General Awareness Updates – January 2010

Places in News:

The Union Government has announced that a new state – Telangana – would be carved out of Andhra Pradesh. The process of forming the state of Telangana would be initiated and an appropriate resolution moved in the AP Assembly. The decision comes in the wake of large-scale violence after the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao went on a indefinite fast.

However, the Government has not committed to a specific timeline as to when a resolution would be moved. The Government also instructed the AP Chief Minister K.Rosaiah to withdraw all cases filed on and after November 29 against all leaders students and others associated with the violent agitation.

South Korea was the fifth biggest buyer of U.S. weapons in 2008, purchasing U.S.$800 million worth of arms from the country in 2008. In Asia, between the years 2001 and 2008, South Korea ranked second followed by Taiwan. According to data compiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency on foreign military sales, Saudi Arabia topped the list with over $1.2 billion in purchases, followed by Israel with just under U.S.$1.2 billion, Egypt at U.S.$1 billion, and Australia at U.S.$900 million.

The Nepalese Government held a historic cabinet meeting at the Mount Everest base camp to highlight the impact of global warming on the Himalayas. Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and 23 other cabinet ministers travelled to the Kalapattar plateau, 17,200 feet up in the Himalayas, by helicopter for the meeting. Through this cabinet meeting, Nepal has drawn the attention of the industrialised countries how their activities are contributing to global warming that could cause devastating effects in the Himalayan region which support the life of 1.3 billion people.

The glaciers formed by the melting Himalayas could disappear within decades, bringing drought to large swathes of Asia, where millions of people depend on rivers that originate from Himalayas.