8th June - CA

1. India-Czech Republic relationship- A new begining
- President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus committed his country's support for India's bid for United Nations Security Council
-Proposed collaboration in science and technology and IT
- Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore had visited Prague twice — in 1921 and 1926. Professor Vincenc Lesny of the Charles University was the first European to have translated Tagore's verses directly from Bengali to Czech
2. Hydra-headed crisis - representative of times we live in. We are living at a time of successive crises successive crises – the Haiti earthquake, famine in East Africa, the Taliban attack on Kabul, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Boxing Day Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina…No sooner does one crisis disappear from the headlines, than another pops up in a different part of the world

3. UNESCO-Obiang prize for improve the quality of human life conroversy:
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Equatorial Guinea has been accused by rights groups and anti-corruption activists of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from his tiny oil-rich West African state, while most of its people scrape by in dire poverty

According to the African Economic Outlook, 77 per cent of Equatorial Guinea's population fell below the poverty line in 2006. The country has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and an average life expectancy of 62. It ranks among the bottom 13 countries on Transparency International's corruption index, and ninth on the Freedom House list of the world's most repressive countries.

3. Indo-Australian collaboration in the energy sector:

- India to jointly with Australia in energy, minerals and power generation sectors including tie-up for gas supply for new plants to be set up by both countries in India
- development of use of brown coal (lignite), energy efficiency, efficiency improvements of coal based power plants, hydro power development and power generation technology research and development of smart grids
- India now had the fifth largest electricity generation capacity in the world and the world's third largest transmission and distribution network.

4. Bharti acquires Zain:
India's largest telecom company Bharti Airtel has closed its $10.7-billion acquisition of Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co, also known as Zain, becoming the world's fifth largest mobile phone services company after China Mobile, Vodafone, Telefonica and America Movil Group.

The Zain acquisition will be an Indian company's second-largest overseas acquisition after Tata Steel's $12.11 billion acquisition of Anglo Dutch steel maker Corus in 2007, which catapulted it to the world's fifth-largest steel maker

The countries in which Bharti can operate through Zain's acquisition are - Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia

5. 17th century 'Archduke Joseph' diamond from Golkonda is up for saleThe diamond takes its name from Archduke Joseph August (1872-1962), a prince of the Hungarian line of the Hapsburg dynasty.

6.Limiting the use of Platinum in fuel cell because of copule of disadvantages of Pt It is expensive, and it breaks down over time in fuel-cell reactions.New technology discovered:five-nanometer palladium (Pd) core and encircled it with a shell consisting of iron and platinum (FePt).
Core of the technology:iron-platinum shell by decomposing iron pentacarbonyl [Fe(CO)5] and reducing platinum acetylacetonate [Pt(acac)2] => reductioon in usage of Platinum in fuel cells

7. Rdio - social music service created by Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström, who built Skype and Kazaa