Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam - 04 April, 2014

Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam

04 April, 2014

Tagore honored

  • India, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom joined hands to honour Rabindranath Tagore, one of the greatest poets of the Commonwealth, at the House of Commons.
  • Tagore was one of the most celebrated sons of India, a towering figure, who wrote India as well as Bangladesh’s national anthem.
  • The range of his achievements is extraordinary and not only includes literature but music and art as well.
  • Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

‘Cobrapost’ sting

  • The sting operation carried out by `Cobrapost’ giving details of alleged conspiracy by right-wing organisations to bring down Babri Masjid in 1992 has no evidentiary value for CBI as it has already completed the investigation.

  • Highly placed sources of the agency said investigation in the cases has been completed after collecting all the legally tenable evidence based on which the cases are at trial stage.

  • They said the so-called revelations made by Cobrapost prima facie do not look to be legally tenable evidence.

  • There are two sets of cases -- one against BJP leader L K Advani and others who were on the dais at Ram Katha Kunj in Ayodhya in December 1992 when Babri Masjid was demolished, while the other case is against lakhs of unknown ‘karsevaks’ who were in and around the disputed structure.

The amendment to Representation of the People Act

  • The Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre on a petition challenging the amendment introduced to Section 62 (5) of the Representation of the People Act to treat persons in lawful custody in a criminal case as voters and allow them to contest elections.

  • A Bench of Justices H.L. Dattu and S.A. Bobde issued the notice on the petition filed by advocate Manohar Lal Sharma against a Delhi High Court order rejecting his plea.

  • Section 62 (5) of the Representation of the People Act says: “No person shall vote in any election if he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police, provided that nothing in this sub-section shall apply to a person subjected to preventive detention under any law for the time being in force.”

Subsurface sea on Enceladus

  • By studying the gravitational pull exerted by Saturn’s moon Enceladus on the Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found that the moon could harbour a subsurface ocean of liquid water.

  • NASA has said the discovery furthers “scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes”.

  • On three occasions between 2010 and 2012, Cassini flew by Enceladus within 100 km, twice over the southern and once over the northern hemisphere. During these flybys, Cassini’s orbit was pushed and pulled by the moon’s gravity, indicating an uneven distribution of mass inside the moon.

  • Though the disturbances were small — 0.2-0.3 mm/second — scientists have been able to conclude that there is excessive mass about 30-40 km beneath Enceladus’s south pole, and a deficiency at the surface.

  • In 2011, a Jovian moon, Europa, was shown to harbour liquid water under an ice shell that covered the body’s entire surface. NASA has planned a mission to investigate Europa and allocated $15 million earlier this year to develop a mission.

  • The Cassini robotic spacecraft was launched in 1997 by NASA, European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency at a cost of $3.26 billion to study the Saturnian system.

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