Current Affairs for Competitive Exams April 2012 Part-2

11-20 April 2012

11 April

•  The Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate on Tuesday declared that the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team had not found any evidence for prosecuting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and top bureaucrats and police officers and recommended that the investigation in the 2002 Gulberg Society massacre case be closed
• Nepal Army (NA) has taken control of the Maoist People's Liberation Army (PLA) cantonments, combatants and the weapons stored in containers inside the camps
• The Annual Plan for West Bengal for 2012-13 was finalised at Rs.25,910 crore at a meeting here on Tuesday between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
• The Election Commission on Tuesday announced that re-poll for the two seats to the Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand would be held on May 3 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and the counting of votes taken up the same day at 5 p.m
• BHEL set to meet target of 3 lakh tonnes
• Chief of the Army Staff General V. K. Singh on Tuesday lodged a formal complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation on the alleged offer of Rs. 14 crore as bribe to him two years ago by an equipment manufacturer's lobbyist to clear the supply of a tranche of 600 sub-standard vehicles to the Army
• Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal launched the country's first-ever fourth generation mobile services from Bharti Airtel in Kolkata on Tuesday
• Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh
• Baby Joseph, heroine of Nirmala, the first film produced in Malayalam by a Malayali, died
• Pakistan is targeting to double its tea imports from India by 2015 — from 24 million kg in 2011 to 50 million kg
• The Volkswagen 2012 World Junior Table Tennis Championship (WJTTC) for boys and girls under 18 years of age will be held at Hyderabad from December 9 to 16

12 April

• Massive earthquakes hit the north Indian Ocean off Indonesia on Wednesday and triggered a tsunami watch. The U.S. Geological Survey said the first 8.6-magnitude quake was a shallow 22 km in the sea, 435 km from Aceh's provincial capital
• Justice M.M. Kumar of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has been recommended to be the next Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. He will succeed Justice Ibrahim Kalifullah, who has been elevated as a Judge of the Supreme Court last week
• Uttar Pradesh Minister and senior Samajwadi Party leader Mohammad Azam Khan stayed away from the swearing-in of the newly elected MLAs in the Assembly
• The Central Government has imposed anti-dumping duty on imports of phosphoric acid from Israel and Taiwan for five years
• The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to consider afresh a plea by multi-commodity MCX Stock Exchange Ltd. (MCX-SX) to launch an equity trading platform like the BSE or the NSE
• Smriti Mehra, the most successful golfer on the Hero Women's Professional Golf Tour in 2011-12, was named the ‘player of the year' at the Hero-WGAI awards function

13 April

• The Supreme Court on Thursday by a majority of 2:1 upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between the age of 6 and 14 years and mandates government/aided/and non-minority unaided schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for these children
• Italian tour operator Bosusco Paolo was finally released by the Odisha State Organising Committee of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) in Kandhamal district
• Rs. 30,000-cr. bailout plan for Air India
• The government will amend the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, to include registration of marriages under the purview of this law
• Google India was on Thursday dropped from the array of defendants in the civil suit filed against social networking websites for allegedly hosting objectionable content
• The Foreign Ministers of India and China will meet today in Moscow to discuss the recent spat over the South China Sea, the next steps to resolve the border dispute, terrorism and the forthcoming calendar for high level meetings
• Zee TV has become the first Indian television channel to be granted landing rights in China
• Trafigura Pvt. Ltd., a commodity trader in the global sphere, has picked up close to 24 per cent equity in Nagarjuna Oil Corporation Ltd. (NOCL) by investing around Rs.650 crore

14 April

• India has decided in principle to allow foreign direct investment from Pakistan, as part of the road map to enhance economic engagement
• Pakistan handed over 33 prisoners, including a fisherman suffering from cancer, to India at Wagah on Friday, after they were freed in a goodwill gesture
• External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna
• Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Ramachandrapuram unit, is getting ready to build E-1700 rigs that will be used for onshore drilling by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)
• Mata Prasad Pandey was unanimously elected Speaker of the 16th Uttar Pradesh Assembly. Mr. Pandey, a Samajwadi Party MLA from Itwa in Sidhhartnagar district, will serve as Speaker for the second time
• Puerto Rican poet Jack Agueros has been selected for this year's Asan World Prize, the only international award given for poetry from the State Kerala
• Foreign Ministers of China Yang Jiechi, Russia Sergei Lavrov and Indiia S.M.Krishna held trilateral meeting in Moscow
• The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has projected a further slowdown in world trade, pegging the growth at 3.7 per cent for 2012

15 April

• Ahead of the annual credit and monetary policy announcement on April 17, Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao on Saturday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, as is the standard practice, for discussions on the current macro-economic environment and the steps that need to be taken to spur growth while containing inflation.
• Car major Maruti Suzuki plans to invest Rs. 2,000 crore in diesel engine manufacturing facility at its Gurgaon plant to meet the demand for Swift and Desire models
• The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, on Saturday, announced it would widen the yuan's daily trading limit against the U.S. dollar to one per cent
• Nico Rosberg of Mercedes stormed to a career-first pole position for Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, edging out McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and teammate Michael Schumacher
• Twentythree-year-old Jeevan Nedunchezhian won the prestigious T.K. Ramanathan award at the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association awards function held at the centre court of the Nungambakkam Stadium

16 April

• The Central government is considering allocating 300 MW of additional power to Tamil Nadu from the Central Grid and a proposal to this effect has been placed with the Ministry of Power
• A statue of Mahatma Gandhi that was vandalised late on April 5 in the East Sri Lankan town of Batticaloa, headquarters town of the Tamil-dominated Eastern province, has been restored
• George Washington, who led the U.S. victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, has been named as the U.K.'s ‘greatest-ever foe,' according to a survey, which also included Tipu Sultan and Rani of Jhansi
• Southern Railway Stores Department has introduced e-auction for sale of scrap materials.
• Australian swimming great and four-time Olympic gold medallist Murray Rose died

17 April

• The new iPad, Apple's third generation tablet PC, will be reaching the Indian shores on April 27, according to a release issued by the company
• The International Cricket Council's Executive Board on Monday decided to increase the number of teams in the biennial World Twenty20 Championships from 12 to 16 for the editions from 2014

18 April

• Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday emerged triumphant in the elections to the newly trifurcated Municipal Corporation of Delhi, winning a majority of seats in the North and East Corporations
• Former naxalite and People's War leader Khambham Gnana Satyamurthy, who worked with revolutionary leaders like Charu Mazumdar in Srikakulam movement, died at Kandulapadu in G. Kondur Mandal of Krishna district
• Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday cut the policy rates by 0.50 percentage points, signalling banks to cut the lending rates
• The short-term repo rate (at which banks borrow from RBI) has been cut from 8.5 per cent to 8 per cent
• Terming the decision to amend tax laws with retrospective effect “denial of justice,” Vodafone on Tuesday threatened to drag the government to international arbitration if it was made liable to pay Rs. 11,000 crore in taxes for a 2007 acquisition. The company's Dutch unit, Vodafone International Holdings BV, served notice of dispute on the government
• Agni-V, which can take out targets 5,000 km away, is all set to soar from a road mobile launcher on Wheeler Island, off the Odisha coast, on Wednesday evening

19 April

• The much-awaited launch of India's longest-range ballistic missile, Agni-V, which was scheduled to take place from Wheeler Island on Wednesday night, was postponed to Thursday morning because of lightning and thunderstorm
• Even as WPI (wholesale price index) based headline inflation in March has been on a declining trend at 6.89 per cent, the price situation at the consumer level appears to provide no comfort with retail inflation way above at 9.47
• HDFC Bank, on Wednesday, announced a dividend of Rs. 4.30 per share of Rs. 2 face value for the year ended March 31, 2012, as against Rs. 3.30 in the previous financial yearper cent during the month
• IDBI Bank, on Wednesday, announced a cut in its lending and deposit rates, following the announcement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday reducing the repo rate by 50 basis points. “Loans linked to Base Rate/BPLR, will become cheaper following a 25 basis points (bps) reduction in Base Rate (to 10.50 per cent) and BPLR (to 15 per cent), with effect from April 20,” said IDBI Bank in a release

20 April

• India on Thursday propelled itself into an elite club of nations with Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) technology by successfully test-firing nuclear-capable Agni-V, which covered a range of more than 5,000 km
• Ashim Ahluwalia, who directed Miss Lovely , is representing India at Cannes this year and the film will be screened as a part of the Un Certain Regard section of the festival
• Global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR) has decided to pick up a ‘significant minority stake' in TVS Logistics Services, a company promoted by TVS & Sons.
• KKR will be the second global investment firm to park equity funds into TVS Logistics
• ICICI Bank, on Thursday, said it would cut its base rate by 0.25 percentage point to 9.75 per cent from 10 per cent with effect from April 23
• PNB too has reviewed its lending rates and decided to revise downwards the base rate by 25 basis points from 10.75 per cent to 10.50 per cent and the Benchmark Prime Lending Rate (BPLR) to 14 per cent from 14.25 per cent

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