General awareness Updates - September 2014

Persons in News

1. Lieutenant General Dalbir Singh Suhag (right) is the new Chief of the Indian Army. The 59-year-old Gen. Suhag, a Gurkha officer, will have tenure of 30 months as the Chief of the Indian Army. He succeeds Gen. Bikram Singh.

2. Resenting his transfer from Mizoram “without consulting him”, Nagaland Governor Vakkom B. Purushothaman resigned from the post.

3. South African Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer, (left) one of the literary world’s most powerful voices against apartheid, has died at the age of 90.

4. Justice Arun Mishra, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and senior advocate Rohinton Nariman became judges of the Supreme Court, taking the number of judges in the apex court to 28.

5. Veteran actress Zohra Sehgal has died. She was 102. Sehgal had a great innings as an artiste, performer and actor that spanned more than seven decades. She started her career as a dancer with Uday Shankar in 1935. She had appeared in many Bollywood films as a character actor as well as in English language films besides television series and plays. 

Places in News

At least 65 people have been killed in clashes between tribal gunmen and Ugandan government troops in the west of the country near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Awards & Honours

2014 Fields Medal

The Fields Medal, widely considered to be the most prestigious award in mathematics, is given to between two and four mathematicians under the age of 40 at the International Congress of Mathematicians, held once every four years. 

According to the International Mathematical Union, the body that awards the Fields Medal, the award intends “to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement.”

It is usually awarded for mathematical research that solves or extends problems that have vexed mathematicians for decades or centuries, or research that greatly expands on or even creates new areas of mathematical thought.

Ø          Artur Avila (Brazil and France)

Ø          Manjul Bhargava (United States)

Ø          Martin Hairer (Austria)

Ø          Maryam Mirzakhani (Iran)

Sports

2014 Commonwealth Games, Glasgow

RANK	COUNTRY	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	ENG	58	59	57	174
2	AUS	49	42	46	137
3	CAN	32	16	34	82
4	SCO	19	15	19	53
5	IND	15	30	19	64

The following is the final list of Indian medal winners at the 2014 Commonwealth Games held in Glasgow, Scotland.

MOTORRACING

British Grand Prix|

Winner: Lewis Hamilton (Britain/Mercedes)

Second: Valtteri Bottas (Finland/Williams-Mercedes)

Third: Daniel Ricciardo (Australia/Red Bull Racing)

German Grand Prix|

Winner: Nico Rosberg (Germany/Mercedes)

Second: Valtteri Bottas (Finland/Williams-Mercedes)

Third: Lewis Hamilton (Britain/Mercedes)

Hungarian  Grand Prix

Winner: Daniel Ricciardo (Australia/Red Bull Racing)

Second: Fernando Alonso (Spain/Ferrari)

Third: Lewis Hamilton (Britain/Mercedes)

Economy & Business

The Supreme Court asked the Central Government to bring wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on par with minimum wages prevailing in different states.

In a move expected to help the cash-starved industry, the Central government removed the quantitative ceiling on exports of organic sugar. Earlier, the government had kept a ceiling of 10,000 tonnes on organic sugar exports.

India has agreed to extend the benefits of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZ) to the proposed industrial parks which would be developed in collaboration with China.

The Central Government has approved minimum monthly pension of Rs 1,000 under Employees Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS-95) run by the retirement body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).

Miscellaneous-1

1. The Parliament of India passed a bill on setting up of the multi-purpose Polavaram irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh, with government assuring all possible steps for rehabilitation and resettlement of the affected people.

The project involves relocation of about 50,000 families especially in Khammam district in Telangana, East Godavari and West Godavari districts in Andhra Pradesh, besides 2,000 families in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. 

2. India has become the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually-impaired or print disabled. The treaty would also go a long way towards establishing equal rights and opportunities for education and employment for them.

3.The 2014 World Population Day was observed on 11 July to raise awareness of global population issues.

Established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, it was inspired by the interest in Five Billion Day on 11 July 1987 – approximately the date when the world’s population reached five billion. 

This year, the theme is ‘Investing in Young People’. Here are a few interesting global population facts: 

# As of 1 January 2014, the world’s population was estimated to be 7,137,661,030, and is increasing by 2.3 people every second. 

# The total number of people who have ever lived has been estimated by the Population Bureau to be around 108 billion. 

# The world population is estimated to have reached one billion in 1804, with two, three and four billion in 1927, 1960 and 1974 respectively. 

# These figures mean that about one fifteenth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today. 

#Vatican City (800) and Nauru (9,378) are the states with the lowest populations. 

#30% of the world’s population generally eat with chopsticks. 

# China, India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan and Brazil account for half the world’s people. 

# More than one in three people are Chinese or Indian.

4. Delhi is world’s second most populous city

Delhi has become the world’s second most populous city in 2014 after Tokyo, more than doubling its population since 1990 to 25 million, according to a UN report.

The 2014 revision of the World Urbanisation Prospects said that India is projected to add the highest number of people to its urban population by 2050, ahead ofChina. 

The Indian capital is expected to retain the spot of the world’s second most populous city through at least 2030, when its population is expected to rise swiftly to 36 million. 

5.Sharia courts are illegal, rules SC

Disapproving of a Shariat court issuing fatwa and order against a person who is not before it, the Supreme Court said it has no sanction of law and has no legal status. The apex court said there is “no doubt” that such a court has no legal status while noting that in some cases, orders were being passed by them which violate human rights and punish innocent persons.

6. France’s law banning veil upheld

The European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s law banning face-covering Muslim veils from the streets, in a case brought by a woman who claimed her freedom of religion was violated. 

The ruling by the Strasbourg-based court was the first of its kind since France passed a law in 2010 that forbids anyone to hide his or her face in an array of places, including the street. 

7.BRICS launch ‘New Development Bank’

Leaders of the BRICS emerging market nations launched a U.S.$100 billion development bank and a currency reserve pool in their first concrete step toward reshaping the Western–dominated international financial system. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. 

The bank, aimed at funding infrastructure projects in developing nations, will be based in Shanghai, China, and India will preside over its operations for the first six years, followed by five–year terms for Brazil and then Russia, leaders of the five–country group announced at the 6th BRICS Summit. The member countries will also set up a U.S.$100 billion currency reserves pool to help countries forestall short–term liquidity pressures.

8.PMEGP gets massive funds boost

The Central Government allocated 8,060 crore for the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) to create over 27 lakh jobs in the 12th Plan period ending March 2017. The scheme provided jobs to over 16 lakh persons during the 11th Plan (2008–2012). 

“The scheme is to be continued during Twelfth Plan (2012–13 to 2016–17). An outlay of 8,060 crore (7,800 crore Margin Money subsidy plus 260 crore under Backward and Forward Linkages) has been approved by the Planning Commission for PMEGP in the 12th Five Year Plan to set up about 3.39 lakh projects with creation of about 27.12 lakh employment,” the Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) said.

9. Rangarajan Panel comes up with new poverty estimates

A panel headed by former PMEAC Chairman Dr C. Rangarajan has dismissed the Tendulkar Committee report on estimating poverty and said that the number of poor inIndia was much higher in 2011–12 at 29.5 per cent of the population, which means that three out of 10 persons are poor.

As per the report submitted by Dr C. Rangarajan to Planning Minister Rao Inderjit Singh, persons spending below 47 a day in cities would be considered poor, much above the  33–per–day mark suggested by the Suresh Tendulkar Committee.

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