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Showing posts from May 10, 2012

Karnaphuli River

Karnaphuli,  the largest and most important river in  Chittagong  and the  Chittagong Hill Tracts , is a 667 metres (2,188 ft)-wide river in the south-eastern part of  Bangladesh . Originating from the  Lushai hills  in  Mizoram , it flows 270 km southwest through  Chittagong Hill Tracts  and Chittagong into the  Bay of Bengal . Source of Origin : Lushai Hills, Mizoram Drainage Area : Mizoram, Bangladesh Length : 270 km End : Bay of Bengal Dams : Kaptai Dam (1962) Power-plant : Kaptai Hydo-power station, the only hydro-electric power plant in Bangladesh, was constructed at Kaptai in 1962. It produces 230 Megawatts of electricity. Important Sea-port : Chittagong sea-port, the main port of Bangladesh, is on the mouth of this river.

Barak River

The  Barak River  is one of the major rivers of southern  Assam  and is a part of the  Surma-Meghna River System . It is the biggest and the most important of all the rivers in the  Manipur  hill territory,  from where it originates.  River Barak in Assam is also proposed to be declared as National Waterway-6 by Govt. of India and thereafter it will be developed with infrastructure facilities for commercial operations. Near its source, the river receives a lot of little hill streams, including the Gumti, Howrah, Kagni, Senai Buri, Hari Mangal, Kakrai, Kurulia, Balujhuri, Shonaichhari and Durduria. It flows west through Manipur State, then southwest leaving Manipur and entering Mizoram State. In Mizoram State the Barak flows southwest then veers abruptly north when joined by a north flowing stream and flows into Assam State where it turns westward again near Lakhipur as it enters the plains. I...

Christian Wulff

Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff  ( born  19 June  1959) is a German politician and lawyer. He served as the  President  of  Germany  from 2010 to 2012.  On 17 February 2012, Wulff resigned as President of Germany, facing the prospect of prosecution for allegations of corruption relating to his prior service as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony.   The new president,  Joachim Gauck , was elected on 18 March by a  Federal Convention .

Kripashankar Singh

Kripashankar Singh  is an  Indian  politician with the  Indian National Congress . He was a minister of state in the  Maharashtra  2004 cabinet.  He was involved in the Congress gains in  Mumbai  against  Shiv Sena  in the  Maharashtra assembly elections, 2009 .  He was the president of the  Mumbai  chapter of the party until June 2011, when he resigned after his son was linked to the  2G scam , an enormous corruption scandal of 2010.  On 22nd February 2012, the   Bombay High Court   directed the city police commissioner to prosecute Kripashankar Singh for "criminal misconduct" under the   Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 . A   PIL   filed by activist Sanjay Tiwari, who alleged that the Congress MLA had amassed wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income. The court also said "The PIL shall be treated as FIR and the report submitted by the state Anti-Cor...

K. G. Balakrishnan

Konakuppakatil Gopinathan Balakrishnan  (b. 12 May 1945) is presently the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of India. He is a former Chief Justice of India. He was the first judge from the state of Kerala to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was also the first person of Dalit origin to ascend to the post of the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court of India. His tenure lasting more than three years has been one of the longest in the Supreme Court of India. Public stances, opinions and views Balakrishnan has tried to exempt the Office of the Chief Justice of India from the purview of the Right to Information Act.   He ordered the Supreme Court registry to file an appeal before the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court judgement making the office of the CJI amenable to the RTI act.   He has also spoken about the need for amending the RTI act in the interests of the right to privacy. Bal...

Anita Rana

Janhit Foundation's Director, Anita Rana, received the prestigious Leadership in Community Initiatives for a Green Economy - UNDP Award  from the UN Development Programme at the 2012 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. The award was presented by the UNDP's Country Director, Caitlin Wiesen. Valuable Work in Support of Earth Day Network's Campaign - Women and the Green Economy (2012) -  Anita Rana was honoured to have her and her organization's work recognized by the Earth Day Network at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, 2012.

Yingluck Shinawatra

Yingluck Shinawatra  ( born 21 June 1967),  is a  Thai  businesswoman and politician, member of the  Pheu Thai Party , and the 28th  Prime Minister of Thailand  following the  2011 general election . Yingluck is Thailand's first  female Prime Minister  and at 44 is the youngest Prime Minister of Thailand in over 60 years. Yingluck Shinawatra was the Chief Guest at India's 63rd Republic Day, 2012.

Zaheerul-Islam

Lieutenant-General   Zaheerul Islam   HI(M)  is the current Director-General of the  Inter-Services Intelligence  (ISI); he was appointed to the position on 9 March 2012. Islam will take over the position from  Ahmed Shuja Pasha  on 18 March.  He is currently serving as Corps Commander  V Corps , Karachi.  He also served as Chief of Staff in the Army Strategic Force Command for 2004-2006.

Jyotirmoy Dey

Jyotirmoy Dey  (1955 – 11 June 2011), also known as  Jyotendra Dey ,  Commander J , and  J Dey , was an Indian journalist, crime and investigations editor for  MiD DAY  (a tabloid newspaper published in several cities in India) and an expert on the Mumbai underworld.  He was shot dead by motorcycle-borne sharpshooters on 11 June 2011. Dey had authored two books on underworld activities,  Zero Dial: The Dangerous World of Informers  and  Khallas . He has done many reports on underworld dons Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan. On 21 Feb 2012, Mumbai Crime Branch chargesheeted journalist Jigna Vora (Deputy Chief of Bureau of Asian Age) under stringent provisions of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), Arms Act and various sections of IPC including criminal conspiracy, murder and destruction of evidence. Jigna Vora had been under the Mumbai police's radar s...

Soumitra Sen

Soumitra Sen  is a retired  judge  of the  Calcutta High Court . He was the first judge in independent India to be impeached in India's  Rajya Sabha  for  misappropriation  of funds. Justice Sen was held guilty of misappropriation of public funds he received in his capacity as receiver appointed by the High Court of Calcutta and misrepresenting facts with regard to it by a committee of three judges set up by former   CJI   K. G. Balakrishnan   in 2007. A year later, Justice Balakrishnan recommended his impeachment to the PM, after which a legal opinion obtained by the law ministry endorsed the judges' committee report. In 2009, 58 MPs of the Rajya Sabha moved a motion for impeachment of Calcutta High Court Judge Soumitra Sen for his involvement in financial misappropriation. Probe panel was set up by Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari in February 2009. It was headed by SC judge Justice B Suders...

Tawakel Karman

Tawakul Karman    or Tawakel Abdel-Salam Karman  (born 7 February 1979 ) became the international public face of the  2011 Yemeni uprising  that is part of the  Arab Spring  uprisings. She has been called by Yemenis the "Iron Woman" and "Mother of the Revolution." She is a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni, the first Arab woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Prize and the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate to date. Karman is a Yemeni journalist, politician and senior member of the of Al-Islah political party, and human rights activist who heads the group "Women Journalists Without Chains," which she co-founded in 2005. She gained prominence in her country after 2005 in her roles as a Yemeni journalist and an advocate for a mobile phone news service denied a license in 2007, after which she led protests for press ...

Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik  ( born 13 February 1979)  is a  Norwegian  accused mass murderer  and the confessed perpetrator  of the  2011 attacks in Norway . On 22 July 2011, Breivik bombed the government buildings in Oslo, which resulted in eight deaths. He then carried out a mass shooting at a camp of the Workers' Youth League (AUF) of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya where he killed 69 people, mostly teenagers. On 10 April 2012 the second psychiatric evaluation was published with the conclusion that Breivik was not psychotic during the attacks and he was not psychotic during their evaluation;   rather he is an extreme narcissist. Breivik's far-right militant ideology is described in a compendium of texts, titled  2083 – A European Declaration of Independence  and distributed electronically by Breivik on the day of the attacks.  Breivik wrote th...

Yoshihiko Noda

Yoshihiko Noda ( born 20 May 1957)  is the current  Prime Minister of Japan , a member of the  Democratic Party of Japan  (DPJ), and a member of the  House of Representatives  (lower house) in the  Diet  (national legislature). He was named to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan as a result of a runoff vote against Banri Kaieda in his party, and was formally appointed by the Emperor  Akihito  on 2 September 2011. In his first speech as Prime Minister on 2 September, Noda confirmed that the Japanese government will continue to phase out nuclear power, by not building new nuclear power plants nor extending the life spans of outdated ones; however, nuclear power plants which are currently sitting idle in the wake of the Fukushima disaster will be restarted in order to help Japan's immediate demands for energy. Since becoming Prime Minister, Noda's most important ini...

Burhanuddin Rabbani

Burhanuddin Rabbani  ( 1940 – 20 September 2011) was  President  of the  Islamic State of Afghanistan  from 1992 to 1996. After the  Taliban government  was toppled during  Operation Enduring Freedom , Rabbani returned to  Kabul  and served as a temporary President from November to December 20, 2001, when  Hamid Karzai  was chosen at the  Bonn International Conference on Afghanistan . Rabbani was the leader of Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan (Islamic Society of Afghanistan), which has close ties to Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami. He was one of the earliest founders and movement leaders of the Mujahideen in the late 1970s, right before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He served as the political head of the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (UIFSA), an alliance of various political groups who fought against Taliban in Afghanistan. He also served ...

Baburam Bhattarai

Dr.  Baburam Bhattarai  (born 18 June 1954)  is a  Nepalese  politician who became the 36th  Prime Minister of Nepal  in August 2011.  He is a senior Standing Committee Member and vice chairperson of  Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) .  His party started a revolutionary  People's War in Nepal  in 1996 that ultimately led to the change of the political system in Nepal. The decade long civil war transformed Nepal from a monarchy into a republic. On 4 February 1996, Bhattarai gave the government, led by Nepali Congress Prime Minister  Sher Bahadur Deuba , a list of 40 demands, threatening civil war if they were not met. The demands related to "nationalism, democracy and livelihood" and included such line items as the "domination of foreign capital in Nepali industries, business and finance should be stopped", and "discriminatory treaties, including the 1950 Nepal-India Treaty, should be ab...

Leila Lopes

Leila Luliana da Costa Vieira Lopes  (born February 26, 1986) is an  Angolan   beauty pageant  titleholder who was crowned  Miss Angola UK 2010 ,  Miss Angola 2010  and later  Miss Universe 2011 . In São Paulo, Brazil on September 12, 2011, She became the first Angolan Miss Universe and the 60th titleholder. Lopes received the title from the former Miss Universe titleholder,  Ximena Navarrete  of Mexico. Lopes is the fourth African to win the title since the beginning of the worldwide pageant (South Africa in 1978, Namibia in 1992, Botswana in 1999 and Angola in 2011) and the second African woman of Black African descent to win following  Mpule Kwelagobe , Miss Universe 1999 from Botswana. Lopes also became the first woman from Angola to win a "Big four" beauty pageant. Lopes title now faces serious questioning following allegations that false documents were use...

Gopal Subramaniam

Gopal Subramaniam  is an Indian lawyer senior advocate of the  Supreme Court of India , who was appointed as the  Solicitor General of India , the second most important law officer of the country after the attorney general, in 2009 at the age of 51. Recent Supreme Court judgments on black money in which the court directed constitution of a special investigation team and the one declaring appointment of Special Police Officers (Salwa Judum) as unconstitutional were seen as a last straw for the exit of Mr. Subramaniam. Subramanium had resigned to protest the government's decision to field a private lawyer in a case involving Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, who has been accused of bending rules to favour Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications. On July 27, 2011, The Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India appointed Rohinton Fali Nariman , the son of distinguished jurist Fali Nariman as the Solicitor General of India for a period of t...

Vanya Mishra

Vanya Mishra  (born 27 February 1992) in  Jalandhar  was crowned the winner of  Femina Miss India  on March 30, 2012. She is currently doing her under graduate program in Electrical Engineering from  PEC University of Technology . Vanya got a direct entry into the finals after being declared as the winner of Dabur Gulabari Miss Rose Glow 2011 contest. Her answer to the final question 'If you have an option, will you create thousand jobs or feed thousand children daily?' (sic) , which won her the award was, "Little children are innocent and anybody's heart will melt. I will also try to give them education so that they can feed themselves and their family too"(sic). She will be representing India at the Miss World 2012 pageant in Dongsheng Fitness Center Stadium, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China. She was also crowned Dabur Gulabari Miss Rose Glow 2012, Bharathi Vidyapeeth Femina Miss Photogenic 2012, Maybelline Femina Miss Co...

Norman Anil Kumar Browne

Air Chief Marshal  Norman Anil Kumar Browne , also known as "Charlie" Browne, is the current  Chief of the Air Staff  (CAS) of the IAF, he was  Vice Chief of the Air Staff  until he replaced outgoing Air Chief Marshal  Pradeep Vasant Naik  on 31 July 2011.  Browne is the twentieth CAS of the IAF and a fighter pilot who has logged over 3,100 hours flying Hunters, Jaguars, MiG 21s and Sukhoi 30s besides others. Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne is an alumnus of National Defence Academy who has also served as an instructor at the Tactics and Combat Development Establishment (TACDE) and Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington. Browne trained with the Royal Air Force, in the United Kingdom, on Jaguar aircraft before commanding a Jaguar Squadron. A graduate of Air Command and Staff College, Albama, USA he has held many appointments including Joint Director at Air War Strategy Cell at Air Headquarters, Chief Operations Offic...

Ronjan Sodhi

Ronjan Sodhi  is an Indian trap shooter who won two silver medals in  2010 Commonwealth Games  and a gold medal at the  2010 Asian Games . In 2011 he became first Indian to defend a world cup title. He is also a recipient of Arjuna award. Ronjan Sodhi became the only Indian marksman to grab the top spot in the latest ISSF World Rankings. Ronjan, who was earlier ranked second behind American Joshua Richmond by three points, attained the summit by virtue of his Bronze Medal-winning feat at the World Cup earlier in July in Maribor, Slovenia. Ronjan Sodhi belongs to the Royal Family Of Sodhi Nagar, Ferozepur.

Tessy Thomas

Tessy Thomas ( born in 1964) is the Key Scientist for  Agni-V  in  Defence Research and Development Organisation , Hyderabad. She is the first woman scientist to head a missile project in  India . In 2011, three women scientists won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award , India's top science prize, compared to 11 from 1958-2010 and one was for Ms Thomas. Tessy was associate project director of the 3,000 km range Agni-III missile project. She was the project director for Agni IV which was successfully tested in 2011. Tessy was appointed as the Project Director for 5,000 km range Agni-V in 2009 and is based at the Advanced Systems Laboratory in Hyderabad. The missile was successfully tested on 19 April 2012.

N Valarmathi

N. Valarmathi , from Tamil Nadu, is the project director for the Radar Imaging Satellite (Risat—1) project at the Indian space agency's Satellite Centre in Bangalore. Valarmathi is the second woman to be the satellite project director at ISRO. T.K. Anuradha , who headed the communication satellite GSAT—12 programme, is the first woman ever to have been the satellite project director at ISRO.

Rajasthan : The Land of Kings

Rajasthan Literal meaning : The Land of the Kingdoms Established : 1 November, 1956 Capital (and Largest City) : Jaipur Legislature : Unicameral (200 seats) Governor : Dr. Shivraj Patil Chief Minister : Ashok Gehlot (INC) Parliamentary Constituency : 25 Borders : West - Pakistan                Southwest - Gujarat                Southeast - Madhya Pradesh                North - Punjab                Northeast - Uttar Pradesh, Haryana Area :  342,269 sq. km ( Largest) Official Language : Hindi High Court : Rajasthan High Court, Jaipur Old Names : Gurjaratra (R.C. Majumdar)                     Rajputana ( George Thomas) Administrative Divisions : Rajasthan is divided into 33 districts and 7 divisions - Ajmer Divis...