20th August Current Affairs

International

Greece exits final bailout successfully: ESM

Greece has successfully exited its final, three-year bailout programme, agreed in August 2015 to help it cope with the continued fallout from a debt crisis, the euro zone's ESM rescue fund said on Monday.

“Today we can safely conclude the ESM programme with no more follow-up rescue programmes as, for the first time since early 2010, Greece can stand on its own feet,” Mario Centeno, the chairman of the ESM's board of governors, said in a statement.

China envoy says no accurate figure on Uighurs fighting in Syria

There is no accurate figure of the number of ethnic Uighurs who have gone to fight with militant groups in Syria, China’s special envoy for the Syrian issue said on Monday, adding he hoped to return to Syria to gain a clearer picture.

China is worried that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people who speak a Turkic language and hail from China’s far western region of Xinjiang, have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for militants, having travelled illegally via Southeast Asia and Turkey.

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull abandons greenhouse gas target

Australia’s prime minister on Monday abandoned plans to legislate to limit greenhouse gas emissions to head off a revolt by conservative lawmakers. Malcolm Turnbull on Monday conceded that he could not get legislation through the House of Representatives where his conservative coalition holds only a single-seat majority.

He said although most government lawmakers supported the target of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 26 per cent below 2005 levels, that support was not enough.

National

Shashi Tharoor to seek UN aid for Kerala, gets permission to travel abroad

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has been granted permission to travel abroad by a Delhi court hearing the Sunanda Pushkar death case, news agency ANI reported Monday.

Tharoor sought permission from Patiala Court to visit the family of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who passed away recently, and pay his respects. The Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram will also visit the United Nations headquarters in Geneva to seek aid for flood victims of his home state, Kerala.

Earlier this month, Tharoor was allowed to go abroad for a few days starting from August 10. The court asked him to deposit Rs 2 lakh before leaving the country as surety. Tharoor will stand trial on charges of abetment of suicide and committing cruelty in the Pushkar death case.

Vasundhara Raje should stop Rajasthan Gaurav Yatra, says Ashok Gehlot

Congress national general secretary Ashok Gehlot hit out at Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje over the ongoing Rajasthan Gaurav Yatra and demanded she stop it, alleging it was an election rally for which funds were being spent from government coffers.

He claimed the Rajasthan High Court sought an affidavit with details of expenditure occurred on the yatra and it indicated that was is being carried out by misusing public funds.

Gehlot said in a statement orders were given to government departments to make arrangements for the yatra and everyone knew that public funds were misused. He said Raje should apologise and release a fresh order clearing that public funds would not be used. He also demanded that she stop the yatra.

Sports

Bajrang Punia’s Asian Games medal is a survivor’s gold

Chhatrasal Stadium, at that time, was the hub of Indian wrestling. On an average, 80 per cent of grapplers in any Indian team from 2000 till 2015 came from there. Bajrang is also a product of the stadium. After his cadet-level wins, he was still competing at the junior level when the most significant moment in his career arrived. 

“Sushil and Yogeshwar were Olympic medallists by then. I was competing at the Budapest Senior Worlds. Yogeshwar had lost and I thought I will not win a medal here. But I won a bronze medal when I was 19. It changed my life. But I did not realise that it won’t be that easy for me in the coming years,” he says.

Real Madrid win La Liga opener without Cristiano Ronaldo

Gareth Bale is doing his part to help Real Madrid get over Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure.

Bale scored in Madrid’s Spanish league opener and set up the other goal in a 2-0 win over Getafe in Sunday’s Madrid derby.

Dani Carvajal also scored for Madrid, which for the first time in nearly a decade started its league campaign without Ronaldo, the club’s greatest goal-scorer.

WWE SummerSlam 2018 Highlights: Roman Reigns is the new Universal Champion

Roman Reigns finally ended Brock Lesnar’s reign as the Universal Champion as he defeated the Beast Incarnate at SummerSlam. Lesnar delivered vicious suplexes to Reigns, but then was distracted most of the match by the presence of Money in the Bank winner Braun Strowman. Strowman’s presence forced Lesnar to take care of the Monster first, which created an opening for the Big Dog to deliver a Spear to distracted Lesnar. Lesnar failed to get up after being hit by the third spear and was pinned down by Reigns as he became the new Universal Champion

Science

JNCASR: A new, robust form of gold

Researchers from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru, have developed a new type of gold in the form of very small crystals — microcystallites. The microcrystal gold has been found to be nobler than gold — it do not dissolve in mercury and Aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), and showed the least interaction with copper.

The microcystallites were synthesised by decomposing an organic complex containing gold and other ions under controlled conditions. The newly formed microcystallites, about 3 micrometre in length were found to be of a different crystal structure. Normal gold has a (face-centered) cubic structure, while the new ones exhibit deformed cubic structure — tetragonal and orthorhombic cells.

Cosmonauts use their hands to set satellites flying into space

Spacewalking cosmonauts set up an antenna for tracking birds on Earth and sent a series of tiny satellites flying from the International Space Station on August 15.

Russian Sergey Prokopyev used his gloved right hand to fling four small technology satellites into space. The first mini satellite safely tumbled away as the space station soared 250 miles above Illinois. By the time the fourth one was on its way 14 minutes later, the station was almost to Spain. Two were the size of a tissue box, while the other two were longer.