Current Affairs : August 22, 2011

India slips to No: 3 Position in Test Rankings

• England under the captaincy of Andrew Strauss defeated India 4-0 in the test series that concluded in Oval
  
• England bowler Stuart Broad was named man of the series for his side
  
• India’s man of the series was named as Rahul Dravid
  
• With this victory, England crowned themselves the number one team in Test rankings with 125 points followed by South Africa with 118 points
  
• The Indians, who started the series as the number one Test team, slipped to the number three position following the 4-0 defeat
  

Andy Murray won the ATP’s Cincinnati Masters (Western & Southern Open) Men’s Singles Title

• Fourth seeded British Andy Murray won the ATP’s Cincinnati Masters title for the second time after defeating World No. 1 Novak Djokovic of Serbia
  
• Murray had won the Cincinnati Masters title last in 2008
  
• The Cincinnati Open is an annual outdoor hardcourts tennis event held in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio, USA. The event started on September 18, 1899 and is the oldest tennis tournament in the United States played in its original city.
  

   

“Indian Express” Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won Men’s Doubles Title at the Cincinnati Masters (Western & Southern Open)

• Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won their third title of 2011 and first at Cincinnati after 10 years, following a hard-fought win over French-Serbian combination Michael Llodra and Nenad Zimonjic
• This is the third title of the season for the Indian Express as they are referred. They had earlier won titles at the Sony Ericsson Open and Chennai Open.

Maria Sharapova won the Women’s Singles Title Cincinnati Masters (Western & Southern Open)

• Fourth-seeded Russian Maria Sharapova defeated Serbia’s Jelena Jankovic to win the women’s singles title at the Cincinnati Open
  

Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova won the Women’s Doubles Title at the Cincinnati Open (Western & Southern Open)

• Vania King (USA) and Yaroslava Shvedova (Russian / Kazakhstan) won the Women’s Doubles Title at the Cincinnati Open after defeating Natalie Grandin (South Africa) and Vladimíra Uhlířová ( Czech Republic)
  
  

“Himayat” launched by the Centre for training of Unemployed Kashmiri Youth

• “Himayat“: A programme launched by the Union ministry of Rural Development in Srinagar for imparting training and placement to over one Lakh youth from poor families in Jammu and Kashmir
  
• The Programme to be implemented in 5 years
  
• The project to be funded by the Rural Development Ministry’s National Rural Livelihood Mission
  
• Central Government to spend Rs.235 crore per year
  
• Priority to be given to youth who are school and college drop-outs and training will be provided at each of the block headquarters
  
• The private sector institutions such as IL&FS and Don Bosco Technical Institute have been chosen to impart the training to the youths, who would be selected for the programme on the basis of applications
  
• After a 3 month training, the first batch of 800 youths will be placed with Cafe Coffee Day, Wal-Mart, V-Mart and Bajaj Allianz insurance
  
• The rural development ministry will spend about Rs 23,000 rupees per youth in the programme 
  
• Once the trained youths complete their course and take up employment, the ministry will keep track of their progress over the next three years and, if required, provide them further training
  
• Programme is part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s vision for creating employment for youths of Jammu and Kashmir, and 1,500 youngsters will complete the training in its first year
  
• Though most girls want employment within the state, many men are ready to work outside Jammu& Kashmir also
  
• Some of the jobs on offer are in cities and towns like Shimla, Jaipur and Chandigarh
  

Lord Krishna’s birthday celebrated all over India

• The festival of “Janmashtami” celebrated across the country
  
• Krishna Janmashtami, also known as Krishnashtami, Saatam Aatham, Gokulashtami, Ashtami Rohini, Srikrishna Jayanti, Sree Jayanthi or sometimes merely as Janmashtami, is a Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Krishna, an avatar of the god Vishnu
  
• Krishna Janmashtami is observed on the Ashtami tithi, the eighth day of the dark half or Krishna Paksha of the month of Bhadrapada in the Hindu calendar, when the Rohini Nakshatra is ascendant. The festival always falls within mid-August to mid-September in the Gregorian calendar
  
• Rasa lila, dramatic enactments of the life of Krishna, are a special feature in regions of Mathura and Vrindavan, and regions following Vaishnavism in Manipur
  
• While the Rasa lila re-creates the flirtatious aspects of Krishna’s youthful days, the Dahi Handi celebrate God’s playful and mischievous side, where teams of young men form human pyramids to reach a high-hanging pot of butter and break it. This tradition, also known as uriadi, is a major event in Tamil Nadu on Gokulashtami
  

Dahi Handi goes Global

• Dahi Handi Mandals are going global this Gokul Ashtami
  
• Mumbai celebrated the festival of the year ‘Dahi Handi’
  
• This year the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) facilitated the participation of the famed Castellers da Vilafranca Group from Spain known for forming human pyramids in Europe
  
• Mumbai’s Govinda groups and the famous Castellers compete on the streets to form the highest human pyramid
  
• In Spain, the formation of human pyramids is a tradition during the harvest season, while in Mumbai the Dahi Handi pyramids celebrate Lord Krishna’s childhood antics

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Month: Current Affairs - August, 2011