Current Affairs and Gk -March 2013 Part-2

Justice N. K. Sodhi
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has formed a panel under the chairmanship of former chief justice of Karnataka High Court Justice N. K. Sodhi to review insider trading norms to curb the menace of insider trading.

Services
Services beat hosts Kerala in the final of the 67th Santosh Trophy football tournament played at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi. It was the third Santosh Trophy title for the Services.

K. Natwar Singh

Sugata Mitra
Educational researcher Sugata Mitra has been awarded the million-dollar TED Prize for pursuing his idea for building the schools in the Internet. Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK. He is best known for his “Hole in the Wall” experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. “Hole in the wall” experiment: In this experiment in 1999, Mitra and his colleagues installed and Internet-connected PC in an urban slum in New Delhi and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was, kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to go online and them teaching each other.

Chuck Hagel
Former Republican senator Chuck Hagel was sworn-in as the new US Defence Secretary, in the midst of a controversy over his remarks that India “financed problems” for Pakistan in Afghanistan.

Department of Economic Affairs
Department of Economic Affairs of the Finance Ministry is responsible for the preparation and presentation of Union Budget to the Parliament.

Anil Ananthaswamy
A London-based Indian-origin writer has won the inaugural Physics Journalism Prize aimed at inspiring the next generation of physicists by encouraging journalists to spread awareness about the complex subject.Anil Ananthaswamy, a consultant at New Scientist Magazine and author of ‘The Edge of Physics’, has won the prize sponsored by the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The Physics Journalism Prize offers an expenses paid trip to Japan to visit world-leading facilities carrying out research at the frontiers of physics. His article ‘Hip Hip Array’, that “brings to life” on the Square Kilometre Array, an international project to design and build the largest radio telescope ever conceived, made him the winner, according to an IOP release.

Colombia
Medellin, in Colombia, has been named the world’s most innovative city in a competition organised by the non-profit Urban Land Institute. Medellin, once known for being the stronghold of the Medellin drugs cartel, beat Tel Aviv and New York. The institute said Medellin had excelled in increasing the mobility of citizens living in poor communities. The city has an efficient metro and cable car system, which allows people to access the city centre easily. The Urban Land Institute compiled a list of 200 cities based on eight criteria ranging from culture and liveability to education and infrastructure.