Current Affairs Quiz - Jan 2013

Explanation
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System. Named after the Roman god of war, it is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance.[14] Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth.

Explanation
Chinese Shenzhou IX rocket carried 33 year old female astronaut Liu Yang and male astronauts Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang to space on 16th June, 2012 The crew stayed in space for more than 10 days, during which time they performed scientific experiments and the country’s first manual space docking — a complicated procedure that brings two vessels together in high-speed orbit.

Explanation
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and robots. An intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."

Explanation
Wagah is the only road border crossing between Pakistan and India and lies on the Grand Trunk Road between the cities of Amritsar, Punjab, India and Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Wagah is a village through which the Radcliffe Line, the boundary demarcation line dividing India and Pakistan upon the Partition of India, was drawn. The village was divided by independence in 1947. Today, the eastern half of the village remains in the Republic of India while the western half is in Pakistan.

Explanation
Bangkok is the capital city of Thailand and the most populous city in the country. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep. The city occupies 1,568.7 square kilometres (605.7 sq mi) in the Chao Phraya River delta in Central Thailand, and has a population of over eight million, or 12.6 percent of the country's population. Over fourteen million people (22.2 percent) live within the surrounding Bangkok Metropolitan Region.

Explanation
Baba Ramdev (born as Ramkrishna Yadav in Haryana) is a spiritual leader known for his contributions in yoga, ayurved, politics and agriculture. Baba Ramdev is best known for popularizing yoga among health conscious Indians through his mass yoga camps & TV shows and has been the inspiration and the guide for the Patanjali group of institutions. He has more recently become a vocal advocate on Indian political issues.

Explanation
Nirupama Menon Rao, born December 6, 1950, is a 1973 batch Indian Foreign Service officer who is the current Ambassador of India to the United States of America since August 2011. Prior to this assignment, she has served as Foreign Secretary of India for a period of 2 years.

Explanation
The peacock sanctuary in Bankapura is the only second sanctuary in the country that is exclusively engaged in the conservation and breeding of peacocks.The Government of India declared Bankapura as a peacock sanctuary on June 9, 2006. This sanctuary is situated on 139 acres of land.

Explanation
The Brahmaputra river originates on the Angsi Glacier located on the northern side of the Himalayas in Burang County of Tibet. The river is 3,848 km long, and its drainage area is 712,035 square km The Brahmaputra enters India in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, where it is called Siang. It makes a very rapid descent from its original height in Tibet, and finally appears in the plains, where it is called Dihang. It then enters the state of Assam and becomes very wide—as wide as 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in parts of Assam.

Explanation
Aung San Suu Kyi, born 19 June 1945 is a Burmese opposition politician and chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament.She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.

 

Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country,

 

Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be the father of modern-day Burma. Her father, Aung San, founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1947