General Awareness Updates – November 2009

Persons in News

Greece’s new socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou has been sworn into office in the presence of President Karolos Papoulias. Mr. Papandreou, whose PASOK party won 44 per cent of the vote in the general election, has a 100-day plan to stimulate the economy by creating jobs and cleaning up public finances. He has promised new laws to redistribute income to the poor, boost public investment and clamp down on corruption.

The leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama (right), has been sworn in as Japan’s 60th Prime Minister. He succeeds Taro Aso whose Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time in almost five decades.

Lieutenant General P. C. Bhardwaj, a veteran special operations officer and a paratrooper, has taken over as Army Vice Chief, succeeding Lt. Gen. Noble Thamburaj, who has retired. A Vir Chakra awardee for operations during the 1971 war, Mr. Bhardwaj was commissioned in 1 Para (SF) in 1970. He was also awarded with a Shaurya Chakra for a daring rescue operation.

The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has won a second term of office. Mr. Barroso, 53, was the only candidate in the European Parliament vote. A former Portuguese prime minister, he will serve a new five-year term. The European Commission President heads the EU’s executive arm. The Commission drafts EU laws, which then go to the parliament and member states’ governments for approval. The parliament is the only directly elected EU institution.

In a damning revelation of Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation, its disgraced atomic scientist A. Q. Khan (left) says the government and the military had a hand in the country’s nexus with the controversial nuke programme of Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The 74-year-old Mr. Khan, who is the Father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and dubbed as a key player in the global nuclear black market, also claimed that former premier Benazir Bhutto had asked him to hand over the nuclear know-how to Iran.

In another stunning disclosure that could come as an embarrassment to China, Mr. Khan revealed how Pakistan helped that country in enrichment technology in return for bomb blue-prints. Mr. Khan outlined Pakistan s nuclear links with China and its official support to the atomic programme of Iran, North Korea, and Libya.