6th August 2016 - Important Current Affairs updates

sponsored links

International Affairs

• 71st anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing is being observed today.
• More than 140,000 people were killed by the first of two uranium bombs, nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man dropped on Japan at the end of the second world war.
• Note : An American B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped Little Boy, on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
• Japan surrendered days later on 15th August 1945 bringing the war to a close.
  

National Affairs

• Union Health Minister JP Nadda has launched a nationwide breastfeeding campaign called MAA (Mother's Absolute Affection). 
• A total of ₹30 crore has been allocated for the programme, which will help reduce the under-five mortality rate.
• Punjab government has reconstituted a state-level drugs advisory committee to suggest ways and means to curb drug abuse in the state which is going to polls early next year. 
• The ten-member panel is headed by Punjab's Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration as its Chairman. 
• The term of the committee would be for two years.
• Minister of Law and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad today launched the MyGov app ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first-ever 'townhall' style event in Delhi. 
• The launch marked two years of MyGovIndia, an online citizen engagement website of the Indian government.
• In the Townhall Meet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched the PMO mobile application, the government's online citizen engagement platform. 
• The newly-launched app was reportedly developed with ideas from citizens and will allow mobile users to connect with the website of the Prime Minister’s Office.
• There is one doctor for every 893 patients in India if allopathic doctors and those practising Ayurveda, Unani and Homeopathy streams are considered together, Lok Sabha was informed today. 
• By pumping 100 cusecs of water from tubewells into a dug-up channel, the Haryana government today recreated the lost river ‘Saraswati’. 
• The water was released from Uncha Chandna village in Yamunanagar which the officials believe will flow up to Kurukshetra, now deemed to be Saraswati’s route. 
• Note : The Saraswati river supposedly dried up 5,000 years ago.
• The Odisha government has started work on the installation of an Early Warning Dissemination System (EWDS) in six coastal districts prone to disasters like floods and cyclones. 
• The system, to be implemented at a cost of ₹66 crore, will involve 122 warning towers that will cover 22 calamity sensitive blocks, and blow sirens two hours prior to any calamity.
• Indian Railways today launched 'Rail Geet', a three-minute song with moving trains visuals, as an ode to its employees and to establish a connect with the public. 
• The song has been composed by Shravan and sung by Udit Narayan and Kavita Krishnamurti. 
• Titled 'Indian Railways, we love Indian Railways', the song will be played now at every railway function's beginning.

Science & Technology

• Orkut Büyükkökten, creator of Google's social networking platform Orkut, has launched a new social network 'Hello' to connect people who share the same passions across the world. 

New Appointments

• Vijay Rupani was declared the new Chief Minister of Gujarat 
• Nitin Patel to be the Deputy Chief Minister.

Business & Economy

• India approves $318 million loan for Sri Lanka Railways to upgrade its communications system and rolling stock in the Tamil-dominated north.
• Uttarakhand has emerged as the top state in India in terms of growth in industry and service sectors during 2004-05 to 2014-15, an Assocham study said. 
• It posted the highest compounded annual growth rate of 16.5% and 12.3% in industry and services respectively. 
• Note : The state outperformed the nearly 7% national average growth, the study added.

 Recent Committees in News

• Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today announced that they had set up a committee to study why Indians spend a large sum of money on gold and also understand their household financing patterns. 
• The Committee will be chaired by : Tarun Ramadorai (Professor of Financial Economics, University of Oxford)

Science & Technology

• China has successfully launched the first satellite dubbed as The Tiantong-01 for mobile telecommunication. 
• It was launched on-board of the Long March-3B carrier rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre.

General Knowledge

• World’s first website was created by World Wide Web's inventor Tim Berners-Lee on this day (August 6) in the year 1991. 
• The website, which is still running, was dedicated to the World Wide Web project and was hosted on Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer. 
• It described the basic features of the web, how to access other people's documents and how to set up a server.
• A Japanese man Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only officially recognised person to have survived both the atomic bomb explosions. 
• Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 when the first bomb detonated, and left for Nagasaki upon surviving, where the next bomb was dropped three days later. 
• The survivor died in 2010 at the age of 93.
• The 1936 Berlin Olympics were the first to be televised live, with a special black-and-white telecast arranged for athletes in the Olympic Village, besides screenings in 25 special viewing rooms in Berlin and Potsdam. T
• he 1960 Rome Olympics were the first to be broadcast live across Europe, while Tokyo 1964 were the first Games to be telecast worldwide.

Deaths

• Eminent Assamese litterateur Mahim Bora (92) passed away. 
• He was a prolific short story writer and a poet. 
• He had received the Sahitya Akademi award for his most popular work Edhani Mahir Hanhi in 2001.
• Actor David Huddleston (85), who is known for his title role as the millionaire in the 1998 film 'The Big Lebowski', has passed away.
• Huddleston's wife Sarah Koeppe said that he died of advanced heart and kidney disease in Santa Fe, USA. "Things were not important to him (Huddleston) – people were," said Koeppe.

Sports

• The 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro have officially been declared open by Brazil's Acting President Michel Temer. 
• Former Brazilian long-distance runner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, who won the bronze medal at Athens Olympics in 2004, lit the Olympic Cauldron during the opening ceremony. 
• The Games will run up to August 21, featuring 306 events in 28 sports.
• Five-time Olympian and gold medallist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Abhinav Bindra led the biggest ever Indian Olympic contingent as it entered the Maracanã Stadium in Rio today. 
• USA became the first nation to register a Gold Medal at the Rio Olympics 2016, after 19-year-old Virginia Thrasher won gold in the 10-metre air rifle on Day One of the event held today. 
• Thrasher finished ahead of China's Du Li and Yi Siling, who won the silver and bronze medals to open China's medals tally at the event.
• Indian Men's Hockey team defeated Ireland 3-2.
• South Korean archer and former world number one Kim Woo-jin set a new world record, during the ranking round of the men’s individual archery competition on Friday. Woo-jin scored the first-ever 700 in archery recurve, beating the previous record of 699 set by compatriot Im Dong-Hyun at London 2012. Meanwhile, Indian archer Atanu Das finished fifth in the ranking round.
• The Indian Railways has announced a ₹1 crore cash award for its athletes who win a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In total, 35 athletes from the Indian Railways will take part in the Games. 
• Further, silver medallists will get ₹75 lakh, bronze medallists ₹50 lakh, and any top-eight finish athlete will receive a reward of ₹30 lakh.

Read more Daily Current Affairs updates from here

sponsored links