Current Affairs: November 18, 19, 2013

Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Markel will be awarded the “Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for 2013”. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh headed jury has chosen her name for the coveted prize. The prize was being given to the German leader because of the work done by for her for promotion of global economic stability, her commitment to universal peace and disarmament and her leadership role in strengthening productive and mutually beneficial relations with India and other developing countries.

Tianhe-2
Tainhe-2, a supercomputer built by the Chinese government has retained its place at the top of the world’s most powerful systems. Tianhe-2 can operate at 33.86 petaflop/s-the equivalent of 33,863 trillion calculations per second-according to a test called the Linpack benchmark.Tianhe-2 which translates as Milky Way-2 was developed by China’s University of Defence Technology and will be based in the city of Guangzhou.

Russia
India and Russia decided to hold their first-ever joint air combat exercise in the Peter the Great Bay-the largest gulf of the Sea of Japan adjoining Russia’s cost next year.

Cement
Vedanta Aluminium Ltd (VAL) has commissioned a red mud powder producing unit at Lanjigarh refinery in Odisha, describing it as first of its kind in aluminium industry tackling major environmental hazards. Red mud is a waste from alumina industry and it can be easily be utilised in cement industry.

Comet
ISON is the much anticipated “comet of the century”. Astronomers have predicted that the icy object could become the brightest comet of the century. ISON will come within approximately 724,000 miles of the star’s surface on 28th November. ISON should become visible to the naked eye in early morning throughout December and then during the night through January.

Assam
Assam government has decided to accord the status of official state anthem to the song “O Mor Aponar Desh” composed by Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbora, the doyen of modern Assamese literature, way back in 1910.

46
India’s ranked 46th at the first ever “Environment and Gender Index (EGI)” launched at a side event of the Conference of Parties (COP19). The EGI-a project of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) claimed to monitor gender equality and women’s empowerment in the environmental area. China ranks 34th.

Microsoft
Microsoft is launching its CityNext initiative to leverage technology for sustainable growth of cities in India. It has tied up with IT services majors TCS and Wipro to launch CityNext initiative. The initiative will work on 40 areas in eight domains energy and water, infrastructure, planning & buildings, transportation, public safety and justice, tourism.

Argentina
Leo Messi is a Argentinean footballer. He will receive his third Golden Boot trophy in the event will be celebrated in Barcelona. The award is given to the player with highest league goal tally from the previous season. Lessi score 46 goals in the 2012-13 season, also won 2009-10 and 2011-12 editions of the award.

The Good Lord Bird
Author James McBird’s “The Good Lord Bird”, about the journey of a young slave in the 1850s has won the prestigious US National Book Award in fiction. Pulitzer Prize winning Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel “The Lowland” failed to win the award.

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