Sample Content: "Person in News"

Gen. Vijay Kumar Singh takes charge as Chief of Army Staff

• General Vijay Kumar Singh took charge as the Chief of Army Staff from General Deepak Kapoor, who retired from service.
• Gen. Singh, 59, is a third generation officer of the Rajput regiment and was until recently the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Kolkata-based Eastern Command. A veteran of many battles, he participated in the 1971 Bangladesh war and saw action in Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka, for which he was awarded the Yudh Seva Medal.
• He the 24th Indian to be the Army Chief, and was awarded the Param Vishist Seva Medal for distinguished service in 2009.

Anish Kapoor’s sculpture for 2012 Olympics

• A towering steel sculpture, taller than the Statue of Liberty and designed by the internationally renowned Mumbai-born artist Anish Kapoor , will form the backdrop to the London 2012 Olympic Games stadium in East London.
• Unveiling the design of the £19.1m project — a massive web of spiralling steel in the form of five Olympic rings — the Mayor of London Boris Johnson hailed it as an “inspired work of art’’ that would change the East London landscape forever and come to be internationally recognised as an “iconic cultural legacy’’ of the Games.
• The 115-metre tall ArcelorMittal Orbit, named after Lakshmi Mittal’s steel company which is partially funding the project, will be 22 metres higher than the Statue of Liberty providing what is promised to be a panaromic view of London .
• It will be placed in the Olympic Park.

Lifetime achievement award for R. P. Goenka

• R. P. Goenka, Chairman Emeritus of RPG Enterprises, received the lifetime achievement award from All India Management Association (AIMA). This was presented to him by Praful Patel, Union Minister for Civil Aviation, in New Delhi. This is the first-ever ‘Managing India’ award by AIMA, a release said.

Manglik new Nasscom chief

•  IT industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) announced that Harsh Manglik will take over as the Chairman of its Executive Council for 2010-11, effective from April 20.
• Mr. Manglik, who replaces Pramod Bhasin, will take on the role as the country’s IT sector recovers from the impact of the global economic slowdown.

Shekhar Kapur on Cannes jury

• Thierry Fremaux, the director-general of the Cannes Film Festival had announced the jury and the line up of the festival which kicks off in the French Riviera city of Cannes on May 12.
• Only one Indian film, Vikramaditya Motwane’s directorial debut Udaan, has made it to Cannes this year.
• Indian director Shekhar Kapur is part of the Festival Jury chaired by U.S. film director Tim Burton who recently released his film version of Alice in Wonderland; the festival will open with a screening of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood.

Godmother of civil rights movement is dead

• Activist Dorothy Height, described by President Obama as the “the godmother of the civil rights movement” passed away at the age of 98 years after weeks of being in a serious condition. Ms. Height, a pioneer of the 1960s movement, had joined historic marches with Martin Luther King Jr. and led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.
• Ms. Height continued to speak out on racial issues and civil rights even until her 90s. She often got as much recognition for her speeches as for her bright, colourful hats.
• Ms. Height’s civil rights involvement began in 1933 when she took on a leadership role at the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. She devoted herself to fighting the practice of lynching and she also pushed for desegregation of the armed forces.

PC maker, inspiration for Microsoft, dead

• Henry Edward Roberts, a developer of an early personal computer that inspired Bill Gates to found Microsoft, died in Georgia. He was 68.
• Mr. Roberts, whose build-it-yourself kit concentrated thousands of dollars worth of computer capability in an affordable package, inspired Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen to come up with Microsoft in 1975, after they saw an article about the MITS Altair 8800 in Popular Electronics.

Juan Antonio Samaranch passes away

• Juan Antonio Samaranch, who died recently,aged 89, was a giant of the Olympic movement, heading the IOC for 21 years for the longest tenure after that of the body’s founding father, Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
• The Baron was the man who brought the Games into the modern era, heading the IOC from 1896 to 1925 — but it was under the tutelage of Samaranch that the movement really took off in the age of increasing global mass media and growing influence of sport.
• From 1974 to 1978 Samaranch was IOC deputy president before securing the top job in 1980. He was re-elected in 1989, 1993 and 1997.
• In 1991 he was awarded the title of ‘marquis’ by King Juan Carlos for his work in the Olympic movement, culminating in the award of the highly successful 1992 summer Games to Barcelona, a city the event transformed.
• On October 1, 2000, following his last Games as IOC chief, Samaranch dubbed the Sydney Olympics “the best of all time”.

State nominates A.R. Lakshmanan on Mullaperiyar Committee

• Justice A.R. Lakshmanan, former Judge of the Supreme Court, will represent Tamil Nadu on the Empowered Committee to go into all issues, including the safety aspects, of the Mullaperiyar dam, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi told the Assembly.
• The committee, headed by Justice A.S. Anand, former Chief Justice of India, was appointed by a five-member bench of the Supreme Court.

SRK’s wax statue heads for Hong Kong

• Actor Shah Rukh Khan’s wax figure is making a special appearance at the Madame Tussauds museum.On loan for three months from London, the 44-year-old’s statue will be on display alongside Hollywood stars Jackie Chan, Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp. The life-size wax statue of the Khan was installed at the London museum in April 2007.
• This is not the first time that a wax figure of a Hindi film star will be displayed at the museum in the city.
• Last year, Madame Tussauds Hong Kong displayed the wax figure of actor Amitabh Bachchan.

President clears Justice Gyan Sudha Misra’s appointment

• President Pratibha Patil cleared the appointment of Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court Gyan Sudha Misra as Supreme Court judge. She is the fourth woman judge of the Supreme Court after Fatima Beevi, Sujata Manohar and Ruma Pal, who retired in June 2006.

Karan Singh honoured

• President Pratibha Patil presenting the Paulos Mar Gregorios Award 2010 to Dr. Karan Singh for Outstanding Contribution in the Fields of Public Life, Inter-Faith Dialogue and Culture, at a function in New Delhi.
  Chirayu Amin is interim IPL chief
• Jolted by the alleged dubious dealings in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) set in motion a clean-up act by appointing vice-president (West Zone) Chirayu Amin as interim chairman of the IPL. Lalit Modi ceased to hold all positions (chairman, IPL and Champions League T20 and vice-president, BCCI) after the BCCI served a show-cause under BCCI Rules and Regulations 32 (iv) and suspended him under Rule 32 (vi) at the conclusion of the DLF-IPL III final at the D. Y. Patil Sports Stadium.

Sample Content: "Person in News"

Rajasthan Governor passes away

• Rajasthan Governor Prabha Rau died in Delhi following a heart attack.
• Ms. Rau, a senior Congress politician from Maharashtra who took over as Rajasthan Governor on January 25 this year, is the second Governor in the State to die in harness in the past five months.
• Her predecessor Shailendra Kumar Singh had passed away in December 2009. Prior to her positing in Rajasthan, Ms. Rau was Governor of Himachal Pradesh from July 19, 2008, to January 24, 2010.

Indian diplomat held for ‘spying’

• A junior diplomat in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad has been arrested by the special cell of the Delhi police on the charge of leaking sensitive national secrets to Pakistani intelligence agencies.
• The official, Madhuri Gupta, was produced in a court and remanded to five-day police custody.
• Ms. Gupta, who was posted as Second Secretary in the Press and Information Wing of the High Commission, was picked up for questioning four days ago.

First woman to conquer 14 peaks

• A South Korean mountaineer became the first woman to scale the world’s 14 highest mountains, crawling on all fours as she reached the last summit.
• Oh Eun-sun (44) arrived at the final, steep stretch of Annapurna in the Himalayas 13 hours after she left the last camp to beat a Spanish rival to the record. Her feat was broadcast live in South Korea by KBS television.
• Annapurna was the last of the 14 peaks above 26,247 feet Ms. Oh needed to climb to set the mark. She reached the summit — 26,545 feet above sea level — 13 years after she scaled her first Himalayan mountain, Gasherbrum II, in 1997. She scaled the Everest in 2004.
• Ms. Oh narrowly beat Edurne Pasaban of Spain to the record.

Supreme Court quashes criminal proceedings against Kushboo

• In a big relief to actor Kushboo, the Supreme Court set aside a Madras High Court judgment directing the chief metropolitan magistrate, Egmore, to conduct a joint trial of the 23 defamation complaints filed in various places in Tamil Nadu for her alleged remarks on pre-marital sex.

Kapadia, next Chief Justice of India

• President Pratibha Patil has appointed senior-most judge of the Supreme Court Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia the 38th Chief Justice of India (CJI). He take charge on May 12, succeeding Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, who retires on May 11.
• Justice Kapadia, the first CJI born after Independence, have a tenure of 2 years and 4 months.
• He was initially appointed an additional judge of the Bombay High Court in October 1991 and made a permanent judge in March 1993. For more than three years, he was the special judge of the special court under the Securities Transaction Act.
• On August 5, 2003, he was appointed the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court. On December 18, 2003, he was elevated to the Supreme Court.
• In the past six-and-half years, he has delivered several landmark judgments under the constitutional law and the taxation, regulatory and commercial laws. He has also dealt with public interest litigation petitions on important matters, cases under the Company Law, and matters of valuations and accounts and revival of companies under the SICA, 1985.

Major General Nair appointed Judge Advocate General

• Major General C.S. Nair will take over as the 14th Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the Army.
• A post-graduate in English, Major General Nair was commissioned to the Army Education Corps in December 1978. He is an alumnus of the Kerala Law Academy and practised as a lawyer in the Kerala High Court before joining the Indian Military Academy, Dehra Dun, for pre-commission training, a Defence Ministry release said.

Indian appointed to United Nations post

• U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has appointed Atul Khare of India as Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. Mr. Khare replaces Edmond Mulet of Guatemala, who was appointed on April 1 as special representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti for one year.
• Mr. Khare, 51, served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Timor-Leste and Head of the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste from December 2006 to December 2009.
  Zulfikar’s daughter, nephew dispute claim in Fatima’s book
• As their political dynasty lives on despite one Bhutto dying a violent death every decade since the 1970s, Fatima Bhutto’s month-old book “Songs of Blood and Sword’’ appears to have opened up barely concealed differences within Pakistan’s first family.

M.M. Joshi to be chairman of Public Accounts Committee

• Senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi has been appointed chairman of the Public Accounts Committee for 2010-11. Congress MP from Goa Francisco Sardinha will head the Committee on Estimates.
• The Lok Sabha Speaker also appointed V. Kishore Chandra S. Deo chairman of the Committee on Public Undertakings and Gobinda Chandra Naskar, head of the Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Jonathan is Nigerian President

• Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan (52) was sworn in President of the oil-rich African nation riven by religious and political divisions, hours after the death of incumbent Umaru Yar’Adua.
• Mr. Jonathan took the oath in the presidential palace, where Mr. Yar’Adua passed away after a long illness.

First women Muslim MPs

• Shabana Mahmood, the Labour candidate for Birmingham Ladywood, in central England, and Yasmin Qureshi, Labour candidate for Bolton South East, in the north-west, easily won seats with majorities.Until now no Asian women have ever been elected as MPs.
• The first male Asian MP, the Indian Dadabhai Naoroji, was elected in 1892 for Finsbury in central London. Mohammad Sarwar became the U.K.’s first Muslim MP after winning Glasgow Central in 1997. Sayeeda Warsi became the first Muslim woman to sit on the front bench for the Conservatives in 2007 — as a baroness (member of the House of Lords) rather than as an MP.

Shantha Sinha gets second term as NCPCR chairperson

• The Centre decided to appoint Shantha Sinha as chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) for the second term.
• Ms. Sinha, a renowned child rights activist, was appointed as the chairperson of the child rights panel in 2007. An academic with the Central University Hyderabad, Ms. Sinha is the winner of prestigious Magsaysay Award for 2003. She was presented the Padma Shree Award in 1999 for her work on child rights.
• The NCPCR emphasises the principle of universality and inviolability of child rights and recognises the tone of urgency in all the child related policies of the country. For the Commission, protection of all children in the 0 to 18 years age group is of equal importance. Thus, policies define priority actions for the most vulnerable children. This includes focus on regions that are backward or on communities or children under certain circumstances, and so on.

Resul Pookutty’s autobiography released

• “I am a humble cinema boy,” goes the first line of Oscar winner Resul Pookutty’s autobiography Sabdatharapadam (The milky way of sound), which was released by Maharashtra Governor K. Sankaranarayanan.
  Shekhawat passes away aged 86
• The former Vice-President and three-time Chief Minister of Rajasthan in the past, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat died following cardiac arrest.
• After the completion of his tenure as the 11th Vice-President (August 2002-July 2007), he had been mostly shuttling between Delhi and Jaipur.
• He first entered the Rajasthan Assembly as an MLA from Sikar district’s Datta Ramgarh in 1952 and thereafter continued to be its member till 2002 except for the period between 1974 and 1977 — when he was a Rajya Sabha member from Madhya Pradesh — and for two years from 1972 to 1974 after losing the election in the fifth Assembly. He was Chief Minister from 1977 to 1980, 1990 to 1992 and from 1993 to 1998.

School girl sails solo around the world

• Australian schoolgirl sailor Jessica Watson sailed into history, becoming the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo, non-stop and without help.
• Ms. Watson (16) crossed the finish line at the entrance to Sydney Harbour.

Rajapaksa to be new G-15 chairman

• Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa take over the chairmanship of the Group of 15 countries (G15) from his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the summit in Tehran.
• Mr. Rajapaksa will serve as the chairman of the grouping, of which India is also a member, for a two-year term.
• The G-15 Summit in Tehran ,focus on co-operation among developing countries in the areas of investment, trade and technology.
• The grouping accounts for one-third of the global population and consists of some of the biggest economies of the world.
• Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are members of the group.

Ratan Kumar Sinha to be new BARC director

• Ratan Kumar Sinha, who is closely associated with the design and development of the country’s first thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, will be the new director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
• Dr. Sinha will take over from S. Banerjee, who was holding the post of BARC director and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Ratan Tata honoured

• CIF Chanchlani Global Indian Award for his outstanding global leadership, vision on professional excellence
• Tata Group Chairman Ratan N. Tata received the 2011
• The award, carrying an $2,25,000 (Rs. 1 crore) cash prize and a citation, was presented at the Annual Award Gala of the Canada India Foundation held in Vancouver.

Iran frees French lecturer

• Iran has freed Clotilde Reiss, French lecturer charged with spying following last June’s disputed presidential elections.
• Ms. Reiss was sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying and e-mailing photographs of the post-election protests. Later, it was commuted to a fine of $285,000, said her lawyer. She has been freed after France released an Iranian engineer detained for allegedly exporting illegally, electronic parts to the Iranian military.

ATM inventor John Shepherd-Barron dead

• India-born Scot John Shepherd-Barron, inventor of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM), has died after a short illness, aged 84.
• The businessman, who worked for a printing firm at the time, came up with the concept of a self-service cash dispenser in 1965 while lying in the bath after getting to his bank too late to withdraw money.
• The first ATM was installed at a London bank in 1967.
• The first ATM was operated by inserting a special cheque that was matched against a Personal Identification Number.

Commander Dilip Donde first Indian to circumnavigate the world solo comes home

• Commander Dilip Donde formally christened the first Indian to circumnavigate the world solo, covering about 21,600 nautical miles (38,880 km) under sail.
• Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Navy Chief Admiral Nirmal Kumar Verma witness the historic moment from INS Delhi as Mhadei crosses the finishing line. Later, Cdr. Donde given a ceremonial guard of honour onboard the aircraft carrier, INS Viraat.

Noida boy conquers Mount Everest

• A 16-year-old schoolboy from the National Capital Region, Arjun Vajpai, became the youngest Indian to successfully climb the world’s highest peak, 8,848-metre-high Mount Everest, via the traditional South Col route in Nepal.
• On 13-year-old American school boy Jordan Romero becoming the youngest person in the world to climb the peak, hours after Arjun’s climb, Ms. Vajpai said: “We heard about the young boy and are happy, but as of now for us nothing in the world stands close to the joy that our son’s successful climb has brought us.”
• Arjun equalled the record of a Nepalese Sherpa Temba Tsheri, who also climbed the peak when he was sixteen.

Carried by helium balloons man crosses English Channel

• An American adventurer crossed the English Channel, carried by a bundle of helium balloons, ending a quiet and serene flight by touching down in a French cabbage patch.
• Jonathan Trappe, 36, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was strapped in a specially equipped chair below a bright cluster of balloons when he lifted off in the morning from Kent, in southeast England.