Current Affairs - 19 September 2014

Pull back your troops who have entered Ladakh, Modi tells Xi

• 

  NEW DELHI: The past caught up with the efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping to elevate bilateral ties, leading the PM to protest against China's bid to escalate tensions in Ladakh.
  
  It was the festering border row which Modi sought to address first in his meeting with Xi on Thursday as he told him that peace and tranquillity along the borders was imperative for mutual trust and for realizing the full potential of Sino-Indian relations.
  
  "This is an important understanding, which should be strictly observed," Modi said as he raised "serious concerns" over what India calls serial transgressions by the Chinese.
  
  Pitching for a quick clarification of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), Modi told Xi that China had to restore the status quo that existed before September 10 in Ladakh this year. Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj also raised the issue with her counterpart Wang Yi.
  
  Modi, in fact, set the tone on Wednesday evening itself when, just after the public display of bonhomie, he raised the latest Chinese transgressions at Chumar in Ladakh in an after-dinner "pow-wow" with Xi.
  
  The Chinese president came back with a response on Thursday when he told Modi that he had "noted'' India's concerns and that the incidents in Ladakh may be a fallout of the non-demarcated border.

Saffron alliance on brink as Shiv Sena rebuffs BJP’s ultimatum

• 

  MUMBAI: The saffron alliance was teetering on the brink of collapse with the Shiv Sena rebuffing a 24-hour deadline set by the BJP on Thursday to respond to its "minimum irreducible" demand for 135 seats. The Sena announced that it would under no circumstances leave more than 119 seats for its ally. 
  
  The BJP has said the two parties should contest 135 seats each and leave the remaining 18 seats for smaller parties who are part of the 'maha yuti.' 
  
  Om Prakash Mathur, the BJP's poll observer for Maharashtra, rang up Uddhav Thackeray's residence Matoshree on Thursday but could not get through to the Sena president. The 24-hour 'ultimatum' was nonetheless delivered to the Sena. 
  
  In the evening, Uddhav's confidant and Sena MP Sanjay Raut emerged from a meeting of the party to announce that they will not improve their offer of 119 seats. 
  
  "We won't compromise on our self-respect. The Sena does not obey anybody's ultimatum. The final decision will be taken only by Uddhav Thackeray," agencies quoted Raut as saying. 
  
  Considering that the figure of 119 includes at least 10-odd seats for allies, the Sena's blunt message to the BJP was to settle for 110 seats—an offer which is clearly not acceptable to the BJP.

Rajnath to Koirala: Border areas now ISI, jihadi hubs

• 

  NEW DELHI: Home minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday raised the issue of growing radicalization among Muslims in Nepal settled near Indo-Nepal border with Nepal PM Sushil Koirala and Home Minister Bam Dev Gautam. Certain pockets in these areas are learnt to have become fishing pools for Pakistan's ISI and is suspected of being used against India.
  
  Singh is on a visit to Kathmandu for SAARC summit in Nepal. An official statement released by his office said, "The Indian HM (home minister) expressed his concern on the growth of religious fundamentalism in the border areas."
  
  Intelligence agencies have been warning for the past few years that a string of madrasas coupled with large-scale settling of Muslims has been systematically taking place in Nepal along its border with India. These colonies, says security establishment sources, are being tapped by ISI fopr anti-India activities.
  
  It is important to note that even Indian Mujahideen had been found to have plans to recruit from these radicalised pockets. NIA chargesheet against Yasin Bhatkal, who was arrested last year from Nepal, mentions that he had got in touch with some Muslims in Nepal and was planning to recruit some boys for operations in India.
  
  Even as Nepal government promised full cooperation in dealing with cross-border crimes and terrorism, Singh thanked Kathmandu for timely cooperation extended by it in averting a catastrophic flood in Bihar in early August in this year. "He offered greater cooperation in disaster management to Nepal and underlined the need to establish a bilateral mechanism on disaster management. India suggested that need assessment team for disaster management should be set up in both the countries," said a Home Ministry official.
  
  Singh also appreciated the efforts of Nepal government in dealing with trans-border crimes and underlined the need for more focused effort to control the activities of criminal elements, terrorists and other Indian insurgent groups along the Indo- Nepal border.
  
  "He expressed concern on the smuggling of fake currency notes and human trafficking. He stated that there is a need for evolving bilateral mechanism for dealing with the issue of human trafficking," said the official.

Barack Obama nominates Indian-American Richard Rahul Verma to be US envoy to India

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  WASHINGTON: President Obama has nominated Indian-American Richard Rahul Verma as the new ambassador to India, the White House announced on Thursday.
  
  Verma, a former assistant secretary of state, is currently a senior counselor at the Steptoe & Johnson law firm and the Albright Stonebridge Group, a business advisory company led by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
  
  The New Delhi post has been vacant since the departure of the previous ambassador Nancy Powell, after a disastrous stint during which India and US hit a new low following a bitter spat over diplomatic privileges and protocol.
  
  Remarkably, Verma is the second Indian-American to put in charge of job that involves India. The current Assistant Secretary of State for South and South Central Asia, a region that also involves India, is also an Indian-American, Nisha Desai Biswal.
  
  Verma graduated from Georgetown University (LLM), Lehigh University (JD), and American University (BS), and is considered a is a leading practitioner in the fields of national security law, international regulatory compliance and public policy.
  
  On the executive side, he has worked mainly with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and on the legislative side he has worked with Senator Harry Reid for many years. He has also worked extensively on US export controls and economic sanctions.
  
  Verma also has some military experience, having served in the United States Air Force as an Air Force judge advocate.

Ig Nobel winner: Using pork to stop nosebleeds

• BOSTON: There's some truth to the effectiveness of folk remedies and old wives' tales when it comes to serious medical issues, according to findings by a team from Detroit Medical Center. 
  
  Dr Sonal Saraiya and her colleagues in Michigan found that packing strips of cured pork in the nose of a child who suffers from uncontrollable, life-threatening nosebleeds can stop the hemorrhaging, a discovery that won them a 2014 Ig Nobel prize, the annual award for sometimes inane, yet often surprisingly practical, scientific discoveries. 
  
  This year's winners honored on Thursday at Harvard University by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine included a team of researchers who wondered if owning a cat was bad for your mental health; Japanese scientists who tested whether banana peels are really as slippery as cartoons would have us believe; and Norwegian biologists who tested whether reindeer on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard were frightened by humans dressed to resemble polar bears. 
  
  As has become the custom, real Nobel laureates handed out the prizes and winners were given a maximum of 60 seconds to deliver their acceptance speech, 
  
  Sticking pork products up the patient's nose was a treatment of last resort when conventional treatments had failed, Saraiya said, and was only used for a very specific condition known as Glanzmann thrombasthenia, a rare condition in which blood does not properly clot. 
  
  "We had to do some out-of-the-box thinking," she said. "So that's where we put our heads together and thought to the olden days and what they used to do." 
  
  The 4-year-old child's nostrils were packed with cured pork twice, and according to their study, "the nasal vaults successfully stopped nasal hemorrhage promptly (and) effectively." 
  
  The method worked because "there are some clotting factors in the pork ... and the high level of salt will pull in a lot of fluid from the nose," she said. 
  
  Still, Soraiya does not recommend sticking pork up your nose for a routine nosebleed, as it could cause infection. 

Longest and Largest

• 1. What is the name of tallest Animal ?

  Giraffe

• 2. Where is largest Archipelago ?

  Indonesia

• 3. Which is smallest and largest bird ?

  Smallest Bird is Humming Bird and Largest bird is Ostrich

• 4. Which is largest continent ?

  Asia

• 5. Which is smallest continent of world ?

  Australia

• 6. Which is the biggest country in Area ?

  Russia

• 7. Which is largest Creature in world ?

  Blue Whale

• 8. Which is the largest epic in world ?

  Mahabharat

• 9. Which is the largest sea in the world ?

  Mediterranean sea

• 10. Which is Largest library in the world ?

  United State Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

• 11. Which is the biggest museum in the world ?

  British Museum, London

• 12. Which is Biggest ocean in the world ?

  Pacific ocean

• 13. Which is biggest planet ?

  Jupiter

• 14. Which is smallest planet ?

  Mercury

• 15. Which is the brightest planet ?

  Venus

• 16. Which is the highest Plateau ?

  Pamir, Tibet

• 17. Which is the longest Platform ?

  Gorakhpur railway station, Uttar Pradesh, India (1355.40 meters)

• 18. Which is longest railway station ?

  Grand Central Terminal, Chicago(USA).

• 19. Which is longest river in world ?

  Nile, Africa

• 20. What is the name of brightest star ?

  Sirius

• 21. Which is tallest statue in world ?

  Statue of Motherland, Volgagrad (Russia)

• 22. Which is the longest wall in world ?

  Great wall of China

• 23. Which is the highest waterfall in the world ?

  Angel, Venezuela

• 24. Which is the longest day in the year ?

  June 21

• 25. Which is the shortest day in the year ?

  December 22

• 26. Which is the lightest gas ?

  Hydrogen

• 27. Which is the lightest metal ?

  Lithium

• 28. Which is the largest gulf ?

  Gulf of Mexico