July 2nd week onwards

1. The Solar Impulse:Solar powered plane, The solar plane project got underway in 2003 under the guidance of Bertrand Piccard, the first person to fly around the world nonstop in a balloon.

This is a very significant step in the sense that flying by night using solely solar power is a stunning manifestation of the potential that clean technologies offer today to reduce the dependency of our society on fossil fuels

2. India, Iran sign six new agreements:

- agreement on air services : The air services agreement includes enhancement in the capacity entitlement for the designated airlines of each nation from 23 services per week to 31 per week.

- transfer of prisoners

- Iran has also agreed to hold technical-level meeting over the issue of Chabahar port, which is strategically important for New Del

- MoUs have also been signed for cooperation in renewable energy, small scale industries and science and technology. Yet another MoU was signed for mutual ties between the Central Pulp and Paper Research Institute of India and Iran's Gorgan University of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources.



Chabahar Port:

Chabahar is an Iranian city and a free port (Free Trade Zone) on the coast of the Gulf of Oman.

Chabahar is situated on the Makran Coast of the Sistan and Baluchestan province of Iran and is officially designated as a Free Trade and Industrial Zone by Iran's government. Due to its free trade zone status, the city has increased in significance in international trade

India is helping develop the Chabahar port, which will give it access to the oil and gas resources in Iran and the Central Asian states. This is done by India to compete with the Chinese, who are building Gwadar Port, in Pakistani Baluchistan.

3. According to a recent study conducted by Indian researchers, Homoeopathic medicine `Belladonna' has a probable role help in preventing Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus infection

4. NP1 - India's first indigenous naval Light Combat Aircraft,


The LCA is equipped with state-of-the-technology and the GE-F-IN20 engine and is designed for Ski-jump Take Off But Arrested Recovery (STOBAR) operations.

The Naval LCA would operate with a wide variety of operational weapons and equipment on board, including the Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile, anti-ship missiles, conventional bombs, air defence guns, counter-counter measures and drop tanks

5. 8 Indian firms on Fortune 500 list are:

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) - Ranked 125
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL)Tata Steel - 175
State Bank of India (SBI) - 282
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) - 307
Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) - 354
Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) - 413
Tata Motors - 442

6. 1GOAL : is a campaign seizing the power of football to ensure that education for all is a lasting impact of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. 1GOAL is bringing together footballers, fans, charities, corporations and individuals to lobby and achieve the ambitious aim of education for everyone

In 2000, 164 world governments came together to create the Education for All goals, 189 governments also created the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Two of the eight goals involve ending poverty through education:

* to ensure that all boys and girls complete primary schooling by 2015

* to ensure that girls have the opportunity for education at all levels by 2015.


They promised to make sure there was enough money and that the policies were in place to make it a reality. Since then many countries have abolished school fees, spending was increased by $4 billion and an extra 40 million children are now going to school


7. Naadam festival- the biggest sports and entertainment event in Mongolia, has been celebrated in summer for centuries as a test of courage, strength, horsemanship and marksmanship, culminating with “the three men's games” — wrestling, archery and horse racing. In the Mongolian language, Naadam means game.

8.Jabulani bladders are manufactured in Enkay (India) Rubber Co, New Delhi
Enkay bladders have been inside the Azteca, used in the 1986 world cup in Mexico, the Etrusco Unico in Italy in 1990, the Questra in the US in 1994, the Tricolore in France in 1998, the Fevernova in Korea/Japan in 2002 and the Teamgeist in Germany in 2006. These balls have variously been produced in factories in Pakistan, France, Morocco and Thailand, and Enkay has delivered its bladders to all these countries

9. India's defence research agency DRDO has developed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) specifically for anti-terrorist and counter insurgency
operations, which will be inducted into the armed forces by the year-end.

The 1.5 kg UAV, called 'Netra', is a collaborative development project between ideaForge, a company formed by a group of Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, alumni and one of Defence Research and Development Organisation's Pune-based labs, Research and Development Establishment (Engineers) (R&DE) Pune.

10. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has conferred Tulsi R Tanti, chairman and managing director of Suzlon Energy Limited, with the title of `Wind Visionary of Asia'. The award was presented at an international consultation - `Quantum Leap in Wind Power in Asia' - held at the ADB headquarters in Manila, the Philippines.

The award is in recognition of Suzlon's commitment to building the case for wind across the world and highlights a decade of tremendous work in key markets of Asia

11. The polar satellite launch vehicle PSLV-C-15 carrying remote sensing Cartosat-2B along with four other satellites has been launched successfully

The four other satelites re:

Alsat from Algeria,
two nano satellites from Canada and Switzerland, and
a pico (very small) satellite, Studsat, built by seven engineering students of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka

Cartosat-2B is India's 17th remote sensing satellite and is meant to augment ISRO's remote sensing data services

The satellites' imagery can be used for preparing detailed forest maps, tree volume estimation, village / cadastral level crop inventory, town / village settlement mapping and planning for development, rural connectivity, canal alignment, coastal land form, mining monitoring and other fields

12. The union cabinet approved a symbol for the Indian rupee. This symbol will be used by all individuals/entities within and outside India after its incorporation in `Unicode Standard', 'ISO/IEC 10646' and 'IS 13194'.

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. Developed in conjunction with the Universal Character Set standard and published in book form as The Unicode Standard, the latest version of Unicode consists of a repertoire of more than 107,000 characters covering 90 scripts, a set of code charts for visual reference, an encoding methodology and set of standard character encodings, an enumeration of character properties such as upper and lower case, a set of reference data computer files, and a number of related items, such as character properties, rules for normalization, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional display order (for the correct display of text containing both right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic or Hebrew, and left-to-right scripts)

13.Archaeologists in Jerusalem have uncovered an ancient clay fragment dating back some 3,400 years, the oldest-ever sample of writing found in Jerusalem

The clay chip is a key find which indicates the importance of the city in the Bronze Age, around 1,400 BC

14. The 22-year-old Patna-born prodigy Tathagat Avtar Tulsi is all set to become the country's youngest faculty at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Powai in Mumbai
In 2003, he was named as one of the world's “seven most gifted youngsters” by Time magazine

15. Vostok-2010 :Russia's largest military exercise since the breakup of the Soviet Union. More than 20,000 troops, 75 combat aircraft, 40 warships from the Pacific, Northern and Black Sea Fleets, and 5,500 pieces of heavy weapons were mobilised for 10-day war games

16. Multidimensional poverty index:

- India ranks 63rd in the new poverty index, after Togo, before Haiti
- Quarter of the world lives on $1.25 a day or less: World Bank estimate
- More than 410 million people live in poverty in the Indian States, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal

17. Leh berries:

- extracted from the Seabuck Thorn Berry, a local shrub

- Seabuckthorn, also called the “Wonder plant” and “Ladakh gold” has multi-purpose medicinal and nutritional properties, and also helps in soil conservation and nitrogen fixation

- Hardy, drought-resistant and tolerant to extreme temperatures from – 43º C to + 40º C, the plant has an extensive root system which can fix atmospheric nitrogen, making it ideal for controlling soil erosion and preventing desertification.

- The Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Defence Research and Development Organisation have launched a major national initiative for seabuckthorn cultivation in the high-altitude, cold desert ecosystems

18. Desmond Symes, a Royal Air Force veteran of World War II, who met Mahatma Gandhi and took Lord Louis Mountbatten across British India, has died at the age of 86.

19.World's biggest solar power station opens in Spain:

The new La Florida solar plant takes Spain's solar output to 432MW, which compares with the US output of 422MW. The plant, at Alvarado, Badajoz, in the west of the country, is a parabolic trough. With this method of collecting solar energy, sunlight is reflected off a parabolic mirror on to a fluid-filled tube. The heated liquid is then used to heat steam to run the turbines. The mirror rotates during the day to follow the sun's movement. The solar farm covers 550,000 square metres (the size of around 77 soccer pitches) and produces 50MW of power

Spain is now the fourth largest manufacturer of solar power technology in the world

20. Defensin-1 :a protein made by bees that they add to honey. This could one day be used to treat burns and skin infections and to develop new drugs that could combat antibiotic-resistant infections.

21. Serum Institute of India (SRI), the largest vaccine manufacturer in India, has launched an indigenously developed intra-nasal vaccine, Nasovac, for prevention of H1N1 (swine flu) infections

22.Three Chancellors - Book on Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, who in their capacity as Prime Minister have served as Chancellor of Visva-Bharati – the book has been compiled by Nilanjan Bandopadhyay, curator of the university's museum at Santiniketan.

It is part of 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Tagore

23. Argentina has become the first country in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage, following a landmark Senate vote carried live on national television.

24. The World Bank Group has sanctioned two loans worth around Rs1,185 crore for environment management projects in India.

Of this, Rs897crore will go for the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) project and the remaining for Capacity Building for Industrial Pollution Management (CBIPMP) project.

The Capacity Building for Industrial Pollution Management Project (CBIPMP) project aims to reduce pollution levels in ten highly polluted industrial areas - two in Andhra Pradesh and eight in West Bengal - on a pilot basis.

Goals of ICZM:

- mapping, delineation and demarcation of the hazard lines and delineation of coastal sediment cells all along the mainland coast of India;
- mapping, delineation and demarcation of environmentally sensitive areas;
- capacity building of the MoEF and the state coastal zone management authorities, and
training programme for coastal zone management as also setting up of a National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM). The NCSCM will be set up at Anna University in Chennai with an outlay of Rs116 crore

25. Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), the apex body set up to regulate and develop the pension sector in the country, has introduced two new schemes - `NPS-Lite', which aims at financial inclusion and `Swavalamban Scheme' which is an add-on product for NPS account holders who meet certain criteria.

NPS-Lite specifically targets the economically disadvantages sections of society and promotes small savings during their productive life.

The scheme will help the economically weaker sections to build a corpus sufficient enough to buy an annuity for their old age

The `Swavalamban Scheme,' which grants an incentive of Rs1,000 to all eligible NPS accounts, will be available to all NPS-Lite accountholders as well, provided they meet the prescribed criteria.

Distinguishing features of NPS Lite are:

Voluntary - Open to eligible citizens of India, in the age group of 18-60 years. Subscriber is free to choose the amount he/she wants to invest every year.

Simple - Eligible individuals in the unorganised work force can open an account through their `aggregator' and get an Individual subscriber (NPS - Lite) account.

Safe - Regulated by PFRDA, with transparent investment norms and regular monitoring and performance review of fund managers by NPS Trust.

Economical - Ultra-low cost structure with no minimum amount required per annum or per contribution.

Portable - Subscriber can operate account from anywhere in the country, even with change of location, employment or `aggregator


26. Raku-Raku - meaning "easy-to-use" in Japanese - new one-touch internet-access mobile handset from Fujitsu

The new Raku-Raku Phone 7 is designed to make the internet more accessible to senior citizens by introducing a one-touch access button to the i-mode mobile internet system.

27. Two new bacterial species that produce enzymes which could have application for biotech industry have been discovered in the Arctic region by a senior scientist from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB).

The bacteria which can grow at 2 degrees Celsius and produce enzymes such as protease and lipase

28. Milon Kumar Banerjee, the former Attorney-General of India, passed away

Mr. Banerjee, as Attorney-General, had the rare honour of being called upon to address the Parliament regarding the powers of the Election Commission on August 5, 1993, a request that had not been made to the Attorney-General for decades, and the Padma Awards case, where he argued before the Supreme Court that these awards were not titles and as such were not violative of Article 18 of the Constitution

He was awarded the second highest national award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2005

29. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said India would emerge as the third largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) for the three-year period ending 2012

India broke into the top 10 destinations for FDI for the first time in 2009, when the world battled to emerge from a brutal financial crisis and FDI flows slowed dramatically. The country rose to the ninth place in 2009 from 13th in the previous year in the list of FDI destinations, according to the UNCTAD report.

30. In a move that will bring about a sweeping change in education across the country, the ministry of human resource development unveiled a low-cost computer with a price tag of Rs1,500 or $35

The single unit system has a touch screen and a built-in keyboard along with a 2 GB RAM memory, wi-fi connectivity, USB port and is powered by a 2-watt system to suit poor power-supply areas.

The device is the product of a collaborative effort involving the ministry, institutes like the IITs, IISc and VIT, Vellore

31. New inflation index from August:

The government will introduce a new system of inflation measurement from August that would cover price changes of about 250 extra items.

The monthly inflation measurement system in use currently, is based on the wholesale price index that reflects the price variations of 435 items.


The new index is likely to include a host of new products, including consumer goods such as mobile phones and LCD televisions, while out of use items such as typewriters and video cassette recorders would likely be dropped from the new inflation measurement mechanism.

The base year of the new index would also be changed from 1993-94 to 2004-05.

32. Now, map details height of the globe's forests:

Using satellite data, scientists have produced a first-of-its kind map that details the height of the world's forests.

The map, based on data collected by NASA's ICESat, Terra, and Aqua satellites, should help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world's forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere.

Some findings:

This new global depiction shows the world's tallest forests clustered in the Pacific Northwest of North America and portions of Southeast Asia, while shorter forests are found in broad swaths across northern Canada and Eurasia.

Temperate conifer forests – which are extremely moist and contain massive trees such as Douglas fir, western hemlock, redwoods, and sequoias – have the tallest canopies, soaring easily above 40 meters (131 feet). In contrast, boreal forests dominated by spruce, fir, pine, and larch had canopies typically less than 20 meters (65 feet). Relatively undisturbed areas in tropical rain forests were about 25 meters (82 feet), roughly the same height as the oak, beeches, and birches of temperate broadleaf forests common in Europe and much of the United States.


33. Researchers have found that sulforaphane, a chemical found in broccoli, interacts with cells lacking a gene called PTEN to reduce the chances of prostate cancer developing

34. The Boeing Company unveiled the hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye unmanned airborne system, a demonstrator that will stay aloft at 65,000 feet for up to four days.

Phantom Eye is powered by two 2.3-liter, four-cylinder engines that provide 150 horsepower each. It has a 150-foot wingspan, will cruise at approximately 150 knots and can carry up to a 450-pound payload.

Key Phantom Eye suppliers and partners include Ford Motor Company (engines); Aurora Flight Sciences (wing); Mahle Powertrain (propulsion controls); Ball Aerospace (fuel tanks); Turbosolutions Engineering (turbochargers); the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and NASA.

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world's largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world's largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $34 billion business with 68,000 employees worldwide.

35. Yet ANother Indian in the Obama administration:

Gururaj ‘Desh' Deshpande, entrepreneur, philanthropist and Chairman of Tejas Networks, A123 and Akshaya Patra, USA, had been appointed Co-Chairman of the U.S. National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE).


36. This year's Lokmanya Tilak Award will be given to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in recognition of her contribution to politics. It consists of a gold medal, a memento, a citation and Rs.1 lakh

37. A big rock art site has been discovered at Kovanur, Perianaickenpalayam taluk, 30 km northwest of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

The site has about 60 paintings, both group compositions and individual images. The paintings portray the hunting of an elephant and a herd of deer, and images of a tiger, herds of bisons, a monitor lizard and hunters with bows and arrows.

38. The eight-legged ‘oracle' Octopus Paul was declared an “honorary friend” of a Spanish town in a ceremony at his German aquarium

39. Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act:

It is a federal statute in the United States that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010.The Act is the product of the financial regulatory reform agenda of the Democratically-controlled 111th Congress and the Obama administration.

The Act is categorized into sixteen titles, and by one law firm's count, it requires that regulators create 243 rules, conduct 67 studies, and issue 22 periodic reports.The stated aim of the legislation is:

To promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end "too big to fail", to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes

40. The Reserve Bank of India will allow take-out financing through external commercial borrowings (ECB) for refinancing of rupee loans availed of from domestic banks

What is exisitng norm?

refinancing of domestic rupee loans with ECB is not permitted

What's the change?

Keeping in view the special funding needs of the infrastructure sector, it has been decided to review the ECB policy and put in place a scheme of take-out finance


41.After years of discussions Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have launched a customs union as a first step towards forming a broader EU-type economic alliance of former Soviet states.

42. The Spitzer infra-red telescope has uncovered 14 of the coldest stars known in our universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes

43. Evidence of early humans who lived in colder climate found:
early humans had indeed ventured beyond 45 deg. N latitude some 7,00,000 years ago and reached Pakefield, Suffolk in the U.K that lies at 52 {+o} N latitude

44. The government has approved the release of Rs4,868 crore as interest subvention to public sector banks (PSBs), regional rural banks (RRBs) and cooperative banks as also NABARD for refinance to RRBs and cooperative banks for lending at concessional rate to farmers.


This is to ensure that farmers get short-term crop loans at a concessional rate of 7 per cent per annum (5 per cent for prompt payers)

What is Interest Subvention?

A subvention is a subsidy, so an interest subvention is a subsidy on interest. If the government is offering 5 % interest subvention on an farm loan which otherwise would have cost 10 % then the farmers can get loans at 5% interest rate.

44.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised its short-term lending and borrowing rates by a higher than expected 0.25 per cent and 0.50 per cent respectively in an avowed attempt to bring the double-digit inflation down to six per cent by March 2011, in a move that would put pressure on banks' interest rates.

The increase in short-term lending rate (repo) to 5.75 per cent and short-term borrowing rate (reverse repo) to 4.5 per cent will be effective immediately

45. President Pratibha Patil appointed Election Commissioner (EC) Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi as the next Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) under Clause 2 of the Article 324 of the Constitution.

46.Mahela Jayawardene now has the most Test hundreds at a single venue. He overtook the legendary Don Bradman's nine centuries in Melbourne, when he reached the three-figure mark and notched up his 10th century at the Sinhalese Sports Club ground

47. The international flavour of the week seems to be the WikiLeaks expose of the documents concerning the operations against the Al Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan.

The New York Times reported on Sunday, July, 18, 2010, that military field documents included in the leak suggest that Pakistan has been allowing "representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders".

48. China stakes sovereign claim over entire South China Sea:

Reiterating historical claims the Chinese military declared that China had "indisputable sovereignty" over the South China Sea, but back-pedalled somewhat by saying it would continue to allow others to freely navigate what is one of the busiest waterways in the world. These remarks, in part, are a reaction to a move last week by the United States, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries to challenge China's claims to the whole sea

The South China Sea

Part of the Pacific Ocean, the South China Sea encompasses an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 km². It is considered as the largest or the second largest body of water after the five oceans depending on measurement.

Located south of China it has Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam as the littoral countries. It has hundreds of small islands scattered on its surface all of which are claimed by the various littoral nations on its rim.

This body of water has great geo-political significance being the second most used sea lane in the world. In terms of world annual merchant fleet tonnage, it is estimated that over 50 per cent passes through the Strait of Malacca, the Sunda Strait, and the Lombok Strait.

49. The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) at Chennai unveiled India's seventh-fastest supercomputer, Annapurna, to provide a boost to simulations and numerical calculations in the areas of statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics.

Annapurna is a high-performance computation (HPC) cluster having 1.5 Tera Byte (TB) memory and 30 TB storage space cluster capacity.


Among broad-based scientific institutions in India, the Annapurna cluster is the third fastest, ranking below the IISc Bangalore and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

Vindhya, Aravalli and Kabru - the other supercomputers built by the institute


49.Tata Chem's low-cost water purifier Tata Swach in WSJ's best Asian innovations shortlist. The fact that the purifier, branded Tata Swach, doesn't require electricity and running water unlike existing water purifiers is what makes the purifier really innovative.

50. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has selected three biometric solution providers and awarded contract to consortiums led by Accenture, Mahindra Satyam-Morpho and L1 Identity Solutions to implement the core biometric identification system in for the `Aadhaar' programme

51. Apple's glitches and antenna issues with iPhone 4 notwithstanding, the $57.4-billion brand that raced past Microsoft in May as the largest technology company, has topped the 'The World's Most Valuable Brands' list compiled by Forbes

Brand Microsoft comes in second with $56.6 billion, followed by Coca Cola ($55.4 billion), IBM ($43 billion) and Google ($39.7 billion) which bagged the third, fourth and fifth spots on the list.