Person In News April 2010

         Person In News: April 2010

Gen. Vijay Kumar Singh takes charge as Chief of Army Staff

• General Vijay Kumar Singh took charge as the Chief of Army Staff from General Deepak Kapoor, who retired from service.

•       Gen. Singh, 59, is a third generation officer of the Rajput regiment and was until

recently the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Kolkata-based Eastern Command. A veteran of many battles, he participated in the 1971 Bangladesh war and saw action in

Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka, for which he was awarded the Yudh Seva Medal.

• He will be the 24^th Indian to be the Army Chief, and was awarded the Param Vishist Seva Medal for distinguished service last year.

Anish Kapoor's sculpture for 2012 Olympics

• A towering steel sculpture, taller than the Statue of Liberty and designed by the internationally renowned Mumbai-born artist Anish Kapoor , will form the backdrop to the London 2012 Olympic Games stadium in East London.

•       Unveiling the design of the £19.1m project — a massive web of spiralling steel in the form of five Olympic rings — the Mayor of London Boris Johnson hailed it as an “inspired work of art'' that would change the East London landscape forever and come to be internationally recognised as an “iconic cultural legacy'' of the Games.

•      The 115-metre tall ArcelorMittal Orbit, named after Lakshmi Mittal's steel company which is partially funding the project, will be 22 metres higher than the Statue of Liberty providing what is promised to be a panaromic view of London .

•      It will be placed in the Olympic Park.

Lifetime achievement award for R. P. Goenka

•       R. P. Goenka, Chairman Emeritus of RPG Enterprises, received the lifetime achievement award from All India Management Association (AIMA). This was presented to him by Praful Patel, Union Minister for Civil Aviation, in New Delhi. This is the first-ever ‘Managing India' award by AIMA, a release said.

Manglik new Nasscom chief

• IT industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) announced that Harsh Manglik will take over as the Chairman of its Executive Council for 2010-11, effective from April 20.

•       Mr. Manglik, who replaces Pramod Bhasin, will take on the role as the country's IT sector recovers from the impact of the global economic slowdown.

Shekhar Kapur on Cannes jury

•       Thierry Fremaux, the director-general of the Cannes Film Festival had announced the jury and the line up of the festival which kicks off in the French Riviera city of Cannes on May 12.

•       Only one Indian film, Vikramaditya Motwane's directorial debut Udaan, has made it to Cannes this year.

• Indian director Shekhar Kapur is part of the Festival Jury chaired by U.S. film director Tim Burton who recently released his film version of Alice in Wonderland; the festival will open with a screening of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.

Godmother of civil rights movement” is dead

• Activist Dorothy Height, described by President Obama as the “the godmother of the civil rights movement” passed away at the age of 98 years after weeks of being in a serious condition. Ms. Height, a pioneer of the 1960s movement, had joined historic marches with Martin Luther King Jr. and led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.

•       Ms. Height continued to speak out on racial issues and civil rights even until her 90s. She often got as much recognition for her speeches as for her bright, colourful hats.

•       Ms. Height's civil rights involvement began in 1933 when she took on a leadership role at the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. She devoted herself to fighting the practice of lynching and she also pushed for desegregation of the armed forces.

PC maker, inspiration for Microsoft, dead

•       Henry Edward Roberts, a developer of an early personal computer that inspired Bill Gates to found Microsoft, died in Georgia. He was 68.

•       Mr. Roberts, whose build-it-yourself kit concentrated thousands of dollars worth of computer capability in an affordable package, inspired Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen to come up with Microsoft in 1975, after they saw an article about the MITS Altair 8800 in Popular Electronics.

Juan Antonio Samaranch passes away

• Juan Antonio Samaranch, who died recently,aged 89, was a giant of the Olympic movement, heading the IOC for 21 years for the longest tenure after that of the body's founding father, Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

•       The Baron was the man who brought the Games into the modern era, heading the IOC from 1896 to 1925 — but it was under the tutelage of Samaranch that the movement really took off in the age of increasing global mass media and growing influence of sport.

•       From 1974 to 1978 Samaranch was IOC deputy president before securing the top job in 1980. He was re-elected in 1989, 1993 and 1997.

•       In 1991 he was awarded the title of ‘marquis' by King Juan Carlos for his work in the Olympic movement, culminating in the award of the highly successful 1992 summer Games to Barcelona, a city the event transformed.

•       On October 1, 2000, following his last Games as IOC chief, Samaranch dubbed the Sydney Olympics “the best of all time”.

State nominates A.R. Lakshmanan on Mullaperiyar Committee

• Justice A.R. Lakshmanan, former Judge of the Supreme Court, will represent Tamil Nadu on the Empowered Committee to go into all issues, including the safety aspects, of the Mullaperiyar dam, Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi told the Assembly.

• The committee, headed by Justice A.S. Anand, former Chief Justice of India, was appointed by a five-member bench of the Supreme Court.

SRK's wax statue heads for Hong Kong

•       Actor Shah Rukh Khan's wax figure is making a special appearance at the Madame Tussauds museum.On loan for three months from London, the 44-year-old's statue will be on display alongside Hollywood stars Jackie Chan, Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp. The life-size wax statue

of the Khan was installed at the London museum in April 2007.

•       This is not the first time that a wax figure of a Hindi film star will be displayed at the museum in the city.

•       Last year, Madame Tussauds Hong Kong displayed the wax figure of actor Amitabh Bachchan.

President clears Justice Gyan Sudha Misra's appointment

•      President Pratibha Patil cleared the appointment of Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court Gyan Sudha Misra as Supreme Court judge. She is the fourth woman judge of the Supreme Court after Fatima Beevi, Sujata Manohar and Ruma Pal, who retired in June 2006.

Karan Singh honoured

• President Pratibha Patil presenting the Paulos Mar Gregorios Award 2010 to Dr. Karan Singh for Outstanding Contribution in the Fields of Public Life, Inter-Faith Dialogue and Culture, at a function in New Delhi.

Chirayu Amin is interim IPL chief

•      Jolted by the alleged dubious dealings in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) set in motion a clean-up act by appointing vice-president (West Zone) Chirayu Amin as interim chairman of the IPL. Lalit Modi ceased to hold all positions (chairman, IPL and Champions League T20 and vice-president, BCCI) after the BCCI served a show-cause under BCCI Rules and Regulations 32 (iv) and suspended him under Rule 32 (vi) at the conclusion of the DLF-IPL III final at the D. Y. Patil Sports Stadium.

Rajasthan Governor passes away

•      Rajasthan Governor Prabha Rau died in Delhi following a heart attack.

•      Ms. Rau, a senior Congress politician from Maharashtra who took over as Rajasthan Governor on January 25 this year, is the second Governor in the State to die in harness in the past five months.

•      Her predecessor Shailendra Kumar Singh had passed away in December 2009. Prior to her positing in Rajasthan, Ms. Rau was Governor of Himachal Pradesh from July 19, 2008, to January 24, 2010.

Indian diplomat held for ‘spying'

• A junior diplomat in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad has been arrested by the special cell of the Delhi police on the charge of leaking sensitive national secrets to Pakistani intelligence agencies.

• The official, Madhuri Gupta, was produced in a court and remanded to five-day police custody.

•      Ms. Gupta, who was posted as Second Secretary in the Press and Information Wing of the High Commission, was picked up for questioning four days ago.

First woman to conquer 14 peaks

• A South Korean mountaineer became the first woman to scale the world's 14 highest mountains, crawling on all fours as she reached the last summit.

• Oh Eun-sun (44) arrived at the final, steep stretch of Annapurna in the Himalayas 13 hours after she left the last camp to beat a Spanish rival to the record. Her feat was broadcast live in South Korea by KBS television.

•       Annapurna was the last of the 14 peaks above 26,247 feet Ms. Oh needed to climb to set the mark. She reached the summit — 26,545 feet above sea level — 13 years after she scaled her first Himalayan mountain, Gasherbrum II, in 1997. She scaled the Everest in 2004.

•       Ms. Oh narrowly beat Edurne Pasaban of Spain to the record.

Supreme Court quashes criminal proceedings against Kushboo

•       In a big relief to actor Kushboo, the Supreme Court set aside a Madras High Court judgment directing the chief metropolitan magistrate, Egmore, to conduct a joint trial of the 23 defamation complaints filed in various places in Tamil Nadu for her alleged remarks on pre-marital sex.