July & August 2010 Current Affairs

July 2010:

 

• Saina Nehwal to be conferred the country’s top sporting honour-the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award. While Jhulan Goswami skipper of womens cricket team, boxer Dinesh Kumar and Sandeep Singh are tipped to receive the Arjuna Awards in recognition of their outstanding achievements during the last one year, Footballer Sunil Chhetri and Deepak Mondal have also been nominated for the award that will be given away in Rashtrapati Bhawan on 29th Aug by President Pratibha Patil.

 

• In a football world cup 2010(19 th FIFA world cup) held in South Afirica, Spain won the world cup by defeating the Netherland.Thirld place was for Germany.32 Teams participated in it.

 

 

 

• August 2010:

 

• The United States have finally started pulling its troops out of Iraq. President Barack Obama has confirmed that the US plans to withdraw significant number of combat troops from Iraq stating that the war was nearing an end. The remaining force of 50,000 soldiers will train Iraqi security forces and provide security for ongoing US Diplomatic efforts.

 

• Australians failed to elect a new government in the polls held in August and were left with a hung parliament. The non-result elections between Julia Gillard’s Labor and Abbott’s Liberal party led to the first hung parliament in Australia since World War II.

 

• The Obama Regime has raised H-1B and L1 visa fees to protect its borders from illegal Mexican immigrants. This additional fee would be used to build operating bases and deploy unmanned aerial surveillance to improve U.S.-Mexico border security. The impact of this hike will be substantial on Indian IT companies that account for approximately 50,000 H1 and L1 visas per year.

 

• China is all set to launch space station into orbit next year.

 

• Parliament recently in Delhi has made a decision to increase the salaries of MPs. A hike of about rupees 35000 will be introduced in the salary of each MP’s thus taking it from figures like 20,000 to 55,000 or so. Because daily allowance has an important role to play hence parliament has also decided to exactly double the allowances issued daily to each Member of Parliament. Hence daily allowance of rupees 1000 will now become 2000. This daily allowance will be issued only when the parliament session is in progress. Other than the daily allowances the official expenses for every office per month have now been considerably raised and touch a 50,000 amount. Retired members will now get a monthly pension of around rupees 20,000 which was around 10,000 in the past times.

 

• IBM is the second largest private sector employer in India after TCS. The company has more than one lakh people on its rolls.

 

• A foreign cargo ship MV Khalijia-111 which collided with MSC Chitra which was carrying about 1,200 containers with over 266 tones of fuel about 10 km off Mumbai harbour has spilled oil into the Mumbai seas. The collision tilted MSC Chitra vessel causing 300 containers carrying oil to tumble into the Mumbai waters creating a thick oil slick two to three kms around the vessel Chitra causing a serious threat to the marine life.

 

• Tejaswini Sawant created history by becoming India’s first female shooter to clinch gold at the World Shooting Championship held in Munich, Germany.

 

• Anil Aggarwal who laid the foundation of Vedanta Resources Corporation, a UK based corporation and all by the virtue of it that he has been designated as the non-resident Indian billionaire has become the largest promoter of a corporate house thus overtaking Mukesh Ambani.

 

• Pallava Bagla from India has won the David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism by American Geophysical Union (AGU). Pallav won this award for his articles on the impact of change in climate on the Himalayan glaciers. Bagla is an author and freelancer for BBC and the likes. His latest book is "Destination Moon: India's Quest for Moon, Mars and beyond".