NOV-7th-2015-Current Affairs

>> The Indian Army today successfully test fired the BrahMos land attack cruise missile against a designated target in Rajasthan's Pokhran test range, demonstrating the weapon's operational capability.

The missile was test launched by a mobile autonomous launcher (MAL) and carried out in the user-deployment configuration by trained army personnel. It met all the mission objectives.

The firing was witnessed by senior army officials, who congratulated the operational team for its successful launch.

"BrahMos missile system, the most lethal and potent weapon system for precision strike available with the Indian Army, has proved again its effectiveness in today's successful launch," Sudhir Mishra, chief of BrahMos Aerospace, said in a statement.

Defence Research and Development Organisation director general S. Christopher congratulated the Indian Army and BrahMos Aerospace for the successful flight test.

The Indian Army has already inducted three regiments of BrahMos in its arsenal. All are equipped with Block-III version of the missile, which was recently tested on May 8 and 9.

The land attack version of BrahMos has been operationalised in the Indian Army since 2007.

The fire-and-forget BrahMos has the capability to take on surface-based targets by flying a combined hi-lo trajectory, thus evading enemy air defence systems.

The inclusion of this powerful weapon system in the Indian Army has given it a distinct operational advantage to knock down any enemy target even in the most difficult and hidden terrains.

The BrahMos missile, having a range of 290-km and a Mach 2.8 speed, is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against sea and land targets.

>>India’s Heena Sidhu made a grand return to form by winning the gold medal in the 10m air pistol women’s event at the 13th Asian Shooting Championship in Kuwait City on Friday.

Heena, who won a gold at the eighth Asian Air Gun Championship at home recently, shot an excellent 198.2 in the finals to edge out Mongolian Gundegma Otreyad, who shot 198.

In the 10m air pistol junior women’s event, Shri Nivetha too won a gold with a score of 195.8 in the finals. She edged out Shinemurun Nyamdorj of Mongolia (195.4) and Heesun Kim of Korea (174.4), who won the silver and bronze medals respectively.

Shreya Gawande, Shri Nivetha and Oshin Tawani also combined to win the team gold with a combined total of 1114.

Besides, the Indian trio of Nayani Bharadwaj (374), Harshada Nithave (374) and Malaika Goel (365) also won the gold in the team event of the 10M air pistol youth women’s event.

In the 25m pistol men’s junior event, India’s Shivam Shukla won gold shooting a score of 576. Korea’s Jungwoo Park (575) and Jaekyoon Lee (572) claimed the silver and bronze respectively.

Shivam, Arjun Das and Achal Pratap Grewal also won the silver medal in the team event.

Meanwhile in the junior skeet men’s competition, Angad Bajwa secured the individual gold.

>>The long-pending 'One-Rank- One-Pension Scheme' for ex-servicemen was tonight brought into force with government issuing a notification which will benefit over 25 lakh veterans and war widows.

However, the protesting ex-servicemen rejected the notification, saying their main demands have not been accepted and it has become "one-rank-five-pension."

To begin with, pension would be re-fixed on the basis of pension of retirees of calendar year 2013 and the benefit will be effective with effect from July 1, 2014.

The veterans had demanded that the period for pension should be financial year 2013-14 and not the calender year. Also, they wanted April 1 as the effective date instead of July 1.

>>More than 19 months since the first case of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak was reported in West Africa, Sierra Leone has been declared free of the disease.

The World Health Organization said Saturday that 42 days—the length of two incubation cycles of the deadly virus—had passed since the last person confirmed to have the disease cleared a second consecutive blood test.
“The Ebola outbreak has decimated families, the health system, the economy, and social structures,” .In Sierra Leone, 8,704 people were infected and 3,589 died of the disease. About 4,000 survived. More than 12,000 children were orphaned as a result of the outbreak, according to a report by the British charity Street Child. The average age of orphans was nine.
The virus killed thousands more in Liberia and Guinea, the other nations hardest-hit by the epidemic. Liberia was declared Ebola-free in September; Guinea saw three new confirmed cases of Ebola in the last week of October.

Sierra Leone now enters what WHO calls “enhanced surveillance”—a period of 90 days during which its staffers will remain on the ground, providing health services as needed.

>>Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson of country's largest bank SBI, remains the most powerful woman in the Indian business sector, according to Fortune India.

ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochhar and Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank follow Bhattacharya at the second and third place, respectively.

Besides, HPCL chairperson and managing director (MD) Nishi Vasudeva has bagged the fourth position, while AZB & Partners Co-Founder Zia Mody and Aruna Jayanthi chief executive of Capgemini India shared the fifth rank.

>>A Russian Army contingent arrived today in Rajasthan's Bikaner district to participate in the Indo-Russia joint training Exercise 'INDRA-2015'. 

The joint exercise between the two nations is one of the major bilateral defence cooperation activities and is the seventh in the series which commenced in 2003. 

The Russian contingent is scheduled to return to their country after the exercise comes to an end on November 20.