5 APRIL 2014

Ø  A sessions court here awarded the death penalty, under a new IPC section, to three repeat offenders — Vijay Jadhav, Qasim Sheikh, alias Bengali, and Salim Ansari — who gang-raped a photojournalist on the Shakti Mills compound in 2013.

Ø  India marched towards establishing its own navigation system when its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C24) put into precise orbit the country’s second navigation satellite, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS-1B). The 1,432-kg IRNSS-1B will form part of a constellation of the seven navigation satellites.

Ø  It is recently found that weather prediction was done in ancient Egypt some 3,500 years ago! A new translation of a 40-line inscription on a six-foot-tall 3,500-year-old calcite block from Egypt — called the Tempest Stela — describes rain, darkness and “the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses”.

Ø  A five-member committee set up by the Union Home Ministry to recommend the location of a new Capital for the residuary State of Andhra Pradesh will be headed by former Union Urban Development Secretary K. Sivaramakrishnan. Among the others appointed as members of the committee are former School of Planning and Architecture dean K.T. Ravindran, National Institute of Urban Affairs director Jagan Shah, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy director Rathin Roy and Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore ) director Aromar Revi.

Ø  A U.S. Navy “black box” detector made its much-anticipated debut in the oceanic hunt for flight MH370 on Friday but Australia’s search chief warned it was crunch time with the box’s signal set to expire soon. The Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield arrived with a “towed pinger locator” capable of homing in on signals from the black box, as 14 planes scoured the remote Indian Ocean search area for signs of a crash site. The plane disappeared March 8, and Australian authorities coordinating the search have rushed the device into place with the black box’s roughly 30-day location signal set to expire.

Ø  NPAs of banks touched an all-time high of over 5 per cent as of the December quarter, while 2013-14 saw banks recasting as many as Rs.1 lakh crore worth of loans, taking the overall corporate debt restructuring loan book to close to Rs.4 lakh crore. NPAs and CDR (corporate debt restructuring) loans put together is over 10 per cent of the system.