Facts Dec 2013

International

1. South Korean President Park Geun Hye and Capital Seoul
2. Chile is the world’s top copper exporter, and its fast-growing economy, low unemployment and stable democracy are the envy of Latin America. 
3. Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov : President of Turkmenistan.Capital : Ashgabat
4. Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia.

News-Facts

1. Pre-COP (Conference of Parties) 2013, is organised to firm up the agenda for the meeting, where all member-countries of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change gather held at POLAND.
2. Wrestling schools in rural western Maharashtra are called taleems, not akharas.
3. Thailand’s embattled Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra
4. 
   

Open Government Data

Open Data Index

Introduction : 

Opening up government data to free public access is a global trend that aims to foster better governance by improving transparency. India makes official data available through its portal launched about a year ago, but it has been ranked low in the just-published Open Data

Books - Oct 2013

• Cooperatives and socialism : A view from CUBA  :   Camila Pineiro Harnecker

National Facts

• While India as a whole has 31 per cent of its population under the age of 14, the corresponding number for U.P. is 35.69 per cent and an astounding 40.1 per cent for Bihar.Today’s children, who come overwhelmingly from U.P. and Bihar, will form the workforce of the future.


• The office of the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner released ‘single year age data’ for the 2011 Census ,which refers to the number of people at each year of age in the population. The data shows that India’s working age population (15-64 years) is now 63.4% of the total, as against just short of 60% in 2001. The numbers also show that the ‘dependency ratio’ — the ratio of children (0-14) and the elderly (65-100) to those in the working age — has shrunk further to 0.55.


• Tripura surged ahead of Kerala to achieve top position in literacy chart in India. The state fell short to become fully literate state, but as of date stands at 94.65 percent.


• India has also the highest number of female millionaires in the world as the country boasts of over 1,250 UHNW women with a combined fortune of $95 billion.Notwithstanding the continuing economic gloom, India has recorded the largest increase in its Ultra-High Net worth Individual (HNIW) club among the BRICS nations in the last one year, with a total of 7,850 super rich people in the country


• Only 15 states have so far set up their own respective State Disaster Response Force following direction from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) earlier 2013.

GK July 2013

1. India has ranked 66th out of 142 in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2013, an index that is published by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as a knowledge partner.


2. India has overtaken the U.S. as the top buyer of Nigerian crude oil.

Committees

1. Walmart lobbying activities in India : Justice Mukul Mudgal 

Gk-June

1. Egypt PM : Mohammad Morsy


2. Ethiopia PM : Hailemariam Desalegn


3. Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani


4. LIC Chairman : S K Roy

Mar 2013 : General Knowledge

•  Philippine President  : Benigno Aquino III
•  India is the largest importer of gold in the world
• Chinese President : XI jinping
• Chinese Premier : Li Keqiang
• President of Zimbabwe : Robert Mugabe
• Sarus caranes — the tallest flying birds in the world.
• Chief Election Commissioner : T.S. Krishnamurthy
• Karnataka Chief Minister  : Jagadish Shettar.
• Installed capacity of power generation in the country is about 2,12,829 MW which includes 26,920 MW from renewable sources. This constitutes 12.5% contribution of renewable.
• National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNT) Chairman : Balkrishna Sidram Renke
• FDI limit is below 100 per cent. While in multi-brand retail it is 51 per cent, in telecom and banking it is 74 per cent 
• Anurag G Thapliyal: Director General of Indian Coast Guard
• Nagaland CM : Neiphiu Rio

Apr 2013 : General Knowledge

• Union Minister of Culture :  Chandresh Kumari Katoch
• Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe  : Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Sri Lanka.
• Bharat Stores by P. Sheshadri :  Best regional film award in the 60th National Film Awards.
• Dr Aswani Kumar : Union minister of Law and Justice
• Treaties on Civil and Commercial Matters by India have already been signed with France, U.A.E., Russia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Mongolia, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan.
• Union Minister of Shipping : G K Vasan
• National Maritime Day : 5th April 
• Kerala CM : Oommen Chandy
• CBI Director  : Ranjit Sinha. 
• DP Kohli Award for the Best Detective Constable of CBI
• CBI came into being : Apr 1 1963 
• South Korean President  : Park Geun-hye
• Italian President : Giorgio Napolitano
• Kenya President : Uhuru Kenyatta
• Japan Prime Minister :  Shinzo Abe
• Nishat Majumder, who, on May 19, 2012 became the first Bangladeshi woman to reach the peak.
• First man to fly over Everest, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton in 1933.
• North Korean leader :  Kim Jong Un
• North Korea Capital : Pyongyong
• 2nd April : World Autism Day(by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior.)
• Nicolas Maduro : Venezuela President
• French Prime Minister :  Jean-Marc Ayrault
• Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) :  Hyderabad
• UP governor : B L Joshi
• Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar
• Governor Bihar : D.Y. Patil 
• Governor of Tripura : Devanand Konwar
• CM of Tripura : Manik Sarkar.
• Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy : CM of Andhra Pradesh
• Virbhadra Singh : CM of HP
• Chief Minister of Odisha : Biju Patnaik
• West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
• Goolam Essaji Vahanvati is the Attorney General of India. He is the first Indian Muslim to hold the post of Attorney General
• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff
• Fifth BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit March 2013 in Durban.
• Cyprus President :  Nikos Anastasiades
• World Bank President  : Jim Yong Kim
• IMF Managing Director : Christine Lagarde
• First GreenField Airport : Karaikal (Puduchery)
• Chief Election Commissioner : V S Sampath
• Enrico Letta : Pm of Italy (Apr 2013)
• State Duma : Lower House of Russia
• Federal Council of Russia : Upper House of Russia
• The largest desalination(Salt water is desalinated to produce fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation.) plant in South Asia is the Minjur Desalination Plant(use reverse osmosis process) near Chennai in India, which produces 36.5 million cubic meters of water per year on  the coast of Bay of Bengal.
• The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates.

Feb 2013 : General Knowledge

• India has (DTAA ) with 84 countries.
• Tunisia Prime Minister :  Hamadi Jebali
• Maldives President :  Mohamed Waheed Hassan
• French President : Francois Hollande
• Finmeccanica SpA New CEO : Alessandro Pansa
• US Airways CEO : Doug Parker. 
• TCS Chief Financial Officer : Rajesh Gopinathan
• World Wetlands Day : 2 Feb 
• India is the fifth largest country in the world in terms of wind power installed capacity.
• Mauritius PM : Navin Ramgoolam
• 
  

Lakes

• Wular Lake in Kashmir 
• Kolleru Lake in Andhra Pradesh
• Chilika Lake in Odisha

Jan 2013 : General Knowledge

• Union Tourism Minister  : Shri K Chiranjeevi
• Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences : Shri Jaipal Reddy
• Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) : S. Ramakrishnan.
• CyanoBacteria  : Blue Green Algae
• World's largest solar telescope : McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope : aperture size of 1.6 metres in Kitt Peak National Observatory at Arizona in the US.
• Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, and nicknamed "Black Beauty(weighs 320gm) : Martian Meteorite.
• Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope : World's largest radio telescope(to be built)
• SCI Chairman and Director(Finance) and MD : B K Mandal 
• Mukesh Ambani : 18th world's richest ( Bloomberg Billionaires Index)
• Mexican telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim : World's Richest.
• NASA’s Cassini mission : On Saturn' moon Titan.
• Bonn Convention : also known as Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals.
• Union Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation : Ajay Maken.
• Business 2012 : At a Glance .
• US Vice President : Joe Biden.
• Persons died in 2012 : At a Glance 
• Japan PM : Shinzo Abe (shin-zoh ah-bay).
• Railway Minister : Pawan Kumar Bansal.
• French President  : Francois Hollande.
• British Prime Minister: David Cameron.
• Paigam-e-Aman’ bus service between Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Jammu and Kashmir
• Maitree Express : India Bangladesh Train service.
• Xpress’ browser : Nokia fast loading browser.
• Kansai Nerolac (subsidiary of Kansai Paints Company, Japan): second largest paint manufacturer in India.
• R.K. Dubey: Chairman and Managing Director of Canara Bank
• Infosys CEO and Managing Director :  S. D. Shibulal
• Biritish telecom giant :  Vodafone
• Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister : Veerappa Moily
• State Bank Group chairman : Pratip Chaudhuri
• Working group constituted for studying gold and goal loans by Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs)  under the chairmanship of KUB Rao.
• Reserve Bank of India Governor: D. Subbarao 
• Chairman, SEBI : U. K. Sinha
• Mauritius President :Rajkeswur Purryag
• Union Minister of Steel : Shri Beni Prasad Verma
• The Government of India has so far declared five waterways as National Waterways. These are:- (i) Allahabad-Haldia stretch of the Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly river system (1620 km); (ii) Dhubri-Sadiya stretch of Brahmaputra River (891 km); (iii) Kottapuram-Kollam stretch of West Coast Canal along with Udyogmandal and Champakara Canals (205 km); (iv) Kakinada-Puducherry stretch of the canal along with designated stretches of Godavari and Krishna Rivers (1078 km); and (v) designated stretches of East Coast Canal, Brahmani River and Mahanadi Delta (588 km). The Lakhipur-Bhanga stretch of the Barak River would be the sixth National Waterway.
• Union Minister for Commerce, Industry & Textiles : Anand Sharma.
• NH-6 is a major link for Kolkata in West Bengal to Hazira Port in Gujarat.
• Kanha National Park is a national park and a Tiger Reserve in the Mandla and Balaghat districts of Madhya Pradesh, India. 
• In 2006 Rajinder Sachar Committee placed the socio-economic and educational status of Muslims below that of the Scheduled Castes.
• Jharkhand Governor : Syed Ahmed
• Pakistani human and civil rights activist :  Ansar Burney(key role in negotiating with Somali pirates).
• Enrica Lexie is an Italian Aframax oil-tanker involved in the shooting of two fisherman at Indian coast on 15 Feb 2012.
• Environmental Performance Index at Yale University : 
• India (125)(36.23)
• China(116)(42.24)
• Switzerland(1) (76.69)
• Anant Gupta elevated as HCL Tech CEO.
• Kachin(Jingpo People) tribe : inhabit the Kachin Hills in northern Burma's Kachin State and neighbouring areas of China and India
• Czech President : Milos Zeman
• Siju-Rewak Corridor, located in the Garo Hills of India : Major among 88 Elephant corridor(A wildlife corridor or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities (such as roads, development, or logging)).
• Jordanian prime minister  : Abdullah Ensou
• Bhutan King : King Jigme Khesar
• Megaupload founder : Kim Dotcom
• White phosphorus : an incendiary agent generally used in war to create smoke screens
• The 700-Mhz spectrum band ranges from 698 Mhz to 806 Mhz : 4G Spectrum.
• RBI has not ease its elevated interest rate, which is one of the highest in the world and the highest among BRIC countries, citing high inflation and the government’s inability to reign-in the fiscal deficit at the desired levels.
• CyberKnife technique have helped lung cancer patients. 

Dec 2012 : General Knowledge

• Icy moon of Jupiter :   EUROPA.
• National Energy Conservation Day :  December 14
• Chairman of Tata group : Cyrus P Mistry
• Iraqi President : Jalal Talabani
• Chief Economist World Bank : Kaushik Basu 
• Chairperson of National Green tribunal : Justice Swatanter Kumar
• U.N. envoy for Syria :  Lakhdar Brahimi
• Egypt Draft Constitution : At a glance
• Miss Universe : Olivia Culpo ( US) (Miss Philippines, Janine Tugonon, came in second, while Miss Venezuela, Irene Sofia Esser Quintero, placed third)
• S korea President : Park Guen-hye
• Civil Aviation Minister: Ajit Singh
• World Environment Day on 5^th June, 2012
• World Population Day on 11^th July, 2012
• Russia was admitted into the World Trade Organisation on 22 Aug 2012, 18 years after negotiations began in 1993 as 156th member.
• Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma : Elected as Chairperson of African Union Commission
• Ivan Sutherland : Father of Graphics