Current Affairs : November 03-04

1. India is inching towards a milestone in space technology with preparatory work in full swing at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota to launch the country's first inter-planetary satellite to Mars tomorrow.

2. India and China is all set to hold their third joint military exercises after a gap of five years, as a 150-strong Indian army contingent today arrived in Chengdu city to take part in anti-terrorism drills.

3. India is placed seventh out of 37 in a list of countries ranked in terms of expat quality of life, according to a a research commissioned by HSBC Expat. Thailand tops the list which is dominated by Asian countries with mainland China, Singapore and Taiwan are ranked 3rd, 6th, and 8th places respectively. Others in the top 10 include Bahrain (2nd), Cayman Islands (4th), Australia (5th), Spain (9th) and Brazil (10th).

4. Indian men's hockey team today officially qualified for the Rabobank Hockey World Cup in The Hague (NED), according to the latest release issued by the FIH.

5. In India, Maharashtra tops list of women arrested for crime. aharashtra has witnessed more women being arrested in criminal cases from 2010 to 2012 than any other Indian state

6. Recently crowned world champion for the fourth time, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel has won the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix.

7. World Number Two Serbia's Novak Djokovic has lifted the Paris Masters Tennis tournament. In the title clash at at the Bercy arena last night, Djokovic defeated defending champion David Ferrer of Spain in straight sets, 7-5, 7-5.

8. India and Myanmar have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on strengthening skills in the Information Technology sector in this country.

9. Virat Kohli today became the number one batsman in One-day cricket after a superb batting show against Australia in the just-concluded series, in which he scored 344 runs.

10. Rihanna has stormed into number 1 spot in UK charts, as the featured artist on Eminem's new track The Monster. The track Eminem's first number one hit since 2006, and is taken from his latest album Marshall Mathers LP 2.

11. Sikkim has been named as the best region to visit in 2014 by a leading global travel guide, with Brazil emerging as the top destination in terms of countries.. Sikkim was the first Indian state to frame an eco-tourism policy with the help of Japanese and American experts.

Current Affairs : November 05

1. The first phase of India's first Mars mission "Mangalyaan" was pronounced a success.

2. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination will be held from December 2 to 8 this year. It's the first time in the last 35 years that the examination is being spread over a span of just seven days.

3. Actor Hrithik Roshan's 'Krrish 3' is the latest film to enter elite Rs 100 crore club within four days of its release. Krrish 3 created history on Monday by collecting Rs 35.91 crore at the box office, the highest single day figure ever.

4. India is happy with the withdrawal of United Kingdom’s proposal to subject visitors from six “high-risk” Commonwealth countries to pay a surety of £3,000 for a visa.

5. Nirupama Rao, Indian envoy to the US, bid farewell to her career of diplomacy, as members of the American diplomatic corps and her counterparts from countries like China and Brazil gathered at a reception hosted in her honour by the State Department.

6. A Bangladeshi court on Tuesday sentenced to death 152 soldiers in one of the world's biggest ever mass criminal trials for their role in a 2009 mutiny and massacre of 74 people, including top army officers.

7. Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said it has entered into an agreement with the Warid Group to acquire its Congo operations -- Warid Congo SA -- a move that will help the Indian telecom operator strengthen footprint in the African market.

8. India men's hockey team defeated Oman 3-0 to register their first win in the third Asian Champions Trophy at Kakamigahara, Japan on Tuesday.

9. Encouraged by public response to its Passport Sewa mobile app for Android phones, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has now launched the application for Windows and Apple iOS platforms.

10. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India largest software services exporter, today said the US-based financial services firm Zions Bancorporation has chosen its core banking software TCS BaNCS.

PSLV C25

Watch LINK: To know how it work and stages in it
   http://www.isro.org/launchtosolarpanel.aspx#

A day after the last of diwali rockets was fired in this part of the country, "the big one" blasted off from the first launch pad in Sriharikota on Tuesday afternoon, firing the ambition of a nation, and the imagination of many others. After 45 minutes, the first phase of India's first Mars mission was pronounced a success.

"I am happy to announce that the Mars orbiter mission first phase is a success," said Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K Radhakrishnan soon after the rocket injected the spacecraft into an Earth orbit about 45 minutes of flight. About 90 minutes after a drizzle raised minor concerns about weather among lay people, the 44.4m PSLV-C25 carrying in its head India's first Mars orbiter, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 2.38pm.

Drowning the cheers at the mission control, about 7km away, and the nearby media centre," the rocket rose to the sky with a roar, spewing fire and smoke. Soon it disappeared into the clouds, only to re-emerge after a few second to another round of applause.

About 58 top scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation remained glued to their computers in the mission control that displayed the performance of the rocket as it shed its first and second stages one by one.

The nail-biting -- albeit expected - phase came soon after the third stage of the rocket burned out, and the blip on the tracking screens disappeared. As Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan had explained earlier, the rocket would be on a coasting phase for almost 28 minutes, 10 minutes of which will be a "total blind phase." The mission control witnessed some silent moments during this period. And, when mission director P Kunhikrishnan reported that the first of the two ships in the South Pacific Ocean had picked up signal from the rocket, the scientists lit up.

About 35 minutes into the flight, the rocket was cruising at an altitude "slightly higher than the expected trajectory," as a scientist put it. "But it will self-correct its course," he assured. And correct it did, after the fourth stage engine fired on its own, bringing the rocket back to life. Soon, the orbiter was injected into an elliptical Earth orbit in what Kunhikrishnan called a "precision exercise." What follows in the next 10 days would be six crucial "orbit raising operations," in the wee hours of November 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 16.

And then, at 12.42am on December 1, the orbiter will leave the earth's orbit for a 300-day journey to the red planet. "It's only the beginning; Bigger challenges are ahead, said the Isro chairman. "We expect the orbiter to be in Mar's orbit on September 24, 2014."

Complete List of NOBLE LAUREATES From INDIA

1. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Chemistry, 2009)

2. Amartya Sen (Economic Sciences, 1998)

3. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Physics, 1983)

4. Har Gobind Khorana (Physiology or Medicine, 1968)

5. C. V. Raman (Physics, 1930)

7. Rabindranath Tagore (Literature, 1913)

Shakuntala Devi's 84th birthday: Google doodles a calculator for the human computer

On Monday, Google paid tribute through its doodle to Shakuntala Devi on her  84th birth anniversary with a calculator font and her picture.
Popularly known as the Human Computer for her awesome ability to mentally solve complex mathematical problems, Shakuntala Devi was included in The Guinness Book of World Records in 1982.
Without any formal education as a child, Shakuntala Devi had the ability to memorise and calculate numbers mentally an ability her circus artist father discovered when she was just three.
A prolific author as well, she wrote books like Fun with Numbers, Astrology for You, Puzzles to Puzzle You, and Mathablit.
In 1977 in USA, Shakuntala Devi competed with a computer to see who gives the cube root of 188132517 faster, she won.
On June 18, 1980, the Human computer, Shakuntala Devi demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds which is correct. This event is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records.
With the ability to calculate the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375 without writing it down or using a calculator, Shakuntala Devi's abilities were studied by Arthur Jensen, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1988.
Jensen wrote in his report that the calculation was done and answers given even before he wrote the answer in his notebook. The findings were published in the academic journal Intelligence in 1990.
In April 2013, Shakuntala Devi passed away in a hospital in Bangalore from complications of the heart and kidneys at the age of 83.

Current Affairs : November 02

1. Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has nominated the country's interior minister as his successor. The nomination on Saturday of Irakli Garibashvili comes a week after elections that chose Ivanishvili's ally Giorgi Margvelashvili as the country's new president.

2. Riding on Rohit Sharma's record-breaking 209, India registered their first bilateral ODI series win at home against Australia as they crushed the visitors by 57 runs in the seventh one-day international on Saturday.

3. Novak Djokovic extended his winning streak to 16 matches as he came back from a set down to defeat Roger Federer on Saturday and reach the final of the Paris Masters.

4. Australian Mark Webber put Red Bull on pole position for the floodlit Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix on Saturday in a front row sweep with quadruple world champion teammate Sebastian Vettel.

5. Russia and Japan have moved to dramatically upgrade bilateral ties, holding their first joint Defence and Foreign Ministers’ meeting and agreeing to expand their defence and security cooperation.

6. The Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, famous for dense population of one-horn rhinos, reopened to tourists on Saturday after remaining closed during the monsoon.

7. The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday confirmed the death of its leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike.

8. Kannur (also known as Cannanore, is a city in Kannur district in the Indian state of Kerala) declared first zero-landless district in country.

9. India moved a step closer to sourcing uranium from Australia, the world’s biggest exporter of the radioactive mineral, with the Foreign Ministers of both countries agreeing to hold the third round of talks on a bilateral civil nuclear agreement towards the end of this month.

10. President Barack Obama has wished Indians "a Happy Diwali and Saal Mubarak" saying the festival reminded Americans that the US "is home to many faiths and traditions, and that our diversity makes us stronger."

Current Affairs : November 01

1.Syria's entire declared stock of chemical weapons has been placed under seal, inspectors said on Thursday, as international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi wrapped up a visit to muster support for peace talks.

2. Six Major Central Banks Permanently Made Currency Swap Accords
i. Six major central banks in the world made currency swap arrangements permanent on 31 October 2013 as a prudent liquidity backstop in case of future global financial strains.
ii. Previously these banks had temporary bilateral currency swap arrangements.

Names of Six major central banks

1. The Bank of Japan
2. U.S. Federal Reserve
3. European Central Bank
4. Bank of England
5. central bank of Canada
6. central bank of Switzerland

3. MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) has appointed Gopal Krishna Pillai IAS (Retd.) as Chairman and Thomas Mathew T., as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.

4. India and Australia are to hold the third round of negotiations to finalise a civil nuclear agreement that could enable the sale of Australian uranium to India, in Delhi during the week beginning November 25, it was announced on Friday.

5. . India developed a new tactical surface-to-surface missile Pragati which has a range between 60-170 km.

6. Scientists discovered a new planet called Kepler 78b which has a similar mass and density to that of Earth. It orbits a star 400 light years away. Kepler78b is composed mostly of rock and iron.

7. India's men's compound Archery team on 31 October 2013 won a gold medal in the 18th Asian Archery competition held at Chinese Taipei. Abhishek Verma, Ratan Singh, Sandeep Kumar forming the compound team defeated the Korean trio of Lihong Min, Yong Hee Choi and Jongho Kim 233-231 to win the gold.

8. Israel secretly provided arms to India in 1971: A book " The Blood Telegram" by Gary Bass, which focusses on the manner in which US President Richard Nixon turned a blind eye to the repression of then East Pakistan by military ruler Yahya Khan, offers a tantalizing glimpse of what was probably the first instance of military cooperation between India and Israel.

9. An estimated 14.3 crore accounts on the popular social networking site Facebook may be false or duplicate, with a major chunk of them coming from developing markets like India and Turkey.

10. India and Australia are to hold the third round of negotiations to finalise a civil nuclear agreement that could enable the sale of Australian uranium to India, in Delhi during the week beginning November 25, it was announced on Friday.