GK & current affairs: 15th May

India

Against honor killing
Indian court has given a verdict that same gothra marriages are legal and Hindu law have to be kept along with time.

World

Bangkok
Thai troops fired bullets at anti-government protesters, and explosions thundered in the heart of Bangkok on Friday as an army push to clear the streets and end a two-month political standoff sparked clashes that killed eight and wounded 101.

GK & Current Affairs: May 4

India

THE JUDGEMENT
Ajmal Amir Kasab Found guilty of murder of 7 people directly and 65 others in common intent with his dead partner Abu Ismail Waging war against India, conspiracy Guilty of being a member of LeT: also attempt to murder, kidnap, robbery Acquitted on 6 lesser counts of forgery, under Railway Act and UAPA. Faheem Ansari, Sabahuddin Ahmed, duo was charged with supplying maps of Mumbai to LeT commanders; also charged for conspiracy on all counts as Kasab Acquitted; court held the entire evidence against them to be “entirely doubtful’’

Four education bills in LS
HRD minister Kapil Sibal introduced four important bills in the Lok Sabha: Foreign Educational Institutions (regulation of entry and operations) Bill, setting up of educational tribunals, a national accreditation regulatory authority and prohibition of unfair practices in universities, technical and medical educational institutions.

Business

Mergers & Acquisitions

Aviation behemoths Continental Airlines and United Airlines on Monday announced a merger to create the world’s largest airline in aviation history. The combined revenues of the merged entity would be around $29 billion. The airlines together fly 144 million passengers annually across 370 destinations in 59 countries.

GK & Current Affairs: 1st May

India
Femina Miss India
PFMI World 2010 went to Andheri girl Manasvi Mamgai. Neha Hinge (left) from Pune won the PFMI International 2010 crown, while Nicole Faria from Bangalore (right) was anointed PFMI Earth.


Time magazine list of 100 most influential people
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh(rank 77), cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar(rank 37) and Nobel winning economist Amartya Sen are among nine Indians on the annual Time magazine list.
Other Indians on the list are eye specialist P Namperumal Swamy, humanitarian worker Sanjit Buker Roy, writer Chetan Bhagat, Indian-American doctor and Harvard professor Atul Gwande, paramedic from Toronto Rahul Singh and entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.
Ajmer Blast 2007
After Malegaon blasts in Maharashtra, the role of the radical Hindu outfit, Abhinav Bharat, resurfaced with the Rajasthan anti-terrorist squad (ATS) on Friday arresting Devendra Gupta for his involvement in the Ajmer dargah sharif blasts in 2007.
World

China bans citizen from buying third house
China on Friday banned its citizens from buying “more than one secondary home” in an effort to curb soaring property prices. The government had in April raised the down-payment requirement on second-home mortgages to 50%, up from the earlier 40%, and reiterated that buyers must pay an extra 10% on interest rates for these homes.

Business

3G bid having a dream run


The bid for a single pan-India block of 3G spectrum hit Rs 9,521 crore on Friday. This surpasses the total revenue of Rs 9,000 crore earned from the allocation of 120 licences for 2G spectrum by telecom minister A Raja on a first-come-first-served (FCFS) basis in January 2008. 3G price, the price per MHz has already touched Rs 86, already five times the Rs 17 per MHz price received for 2G spectrum.

Sports

T20 World Cup
NZ beat Srilanka and West Indies beat Ireland on the opening day of T20 World Cup.

Mahindra United Club shut
In a big blow to Indian football, Mahindra United, one of the country’s top clubs, will not feature in competitive football from the next season, as the owners have decided to allocate resources to a nationwide school-level enterprise instead. The club has recently tied up with the NBA to nurture a community basketball league.

GK & Current affairs: April 26

India

False police complaints
Crime Branch officials say a huge number—nearly 50 out of every 100—complaints filed across the city turn out to be either baseless or frivolous, requiring no further inquiry, or they are sent on wild goose chases probing cases from the wrong angle. False complaints against the police appear to be a nationwide phenomenon. According to statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau, 48,939 complaints were received against policemen across the country in 2008, but 60% of them were declared to be false or unsubstantiated by investigators. Madhya Pradesh accounted for 35.8% (18,315) of the complaints, followed by Delhi (6,031) and Uttar Pradesh (6,015). Anyone who files a false or misleading police complaint can be charged under Section 182 of the Indian Penal Code for giving false information with intent to cause a public servant to use his/her lawful power to do injury to another person. Punishment can be either jail of upto six months, fine of upto Rs 1,000, or both.

World Malaria Day (Today)

Malaria, along with tuberculosis, continues to be one of the world’s most lethal diseases with half the world’s population — about 3.3 billion people — at risk from it, according to the latest World Malaria Report 2009, released by WHO last December. Over 243 million (2.43 crore) confirmed cases of malaria were reported from across the world, of which an estimated 8,63,000 died. The biggest burden of malaria is borne by Africa with nearly 90% of cases, most being children below 5 years. In India too, one variety of malarial parasite was found to have developed resistance to chloroquine in 117 highly endemic districts of 7 North Eastern states and AP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, MP and Orissa.

Science

Aliens exists
Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

World

Uzbek: The other China
According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women been sterilized without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan. The policy, ordered by President Islam Karimov, is aimed at keeping down the numbers in the densely populated state. In many cases, doctors opt for delivery by C-section and then perform a sterilization without telling the woman


Sports

Chennai Super Kings beats Mumbai Indian to win the IPL 3 trophy. Sachin Tendulkar named "Man of the Tournament".

GK & Current Affairs: April 24

India

Mumbai
The sex ratio of Mumbai worsen as compared with 2005. The worst part is the affluent socities of Mumbai shows worse sex ratio.

India-Russia Nuclear Deal
India and Russia are exploring the possibility of setting up a joint fuel fabrication facility. The idea of setting up such a Russian designed facility in India is part of the Indo-Russian nuclear agreement signed on March 12. Dybov said one of main advantages of setting such an unit in India is that it will go a long way in reducing the fuel costs. Russia has already entered into an agreement with India for the supply of 2,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel to India starting from 2009. Tvel Corporation has been deputed to supply 210 tonnes of uranium in 2010-11.

Unique train numbering
The four-digit combination identifying every long distance mail or express chugging in and out of stations across the country is an address which links the engine and coaches to the zonal headquarters and then to their division. The first digit belongs to railway division. 0 is for Konkan Railway 1 is for CR, West Central Railway (Bhopal and Jabalpur division) and North Central Railway (Jhansi, Agra div) 2 is for superfasts, Shatabdi and Jan Shatabdi trains regardless of zones 3 is shared by Eastern Railway and East Central Railway (Hazipur div) 4 is for Northern Railway, North Central Railway (Allahabad div) and North West Railway (Bikaner div) 5 is shared by North Eastern Railway and North-east Frontier Railway 6 is for Southern Railway and South WR (Mysore and Bengaluru div) 7 is shared by South Central Railway and South Western Railway (Hubli div) 8 is for South Eastern Railway, South East Central (Bilaspur, Raipur and Nagpur) and East Coast Railway (Khoda, Sambalpur and Waltaire div) 9 is for Western Railway, North Western Railway (Ajmer, Jaipur, Kota and Jodhpur) and West Central Railway. The second digit here would then indicate which zone the train belongs to-Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta and Secunderbad. The last two digits do not follow any set rules or norms. However, the fourth digit would be odd or even depending on how the railway division numbers its Up and Down trains.

Below poverty line: Still a question mark
A whopping 782 million Indians will be living on less than $2 a day by 2015, a joint report by the World Bank and IMF said on Friday. The report, however, said the number of poor Indians living on less than $2 would moderately decline to 686 million by 2020. But the report adds that by the turn of the next decade 268 million Indians would be living on less than $1.25 a day, while in 2015, the figure would be 295 million. These figures, however, are almost double the revised number of the poor in the country which is pegged at 400 million.

World

Baghdad, Iraq
A series of bombings mainly targeting Shia worshippers killed at least 61 people on Friday, officials said, just days after US and Iraqi forces killed the top two Al Qaida leaders in Iraq in what was described as devastating blow to the insurgency.

Nobel Prize winners 2009

The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: Nobelpriset) are annual international awards bestowed by several Scandinavian committees for cultural and scientific advances. Established in 1895 by the Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. They were first awarded in 1901 for achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. An associated prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was instituted by Sveriges Riksbank in 1968 and first awarded in 1969. Although this is not technically a Nobel Prize, its winners are announced with the Nobel Prize recipients, and it is presented at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.

The prizes are awarded by different associations. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; and the Swedish Academy grants the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded by a Swedish organisation, but by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Category	People
Physics	Kao, Charles K.Charles K. Kao; Boyle, Willard S.Willard S. Boyle; Smith, George E.George E. Smith
Chemistry	Ramakrishnan, VenkatramanVenkatraman Ramakrishnan; Steitz, Thomas A.Thomas A. Steitz; Yonath, Ada E.Ada E. Yonath
Physiologyor Medicine	Blackburn, ElizabethElizabeth Blackburn; Greider, Carol W.Carol W. Greider; Szostak, Jack W.Jack W. Szostak
Literature	Müller, HertaHerta Müller
Peace	Obama, BarackBarack Obama
Economics	Ostrom, ElinorElinor Ostrom; Williamson, Oliver E.Oliver E. Williamson

Padma Bhushan Awards 2010

Padma Bhushan award is the India's third highest civilian award.

Name	Field	State
Aamir Khan	Art	Maharashtra
Akbar Padamsee	Art	Maharashtra
Allah Rakha Rahman	Art	Tamil Nadu
Chhannulal Mishra	Art	Uttar Pradesh
Ilaiyaraaja	Art	Tamil Nadu
Kumudini Lakhia	Art	Gujarat
Kuzhur Narayana Marar	Art	Kerala
Madhusudan Amilal Dhaky	Art	Gujarat
Mallika Sarabhai	Art	Gujarat
Nookala Chinna Satyanarayana	Art	Andhra Pradesh
Puttaraj Gavai	Art	Karnataka
Ram Kumar	Art	Delhi
Shrinivas Vinayak Khale	Art	Maharashtra
Sultan Khan	Art	Maharashtra
B. K. Chaturvedi	Civil Service	Delhi
Moosa Raza	Civil Service	Delhi
P. R. Dubhashi	Civil Service	Maharashtra
Fareed Zakaria	Journalism
Anil Bordia	Literature and Education	Rajasthan
Bipan Chandra	Literature and Education	Delhi
G. P. Chopra	Literature and Education	Delhi
Mohammad Amin	Literature and Education	Delhi
Satya Vrat Shastri	Literature and Education	Delhi
Tan Chung	Literature and Education
Belle Monappa Hegde	Medicine	Karnataka
E. T. Narayanan Mooss	Medicine	Kerala
Noshir M. Shroff	Medicine	Delhi
Panniyampilly Krishna Warrier	Medicine	Kerala
Ramakant Madanmohan Panda	Medicine	Maharashtra
Satya Paul Agarwal	Medicine	Delhi
Abhijit Sen	Public Affairs	Delhi
Sailesh Kumar Bandyopadhyay	Public Affairs	West Bengal
Sant Singh Chatwal	Public Affairs
Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj	Science and Engineering
Bikash Chandra Sinha	Science and Engineering	West Bengal
Jagdish Chandra Kapur	Science and Engineering	Delhi
Balagangadharanatha Swamiji	Social Work	Karnataka
Balasaheb Vikhe Patil	Social Work	Maharashtra
C. P. Krishnan Nair	Trade and Industry	Maharashtra
Kushal Pal Singh	Trade and Industry	Delhi
Manvinder Singh Banga	Trade and Industry
Narayanan Vaghul	Trade and Industry	Tamil Nadu
S. P. Oswal	Trade and Industry	Punjab