Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 15 April, 2014

Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams

The underwater drone hunting for clues to the fate of flight MH370 returned six hours into a planned 16-hour mission because it was out of its depth, officials said on Tuesday.
The submersible is programmed to resurface rather than go beyond its safe maximum operating limit of 4,500 metres.
The Bluefin-21 vehicle was sent down for the first time to scour a 40 sqkm patch of the Indian Ocean about 2,170 kilometres north-west of Perth.
A week has gone by without any signals being picked up that could be from the flight recorders on the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
The plane vanished an hour into a night flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
In a downbeat assessment of search results, Mr. Houston said it would “be appropriate to consult with Australia’s partners to decide the way ahead later this week.” The search for aeroplane wreckage has been assessed as the most costly ever mounted.

Snapping the declining trend, the inflation rose to a three month high of 5.7 per cent in March mainly due to spurt in prices of food items like potato, onion and fruits.
The inflation in the food items, based on the wholesale price index (WPI), shot up by 9.9 per cent in March as against 8.12 per cent in the previous month.
The overall WPI inflation, which was on decline since December, had dropped to a nine-month low of 4.68 per cent in February.
The government further said the build up of inflation rate in the 2013—14 financial year was 5.70 compared to a build up rate of 5.65 per cent in the earlier fiscal.
The data further revealed that prices of sugar, pulses, cereals, cement and minerals eased in March compared to the previous month.
Inflation in the fuel and power category (LPG, petrol and diesel) rose to 11.22 per cent versus 8.75 per cent in February.

Mohammed Asab missed the double trap knock-out phase by one point in the Shotgun World Cup in Tucson, US. Ankur Mittal finished 19th with a 132 while Ronjan Sodhi placed 35th with 120 in a field of 41.
Joshua Richmond of the US who made the cut for the knock-out, one point above Asab, following a shoot-off on 138, went on to bag the silver after losing the shoot-off for gold against compatriot Jeffrey Holgun.
In women’s skeet, Saniya Sheikh shot 64 to be placed 25th among 31 shooters. National champion Rashmee Rathore could muster only 57 . Danka Bartekova of Slovakia won the gold as she beat Wei Weng of China, 14-13.

Astronauts will now turn into cosmic gardeners and grow lettuce in space as United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to send the largest ever plant growth chamber to the International Space Station (ISS).
It will launch the Vegetable Production System aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
The plant growth chamber will grow lettuce inside prototype flight pillows that will help the plants withstand zero gravity, The Verge reported. Red, blue, and green light emitting diodes (LEDs) will help sustain the vegetables, and the plant chamber itself can grow to 11.5 inches wide and 14.5 inches deep.
This will be “the largest plant growth chamber for space to date.
The chamber may even be used for more ambitious projects, like providing food for the average person back on Earth. After extensive testing on weightless horticulture, NASA is confident the lack of gravity will not impede growth.
However, space-borne microbes that may develop during growth are a cause of concern. Therefore, the lettuce will undergo extensive testing before astronauts chow down.