7th BRICS Summit held in Ufa, Russia

The 7th BRICS summit was held from 8 to 9 July 2015 in the Russian city of Ufa in Bashkortostan. The Summit comprised the heads of state of 5 BRICS countries – Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Narendra Modi (India), Xi Jinping (China) and Jacob Juma (South Africa). The theme of the summit was “BRICS Partnership – a Powerful Factor of Global Development“.

Note:- In a five­-year summit cycle, the summit is hosted by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in the order. While the 6th BRICS summit was held at Fortaleza in Brazil in 2014, New Delhi will be hosting the 8th summit in 2016.

Russian astronaut Gennady Padalka sets record for spending longest time in space

Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has set a Guinness World Record for spending longest time in space with a total of 804 days as on July 2015. With this he broke the previous record of 803 days, nine hours and 41 minutes set by Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev (now retired) across six missions from 1998 to 2005.

China nominated Jin Liqun, former Chinese Finance Minster, for the post of AIIB President

Former Finance Minster of China Jin Liqun was nominated by China to be the first president of the Beijing-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Note:- AIIB is a multilateral development bank proposed by the government of China to provide finance to infrastructure projects in the Asia region. The bank was proposed by China in 2013 and launched at a ceremony in Beijing in October 2014. The bank has 33 founding members from the Asian region and 17 founding members from outside the region. India is one of the founding members of AIIB and has second highest stake in it after China.

Bandhan Bank appoints Ashok Lahiri as chairman 

Ashok K. Lahiri, a former Chief Economic Advisor (CEA), was named as the first Chairman of Bandhan Bank. The bank will start its operations from 23 August 2015 and will be inaugurated by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee.

India’s 1st Earthquake Warning System successfully installed in Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand became first Indian state to install a system to detect earthquakes and disseminate warnings. The system was designed and manufactured by Italian firm Space Dynamics which already installed this system in Japan, Italy and US. The system will issue warnings 1­-40 seconds before the occurrence of earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more.

Indian skipper Mithali Raj creates history by crossing 5000 runs mark

Indian Skipper Mithali Raj became the first woman and second in women’s ODI history to complete 5000 runs after England’s Charlotte Edwards. Playing against New Zealand in Bengaluru, Mithali Raj’s unbeaten knock of 81 runs took her run tally to 5029 runs comprising of 5 centuries and 37 half centuries at an average of 48.82 in 157 matches.