding the use of Digital Technologies in the 21st century and social infrastructure financing were the key focus under the seminar.