DAILY GK UPDATE: 13TH JANUARY

1. Maha Kumbh begins at Allahabad !
1.1 crore pilgrims may take dip on the occasion of Makar Sankranti...

i.The world's largest religious gathering, the Maha Kumbh, began at Allahabad on the occasion of Makar Sankranti.

ii. The inaugural day of the two-month-long congregation, often described as the "greatest show on earth", was marked by the first "Shahi Snan" of 13 "akharas" wherein Naga Sadhus - a martial order of ascetics who move about either naked or scantily clad with matted hair and ash smeared bodies - marched to Sangam in processions with their leaders perched atop ornately decorated elephants, horses and chariots and musical bands in attendance in a unique blend of austerity and opulence.

iii. Devotees from across the country had started pouring in since on Sunday evening and the influx continues despite cold weather and elaborate security arrangements on account of which bathers are being made to park their vehicles several kilometres away from the holy confluence and reach the Sangam on foot.

iv. More than one crore people are expected to take a holy dip at the Sangam, confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati.

NOTE: The Mela, which is held every 12 years, will conclude on Maha Shivaratri that is on the 10th of March.

2. India and Pakistan to hold Brigade-Commander level flag meeting in Poonch sector on Monday:

i. In a bid to de-escalate tension along the Line of Control (LoC), India and Pakistan will hold a Brigade Commander-level flag meeting in Poonch sector on Monday  during which the recent intrusions and the brutal killing of two jawans by Pakistani soldiers will figure.

ii. Defence Spokesperson, Col. R. K. Palta said that Pakistan agreed to hold the Flag meeting, in a communication through a hot line in the sector.

iii. The Indian Army had sent a hotline message to the Pakistan Army on January 11 and asked for a flag meeting to discuss the issues of brutal killing of two jawans by Pakistani troops and increasing incidents of firing and ceasefire violations in the Poonch sector.

NOTE: i. This is the second Brigade Commander-level flag meeting to be held in the Poonch sector in the last 6 months.

 The first such meeting was held at Chakan-Da-Bagh LoC point on June 23 following the killing of two Indian soldiers and injuries to four other jawans in ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops between June 11 to June 16.

ii. The jawans were killed on January 8 by Pakistani troops after intruding deep into Indian territory along the line of control. India had also summoned the Pakistan High Commissioner in Delhi to protest against the provocative attack.

3. India for the Second Year reported No Fresh Polio Cases:

i. India for the continuous second year reported no fresh cases of Polio. One more year of success with zero fresh cases of polio, would win India a status of polio free nation, in 2014. 

ii. In 2009, India shared about a half of the polio cases witnessed by the world. But the success achieved since then, can be termed as the biggest public health success story of the century.

NOTE: The report submitted by the National Certification Committee of India to the 11-member Regional Certification Commission of WHOs South East Asia Region is under review. Continuous three years absence of Polio that is caused due to the wild polio virus (WPV) coupled with the intense surveillance would help India in being declared the Polio-free Nation in 2014.

4. Koto Okubo, World’s Oldest Living Female died at 115:

Koto Okubo, the lady who received the title of world’s oldest lady alive after the death of Dina Manfredini of United States, died on 12 January 2013. The 115 years old Okubo was born on 24 December 1897 in a town near Tokyo, Japan.

5. Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence win Golden Globe awards:

i. Jennifer Lawrence beat veterans like Meryl Streep and Judi Dench to win the best actress trophy in the musical or comedy category for “Silver Linings Playbook” .

ii. Hugh Jackman won the best actor trophy for his role of Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables“ at the Golden Globes on Sunday.

iii. The best supporting actress honour went to Anne Hathaway for her portrayal of a dying prostitute, Fantine, in “Les Miserables”

iv. Christoph Waltz won the supporting actor trophy for his role as Dr King Schultz in slave-revenge drama “Django Unchained".

v. Austria’s “Amour” won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film.

vi. Best Animated Feature Film Globe went to “Brave”.

6. 'Life of Pi' wins best original score at Golden Globe:

i. Composer Mychael Danna won the best original score motion picture award for "Life of Pi" at the 70th edition of the prestigious annual Golden Globe awards here.

ii. Danna beat Alexandre Desplat ("Argo"), Dario Marianelli ("Anna Karenina"), Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil ("Cloud Atlas") and John Williams ("Lincoln") to walk away with the prestigious trophy at a glitzy gala Sunday night.

NOTE: i.Directed by Ang Lee, "Life of Pi" is based on Canadian author Yann Martel's Man Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name. It is about the journey of an Indian boy who survives a storm and is left on a life-boat with a tiger.

ii. The Oscar-winning director chose an entirely Indian cast for 'Pi' depicting Indian culture beautifully in the adventure-drama.

iii. He shot the 3D film in places like Munnar and Pondicherry in South India.

iv. Lee made several trips to India and finally chose Delhi student Suraj Sharma to play the lead in the film, over 3000 others.

v. He also cast noted Indian actors - Irrfan Khan, Tabu and Adil Hussain to play key roles in the movie.

7. Astronomers discovered Largest Cosmic Structure in the Universe:

i. Astronomers in the first week of January 2013 discovered the largest known structure in the Universe called Large Quasar Group (LQG) that is powered by super massive black holes clump together. This cluster of galaxies spans across four billion light years.

ii. Quasars are considered to be the nuclei of galaxies of the universe, which undergoes brief period of extremely high brightness making them visible in the sky from extreme distant positions.

iii. The newly, discovered LQG carries a dimension of 500 megaparsecs (Mpc). The elongated structure makes its longest dimension to a size of 1200 Mpc or 4 billion light years, which is 1600 times larger than the distance between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy.

iv. The LQG was identified by a research team from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) that is led by Dr. Roger Clowes and the significant size of the same is challenging the Albert Einstein’s Principle of Cosmology.

NOTE: i.The principle states – the Universe when viewed at a large scale, it seems to be the same; it doesn’t matters that from where it is being observed from. The Einstein’s principle is just an assumption but was never demonstrated after observations so it’s beyond reasonable doubts.

ii. The modern calculations of astrophysicist’s states that they can’t find any structure larger than 370 Mpc and these calculations are made on the basis of modern theory of cosmology and the principle of cosmology.

iii. One will take 4 billion years to cross the LQG if one travels with the speed of light and this is just not because of its huge size but also because it has challenged the accepted principle of cosmology given by Einstein.

8. Internet Activist and Co-founder of Reditt, Aaron Swarth committed Suicide:

i. Aaron Swarth, the internet activist and co-founder of Reditt committed suicide by hanging himself on 11 January 2013.

ii. The 26 years old computer genius was the developer of the early version of the RSS (Rich Site Summary) – web feed system was facing federal criminal charges in cases of a controversial fraud and hacking allegations.

iii. He was largely credited as the co-author of the specifications of the RSS 1.0 web feed format at the age of 14.

iv. RSS feed generally is a format that supports the users to find out content from the sites, where updates keeps on changing regularly like a news website or a blog.

NOTE:  i. In July 2011, he faced troubles after being indicted for a wire fraud, computer fraud and other related charges of stealing millions of academic articles and journals by a federal grand jury.

ii. He was accused for stealing all the journals and four million articles from the digital archive JSTOR (an online archive and journal distribution service) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

iii. To steal those, he used MIT’s Computer Network. He was a fellow at the Harvard University's Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics.

iv. In case Swartz conviction was proved in the court of law, he would have faced a 1 million dollar fine along with 35 years in prison.

9. Inaugural Hockey India League kicks off in New Delhi:

i. The Hockey India League- HIL will kick start at the Major Dhyanchand Stadium in New Delhi  from  Monday.

ii. The opening match of the League will be played between Delhi Waveriders and Punjab Warriors at 8 PM.

iii. Punjab's skipper Jamie Dwyer, SV Sunil, and Shivendra Singh form a strong forwardline for the team, while Delhi too possess a formidable attack with the likes of Gurvinder Singh Chandi, Yuvraj Walmiki, and Danish Mujtaba in their ranks..

iv. Five teams, namely Delhi Wave Riders, Mumbai Magicians, Punjab Warriors, Ranchi Rhinos and Uttar Pradesh Wizards are taking part in the competition.

NOTE: The tournament will feature 34 matches spread over 28 days. A prize money of 25 lakh rupees will be awarded to the player of the tournament while the emerging player of the tournament will receive a reward of 20 lakh rupees.

10. Urvashi Dholakia wins Bigg Boss 6:

i. TV actress Urvashi Dholakia has won the sixth season of reality show Bigg Boss defeating her nearest rival Iman Siddique.

ii. With Urvashi's win, this is the third time in a row that a TV 'bahu' has won the reality show.

iii. Previously, TV actresses Shweta Tiwari and Juhi Parmar had won season 4 and 5 of Bigg Boss, respectively.

iv. Urvashi has won Rs 50 lakh and a trophy as the prize, while Colors channel gave Rs 10 lakh to Imam for being a 'wholehearted entertainer'. He had been given Rs 5 lakh by the channed during the show earlier.