Current Affairs for PA Exam

1) The Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships (Akademi Ratna) and Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) are national honours bestowed on performing artists as well as teachers and scholars in the field of performing arts.

2) Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha has been appointed as the next Chief Justice of India.

3) Veteran film lyricist, director and poet Shri Gulzar has been conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2013. The award is conferred by the Government of India for outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian Cinema.

4) Britain’s Royal Mail issues stamp on Indian-origin Noor Inayat Khan, who fought in the World War II.

5) The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) asked Japan to stop its whaling programme in the Antarctic. Japan catches about 1,000 whales each year in the region for what it calls scientific research. Australia in 2010 filed a case with the ICJ, arguing that Japan’s programme — under which it kills whales — is actually commercial whaling in disguise. The court’s decision is considered legally binding, and Japan earlier did say it would abide by the court’s ruling.

6) Robber crab or coconut crab, one of the largest land crabs are found in the wild archipelagos of Andaman and Nicobar, the only place in India where they are found.

7) Long-billed vultures sighted in the Nilgiris. Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug used for both animals and humans, poses a major threat to the survival of vultures.

8) Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Monday announced that it will acquire 100 per cent of Ranbaxy Laboratories in a $ 4 billion all-share transaction. The combined entity will create the fifth-largest specialty generics company in the world and the largest pharmaceutical company in India.

9) Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for overall contribution and scholarship in the performing arts were presented to Mysore V. Subramanya and N. Ramanathan.

10) Heartbleed bug is a newly discovered security vulnerability that puts users’ passwords at many popular Web sites at risk.

11) Cancer in India: Every year nearly one million new cancer cases are diagnosed in India, the prevalence being 2.5 million. With mortalities of 6,00,000-7,00,000 a year, cancer causes six per cent of all adult deaths in the country.

The most common, nearly half of all, are cancers of the lung and oral cavity in men, and of the breast and cervix in women. Tobacco use alone accounts for about 40 per cent of all cancers in India.

12) The Indian government has topped the list of global governments asking for censorship of content on social network Facebook, according to the ‘Global Government Data requests’ report released by the US-based company.