February 11-20 2013 Current Affairs

• PC manufacturer Dell is ready to go private in a $24.4-billionbuyout. The company will be sold to a group of investors that includes investment firm Silver Lake. Once this is done, DELL will stop trading on the NASDAQ.
• India has developed its own propulsion engine for future UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). The 55-hp engine named “Wankel” is developed by three national research agencies –National Aerospace Labs, Aeronautical Development Establishment, and the Vehicle Research and Development Establishment at the cost of Rs 20 crore. Wankel will be used to power the home-grown UAVs Nishant, Lakshya and Rustom-1 and 2 versions used to observe and survey border areas.
• Late sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Grammy award, which was jointly accepted by his musically gifted daughters Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones.
• Ranchi Rhinos has won the maiden Hockey India League (HIL). They defeated Delhi Waveriders in the final match of the tournament.
• Sachin Tendulkar has equalled Sunil Gavaskar’s record of most first-class hundreds by smashing an unbeaten century against Rest of India in the Irani Cup.
• India bagged 46 Medals in 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Pyeongchang (South Korea). They are the world’s largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, providing year-round training and competitions to more than 4 million athletes in 170 countries.Special Olympics World Games are held alternatively between summer and winter games. Special Olympics World Games are held every two years.
• Zhuang Zedong (72), Chinese ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ playerpassed away recently. Zhuang won several championships in the 1960s and remained World Table Tennis Champion thrice.
• Researchers have built the world’s first complete bionic man named “Rex”. Rex, which is on display in UK, has the face of a man, prosthetic limbs, a functional artificial blood circulatory system and artificial organs, including a pancreas, kidney, spleen and trachea.
• India signed a Social Security pact with Austria. As per the pact, the Indian professionals working in Austria would be exempted from paying the social security contribution of the country, if such payments are already made in India.
• The Ministry of Civil Aviation launched Shubh Yatra, an exclusive monthly bi-lingual (Hindi & English) in-flight magazine of Air India.
•  Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty , a 1970 batch retired IAS officer has been appointed as the new chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi.
• ‘Operation Three Star’ was the code name of the top secret execution plan in which Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was sent to gallows in the high-security Tihar Jail on February 9, 2013.
• The1939 started Parle-G glucose biscuit brand of Parle Products has become the first Indian FMCG brand to cross the Rs 5,000-crore mark in retail sales in a year.
• India’s new stock exchange MCX-SX has started trading in equities, competing against the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE).MCX-SX is the third national equity market trading platform. MCX-SX started trading in the shares of 1,116 listed companies.India’s oldest stock exchange BSE has 5,191 firms on its list.There are 1,665 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange that started trading in 1994 and has now emerged as the largest stock exchange in the country.The benchmark index for the MCX-SX is called SX-40, just like BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty. 
• Newly discovered asteroid 2012 DA14 flew by closest to Earth. DA14 is the largest known object of its size which passed this close without making any impact.
• Mohan Parasaran has been appointed as the new Solicitor General of India following the resignation of senior advocate Rohinton Nariman from the post.
• India’s trade deficit surged to a three-month high of $20 billion despite some stingy improvement by 0.82% growth at $25.58 billion in January.
• Asoke Kumar Mukerji, currently Special Secretary at headquarters, has been appointed as the next Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations at New York.
• In the women’s cricket World Cup tournament, Australia beat West Indies by 114 runs in the final match played in Mumbai to win the title.
• As per an analysis of Zoological Society of London along with IUCN species survival commission:19% of turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodiles and other reptiles were facing severe threat of extinction.One out of every five out of 10000 species of reptiles in the world, many of which are from India, is facing a threat of extinction. Out of the endangered species are the King cobra, Indian crocodile (mugger), South Andaman krait and four kinds of turtles namely, Red-crowned Roofed Turtle, Bengal Roof Turtle, Jaggedshelled turtle and Hawksbill turtle. These species were identified to be extinct forever.