Smart Practice Current Affairs October 2015 [Part 5]

Gennady Padalka

• Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has set a Guinness World Record by spending longest time in space with a total of 877 days or around 2.5 years in space.
• He returned safely to Earth with 2 other astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) on September 11, 2015 with the record for having spent the most time in space.
• Padalka led the 44th expedition at the ISS, breaking a 10-year-old record for the total number of days spent in the cosmos on June 28, 2015 when he surpassed the figure of 803 days, 9 hours and 41 minutes achieved by Sergei Krikalev, another Russian.
• Gennady Padalka was selected as a cosmonaut candidate at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in 1989.

Mukesh Ambani

• Industrialist Mukesh Ambani was named as India’s richest man for 9th year in a row with a net worth of $ 18.9 billion even as his wealth dipped by $ 4.7 billion in a year. This is published on September 23, 2015 in the 2015 Forbes magazine’s India rich list.
• He was followed by Sun Pharma’s Dilip Shanghvi as 2nd richest with a net worth of $ 18 billion, while Wipro’s Azim Premji retained his 3rd place with $ 15.9 billion.
• Flipkart’s co-founders Sachin and Binni Bansal made their debut at 86th position with a net worth of $ 1.3 billion each.

Queen Elizabeth II

• Queen Elizabeth II became the longestreigning monarch on September 9, 2015 in Britain’s history by passing Queen Victoria, who served for 63 years and seven months.
• Presently, she is Queen of 16 member states in the Commonwealth of Nations which overall consists of overall 53 member States including India.
• She also became the longest- reigning female monarch in history. Buckingham Palace marked the day with an event by releasing an official photograph of the queen taken by Mary McCartney, a photographer who is the daughter of former Beatle Paul McCartney.
• She was crowned as queen of Britain and other realms, including Canada and Australia on June 2, 1953.

Read Also – Ecology & Environment Current Affairs August 2015.

Binita Thakur

• Binita Thakur appointed as Private Secretary to Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on September, 2014 had sought to be relieved from the Ministry as she went on leave in the second week of September, 2015.
• Now, the name of M. Imkongla Jarnir, a 2002 Karnataka cadre IAS officer, is doings the rounds as Thakur’s replacement in the Ministry.
• Thakur is a 1996-batch IPS officer of Rajasthan cadre. She has been appointed at the level of Director for a period up to December 17, 2016.

Sreedharan

• The Principal Advisor to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, Sreedharan, has been invited by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to serve for a period of three years on his High Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport (HLAG-ST).
• This data is released about him by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation on September 18, 2015.
• Sreedharan, a retired Indian Engineering Service (IES) officer was bom in Palakkad district of Kerala.
• He has been conferred with Padrna Shri in the year 2001, Padma Vibhushan in the year 2008 and French government’s Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur in the year 2005.

Swetha Prabhakaran

• An Indian-American teen entrepreneur and founder CEO of ‘Everybody Code Now’ Swetha Prabhakaran, received the prestigious ‘Champions of Change’ award at the White House on September 15, 2015.
• She is among 11 young women selected by the White House as recipients of ‘Champions of Change’.
• She is just 15 and studying in Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Virginia, founded non profit Everybody Code Now! to empower the next generation of youth to become engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

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