Current Affairs : August 22, 2011

India slips to No: 3 Position in Test Rankings

England under the captaincy of Andrew Strauss defeated India 4-0 in the test series that concluded in

Oval

England bowler Stuart Broad was named man of the series for his side

India’s man of the series was named as Rahul Dravid

With this victory, England crowned themselves the number one team in Test rankings with 125 points

followed by South Africa with 118 points

The Indians, who started the series as the number one Test team, slipped to the number three position

following the 4-0 defeat

Andy Murray won the ATP’s Cincinnati Masters (Western & Southern Open)

Men’s Singles Title

Fourth seeded British Andy Murray won the ATP’s Cincinnati Masters title for the second time after defeating World No.

1 Novak Djokovic of Serbia

Murray had won the Cincinnati Masters title last in 2008

The Cincinnati Open is an annual outdoor hardcourts tennis event held in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio, USA.

The event started on September 18, 1899 and is the oldest tennis tournament in the United States played in its original

city.

“Indian Express” Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won Men’s Doubles

Title at the Cincinnati Masters (Western & Southern Open)

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won their third title of 2011 and

first at Cincinnati after 10 years, following a hard-fought win over

French-Serbian combination Michael Llodra and Nenad Zimonjic

This is the third title of the season for the Indian Express as they are

referred. They had earlier won titles at the Sony Ericsson Open and Chennai Open.

Maria Sharapova won the Women’s Singles Title Cincinnati Masters

(Western & Southern Open)

Fourth-seeded Russian Maria Sharapova defeated Serbia’s Jelena Jankovic to win the women’s singles title at the

Cincinnati Open

Vania King and Yaroslava Shvedova won the Women’s Doubles Title at the

Cincinnati Open (Western & Southern Open)

Vania King (USA) and Yaroslava Shvedova (Russian / Kazakhstan) won the Women’s Doubles Title at the Cincinnati Open

after defeating Natalie Grandin (South Africa) and Vladimíra Uhlířová ( Czech Republic)

“Himayat” launched by the Centre for training of Unemployed

Kashmiri Youth

“Himayat“: A programme launched by the Union ministry of Rural Development in Srinagar for imparting training and placement to over one

Lakh youth from poor families in Jammu and Kashmir

The Programme to be implemented in 5 years

The project to be funded by the Rural Development Ministry’s National Rural Livelihood Mission

Central Government to spend Rs.235 crore per year

Priority to be given to youth who are school and college drop-outs and training will be provided at each of the block headquarters

The private sector institutions such as IL&FS and Don Bosco Technical Institute have been chosen to impart the training to the youths, who

would be selected for the programme on the basis of applications

After a 3 month training, the first batch of 800 youths will be placed with Cafe Coffee Day, Wal-Mart, V-Mart and Bajaj Allianz insurance

The rural development ministry will spend about Rs 23,000 rupees per youth in the programme

Once the trained youths complete their course and take up employment, the ministry will keep track of their progress over the next three

years and, if required, provide them further training

Programme is part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s vision for creating employment for youths of Jammu and Kashmir, and 1,500

youngsters will complete the training in its first year

Though most girls want employment within the state, many men are ready to work outside Jammu& Kashmir also

Some of the jobs on offer are in cities and towns like Shimla, Jaipur and Chandigarh

Lord Krishna’s birthday celebrated all over India

The festival of “Janmashtami” celebrated across the country

Krishna Janmashtami, also known as Krishnashtami, Saatam

Aatham, Gokulashtami, Ashtami Rohini, Srikrishna Jayanti, Sree

Jayanthi or sometimes merely as Janmashtami, is a Hindu festival

celebrating the birth of Krishna, an avatar of the god Vishnu

Krishna Janmashtami is observed on the Ashtami tithi, the eighth

day of the dark half or Krishna Paksha of the month of Bhadrapada in the Hindu

calendar, when the Rohini Nakshatra is ascendant. The festival always falls within

mid-August to mid-September in the Gregorian calendar

Rasa lila, dramatic enactments of the life of Krishna, are a special feature in

regions of Mathura and Vrindavan, and regions following Vaishnavism in Manipur

While the Rasa lila re-creates the flirtatious aspects of Krishna’s youthful days, the

Dahi Handi celebrate God’s playful and mischievous side, where teams of young

men form human pyramids to reach a high-hanging pot of butter and break it.

This tradition, also known as uriadi, is a major event in Tamil Nadu on

Gokulashtami

Dahi Handi goes Global

Dahi Handi Mandals are going global this Gokul Ashtami

Mumbai celebrated the festival of the year ‘Dahi Handi’

This year the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC)

facilitated the participation of the famed Castellers da Vilafranca

Group from Spain known for forming human pyramids in Europe

Mumbai’s Govinda groups and the famous Castellers compete on the

streets to form the highest human pyramid

In Spain, the formation of human pyramids is a tradition during the harvest

season, while in Mumbai the Dahi Handi pyramids celebrate Lord Krishna’s

childhood antics