Daily Current Affairs Quiz: May 15, 2026

Notes:
Lake Tahoe is a large freshwater alpine lake located along the boundary of the US states of California and Nevada. It is surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountain range and is considered the highest lake in the United States. Lake Tahoe is also North America’s largest alpine lake and one of the largest lakes in the United States after the Great Lakes. The lake’s only outlet is the Truckee River, which begins at Tahoe City in California. The lake recently came into focus amid concerns over electricity demand from Artificial Intelligence data centres in the region.

Notes:
Three church leaders belonging to the Thadou Tribe were killed in an ambush in Kangpokpi district of Manipur. The Thadou are an indigenous tribal community mainly residing in Manipur and neighbouring regions of Northeast India and Myanmar. In Manipur, they largely inhabit the hill regions surrounding the Imphal Valley. The Thadou are the second-largest tribe in Manipur after the Meiteis. According to the 2011 Census, the tribe had a population of about 190,595 in Manipur. The community shares close cultural ties with the Chin-Kuki-Mizo ethnic groups.

Notes:
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology launched the Intellectual Property (IP) Catalyst initiative along with its digital platform. The initiative is being implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC Pune). It aims to create a digital ecosystem supporting the entire innovation cycle, from research and patent generation to commercialization and market deployment. The initiative seeks to strengthen collaboration among startups, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), academia, industry, and MeitY organizations. It also aims to bridge the gap between publicly funded research and industrial adoption.

Notes:
India’s first Human-Elephant Conflict Research Centre will be established at Palamu Tiger Reserve. The tiger reserve is located on the Chhotanagpur Plateau in Jharkhand and forms part of Betla National Park. Palamu was among the first nine tiger reserves created under Project Tiger. It was also the first reserve in the world where a tiger census was conducted through the pugmark counting method in 1932. The reserve has an undulating terrain consisting of valleys, hills, plains, granite, limestone, and gneiss formations.

Notes:
Psechrus ntu and Psechrus phenshunyu are two newly discovered spider species identified by the Zoological Survey of India. Both species belong to the genus Psechrus of the Psechridae family, known for building large horizontal sheet webs in moist forests. The spiders were discovered in Nagaland and named after the villages Ntu and Phenshunyu. They possess elongated flattened bodies, long anterior legs, and fine sensory hairs that help detect vibrations in dense forest habitats. The spiders build expansive sheet-like webs that act as prey-capture and environmental sensing platforms. Researchers also observed a rare heterospecific association where different spider species shared the same web.