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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 04 January 2015

:: National ::

The Cyberabad police launched a month-long campaign ‘Operation Smile’ to help reunite runaway children with their parents. For this purpose, 11 Task Force teams headed by a Sub Inspector each have been constituted.
The teams will go to shelter homes, railway stations, bus stations, religious places and other public places and take down the details and photographs of the children and post them.
The photographs and details will be posted on the ‘Missing Child’ portal of Ministry of Women and Child Welfare Department and also be published in newspapers and telecast on news channels, a press release said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Pakistan this month, shortly after certifying the Pakistan government’s “action against” Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).
The authorisation is likely to spark outrage in India. Mr. Kerry is due to visit the Vibrant Gujarat summit, which begins in Gandhinagar on January 11, ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit on January 24.
Mr. Kerry will lead the Strategic Dialogue in Islamabad later in January, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry announced this week.
Despite the fact that both the LeT and JeM have resurfaced visibly in the past year in Pakistan and the founders of both, Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar, have held public rallies in Pakistan in 2014, the U.S. Secretary of State has signed off on a certification that the Pakistan government has “prevented al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad from operating in the territory of Pakistan” for the year.

A 20-year-old footballer for Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala has been shot dead near his home in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus.
Gasan Magomedov was driving into his home village when his car was sprayed with machine gun fire and he died from his wounds while being transported to hospital, Anzhi said in a statement.
No arrests have been made and the motive is unclear, the club said. Magomedov was a regular in midfield for Anzhi’s youth and reserve teams.

Algebra and the Pythagoras’ theorem both originated in India but the credit for these has gone to people from other countries, Union Minister for Science and Technology, Harsh Vardhan, said.
Ancient Indian scientists have graciously allowed scientists from other countries to take credit for their findings, the Minister said at the inaugural event of the Indian Science Congress.
“Our scientists discovered the Pythagoras theorem, but we ... gave credit to the Greeks. We all know that we knew ‘beejganit’ much before the Arabs, but very selflessly we allowed it to be called Algebra. This is the base the Indian scientific community has maintained,” Mr. Vardhan said.
The Union minister said Indians have never used their knowledge of science for negative purposes. “Whether it is related to the solar system, medicine, chemistry or earth science, we have shared all our knowledge very selflessly,” he said.
Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that in ancient times, India had opened new frontiers in the field of science. “Mahabharata says Karna was not born out of his mother’s womb. This means people then were aware of genetic science.
There must have been a plastic surgeon who fixed an elephant’s head on Ganesha,” Mr. Modi had said in Mumbai, adding that what the mathematician Aryabhata had said centuries ago, the world has accepted now.