Current Affairs: International - Minor Issues 10 to 18 August 2010

CAG Weekly
(Current Affairs & GK)
By Om Prakash (Goldy sir)

International Relations (Minor Issues)

Obama in firing line over mosque comments

  • The latest political casualty of the sizzling controversy around the Ground Zero mosque, as it has come to be known, might be none other than President Barack Obama.
  • After he broke months of silence on the issue and threw his weight behind the proponents of the Cordoba House community centre, planned two blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks, he has found himself lacking the support of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, and watched as Republicans began to attack his position on the subject.
  • As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

Julia Gillard favours timeline for republic

  • Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard proposed that her country turn into a republic at the time of succession to Queen Elizabeth II in Britain.
  • She set this timeline while responding to a question in a network interview, a transcript of which was released by the ruling Australian Labour Party.
  • Asked why she was not pressing for that now itself, Ms. Gillard said “the move to a new monarch” in Britain would be “the appropriate transition time.”

Zero emissions race

  • Teams from Australia, Germany and Switzerland have set off from Geneva for what they hope will be the first carbon neutral race around the world.
  • Participants are using custom built two-seater electric vehicles that will be charged from regular power outlets along the way.
  • At the same time they are feeding electricity generated from solar and wind plants into the grid.
  • Australian Jason Jones says his team expects to pay only a little over $350 for the electricity needed to power their three-wheel car around the globe.
  • The race set up by Swiss inventor Louis Palmer will pass through 150 cities including Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Cancun before returning to Geneva in January after 30,000 km on the road. —

Ex-dictator seeks to contest in Nigerian election

  • The former Nigerian military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida, has decided to run in the presidential election due next year, nearly two decades after he controversially overturned a ballot widely regarded as fair.
  • General Babangida, a Muslim from the north who held power for eight years, announced his intention to seek the ruling party's nomination for the President's post.
  • Given my wealth of experience and decades of leadership study, plus the urgent need to confront the challenges of our national lives.
  • General Babangida (68) becomes the second Muslim from the north to seek the ruling party's nomination for the election, which could occur as early as January, though a date has not yet been set.

New dinosaur bones found in Russia

  • New dinosaur bones have been found at an excavation site in Russia's south-eastern region of Primorsky Krai, the Vostok Media news agency has reported.
  • Palaeontologists believe the dinosaurs were killed by a mudslide because the bone fragments were buried in solidified mud and stone, according to the report.
  • The palaeontologists have been digging up bones of dinosaurs at the excavation site for two years, inch by inch removing soil from the finds.

Iran's nuclear plant launch next week

  • Russia will begin the start-up of the reactor at Iran's first atomic power plant in Bushehr next weekend.
  • The ceremony will be attended by Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko and Iran's vice-president Ali Akbar Salehi, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, he said.
  • Construction of the plant began in 1974 by but was shelved after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Russia in mid-1990s agreed to step in and complete the project despite vehement protests from the United States and Israel. The reactor was originally due to go online in 2007, but was delayed by financing problems and difficulties in integrating 12 tonnes of installed German equipment with Russian technology.

World's largest clock

  • A four-faced clock atop the Abraj Al-Bait Towers is seen under construction in Macca, Saudi Arabia on Thursday. Saudi Arabia will test what it has billed as the world's largest clock during the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan.The clock tower will top a massive skyscraper that when completed will be around 600 metres tall, the second tallest in the world after Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

China is the second largest economy now

  • China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy last quarter. Japan’s nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totalled $1.288 trillion, less than China’s $1.337 trillion. Japan’s annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China’s is more than $4.9 trillion.
  • The country of 1.3 billion people will overtake the US, where annual GDP is about $14 trillion, as the world’s largest economy by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs Group chief economist Jim O’Neill.

ILO warns of more global unemployment

  • Youth unemployment across the world has climbed to a new high and is likely to climb further this year, according to International Labour Organization. The agency said in a report that of some 620 million young people aged 15 to 24 in the work force, about 81 million were unemployed at the end of 2009. The youth unemployment rate increased to 13% in 2009 from 11.9% in the last assessment in 2007.
  • The agency forecast that the global youth unemployment rate would continue to increase through 2010, to 13.1%, as the effects of the economic downturn continue. It should then decline to 12.7% in 2011.
  • About 152 million young people, or a quarter of all the young workers in the world, were employed but remained in extreme poverty in households surviving on less than $1.25 a person a day in 2008.