1.Tata Trust ties up with Khan Academy
(i) Recently, Tata Trusts tied up with California-based Khan Academy in a five-year partnership to provide free online education to Indians through one of the biggest open-access online platforms.
(ii) American teacher and entrepreneur Salman Khan started the Academy in 2006 to educate people for free through lectures on YouTube.
(iii) Though Indian students already use the Academy’s material, it is now creating specialised content in English and Hindi for the benefit of scores of students and as per the standards set by the National Council of Education Research and Training. Khan said though the focus will be on Math and Science, the content will be produced in regional languages soon.
2. Vyachakurahalli village declared as India’s first ‘smokeless village’
(i) Recently, the Union Petroleum Ministry officially declared Vyachakurahalli village in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur district as the nation’s first smokeless village after its complete conversion from conventional fuel to LPG.
(ii) Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) steered the ‘Mission Smokeless village’ project in order to alleviate problems of women, who were prone to pneumonia due to excessive inhalation of firewood fumes.
3. M Rajeevan Nair appointed as the Earth Sciences secretary
(i) Prominent scientist M Rajeevan Nair was recently appointed as the Earth Sciences secretary.
(ii) Currently, director at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, Nair is known for his research in topics like Monsoon Variability and Monsoon Prediction, Cloud-radiation interaction
(iii) Climate Variability and Climate Change, Prediction of Mesoscale Weather Systems and Aerosol Radiative Forcing, among others.
(iv) Over the course of his illustrious career, he has also been associated with the Commission on Climatology (CCl) of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Indian Academy of Sciences, etc.
4. Petroleum products consumption hits a five-year high in India
(i) As per data recently released by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), India’s consumption of petroleum products (petrol, diesel, cooking gas, Kerosene, etc) has increased 17.7% to 15.2 million tonne (MT) in October 2015 vis-à-vis 12.9 MT in the year-ago period.
(ii) This is the highest monthly growth rate seen in the last five years. Consumption of diesel, which alone accounts for 41% of the basket, has risen by 16.3%.
(iii) The oil ministry has stated this has created favourable environment for the Indian economy and that growth is expected to rise above other major emerging economies.
5. India bags bronze at the Hockey World League Final
(i) Recently, India thrashed defending champions Netherlands in a penalty shoot-out to win a bronze medal in the Hockey World League Final.
(ii) The Indian team prevailed over the Dutch 3-2 (5-5) in the shoot-out.
(iii) This is the first time in 33 years that India has won a medal in an international tournament, the last was in 1982 when they defeated Pakistan in the Champions Trophy in Amsterdam.
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