Latest News

Top Congress leaders, including UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were present at the funeral New Delhi: A van carries the mortal remains of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit towards DPCC office, in New Delhi, Sunday, July 21, 2019. Dikshit passed away at the age of 81 on Saturday.    Current affairs : The mortal remains of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit were consigned to flames on Sunday, with colleagues, Congress workers and admirers braving heavy rains and gusty winds to bid her final farewell. The 81-year-old Congress veteran, who died on Saturday due to cardiac arrest, was cremated with full state honours at the Nigambodh Ghat. Top Congress leaders, including UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were present at the funeral. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and Home Minister Satyendar Jain were... read more

West Bengal chief minister says BJP won by misusing electronic voting machines and security forces. Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee addresses a rally to commemorate Martyr's Day in Kolkata, Sunday, July 21, 2019.   Current affairs : West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said the BJP’s the party’s victory in the Lok Sabha elections was "mystery" and not "history", hinting that electronic voting machines (EVM) had been rigged. "We don't want EVMs. We want ballot box to be brought back. We want to tell the Election Commission in the state that municipality and other elections should be done via ballot boxes," said Banerjee at Martyrs' Day, an annual rally organised by her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party in Kolkata to commemorate the deaths of 13 people in police firing in 1993. Banerjee said several countries that had reverted to ballot papers after... read more ...

This is perhaps the first recommendation to be returned to the collegium by the present government Current affairs : The government is learnt to have asked the Supreme Court collegium to reconsider its recommendation to elevate a judge of the Allahabad High Court as chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. While returning the file of Justice Vikram Nath last month, the government did not cite any reason, sources said. This is perhaps the first recommendation to be returned to the collegium by the present government. The NDA-I had returned several recommendations back to the... read more

The orbiter is planned to circle the Moon for about one year, imaging the surface and studying the atmosphere GSLV-Mk III--nicknamed Bahubali-- will carry the 3.8-tonne Chandrayaan-2   Current affairs : India’s space agency at 6.45 pm Sunday began the countdown to launch its second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, a week after calling off the event due to a “technical snag”. Chandrayaan-2 will be launched atop a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) MkIII, India's most powerful rocket. It will carry an orbiter, a lander called Vikram and a rover called Pragyan, which has been almost entirely designed and made in India. The orbiter is planned to circle the Moon for about one year, imaging the surface and studying the... read more

Each Bharat Kavach has four hard armour plates, which protect the wearer from the front, back, and either side Bhabha Kavach, the bulletproof jacket, on display at the International Police Expo 2019 in New Delhi on Saturday   Current affairs : When the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) under the ministry of home affairs demanded bulletproof jackets that offer greater protection than those used by the Army, the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) turned to the agency that makes the country’s nuclear warheads — Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. The OFB also brought in defence public sector undertaking Mishra Dhatu Nigam (MIDHANI). The bulletproof jacket they developed together, named Bhabha Kavach in recognition of BARC’s contribution, has recently cleared firing trials at Gujarat Forensic Science University. The challenge was to develop a jacket that weighed less than 9.5 kg and could stop steel-jacketed, 7.62-mm NATO-standard bullets. This was intended to protect CAPF pers...

Geological mapping continues today, even on bodies where there is no prospect of human visitors in the forseeable future Current affairs : I still remember a cartoon in a newspaper in July 1969, just before the first Apollo moon landing. It showed the ground crew reminding the astronauts as they boarded their rocket, “Don’t forget to bring back some rock!” This was a nod to an old holiday cliché – people who went to the seaside were often asked to bring back some “rock”, referring to rock candy. It wasn’t very funny, but it does demonstrate that, once the race against the Soviets was won, the point of it all was to find out about the moon’s geology. The scientific value of landing on the moon would have been diminished without studies to establish the context of the landing sites. The primary consideration was to touch down somewhere safe, but rocks collected from these places would have conveyed much less information had effort not gone into working out the nature of, and more...

This faith in technology has given us a false sense of security Current affairs : The Apollo project gave us the astonishing spectacle of a blue marble rising over the sterile surface of the moon. Of course, the moon was already known to be uninhabitable. But being shown something in high-resolution colour photography makes a stronger impression than being told it by the experts. Our planet appeared in the photos as a small, vulnerable object amid surroundings utterly inimical to life. They showed, in a way that no scientific report could, the importance of keeping the Earth habitable, boosting the environmental movement. But the moon landings affected many people in precisely the opposite way. No other public project has been such a spectacular success. The aim was so simple and concrete that everyone could immediately grasp it. Kennedy’s commitment to “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth” was made before the US had even put a man into orbit. Yet it...