Tuesday, August 21, 2012

PERSONS IN NEWS 2012 (International)

(Useful for UPSC Civil Services Mains)

Alana Seebarran

Alana Seebarran of Guyana has been crowned as the Miss India Worldwide 2012 in the 23rd edition of the pageant held in Suriname capital of Paramaribo. 

Alberto Contador

Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador on February 6, 2012 Received a two-year ban for doping during the 2010 Tour de France and was stripped of his victory in the race. Contador tested positive for the banned anabolic agent clenuterol.

Bosusco Paolo

Italian tour operator Bosusco Paolo was finally released by te Odisha State Organising Committee of the outlawed Communist Party of India  (Maoist) in Kandhamal district on April 12, 2012

Chandra Bahadur Dangi

Nepal's Chandra Bahadur Dangi was declared the world's shortest living  man at a ceremony in Kathmandu on February 26, 2012 Dangi, who measured at just 21.5 inches (54.6 centimetres), snatched the title from Junrey Balawing of the Philippines.

Christian Wulff

Germany's President Christian Wulff resigned on February 17, 2012 in a scandal over favours he allegedly received before becoming head of state, creating a major domestic distraction for Chancellor Angela Merkel as she grapples with Europe's debt crisis.

Charles Taylor

A U.N. –backed war crimes court sentenced the former President of Liberin, Charles Taylor, to 50 years in jail on May 30, 2012 for arming rebels in Sierra Leone in return for "blood diamonds" Taylor, 64 was earlier convicted of all 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front during the country's brutal 1991-2001 civil war.

Fernando Lugo

Paraguay's Senate on June 21, 2012 voted to impeach left-wing President Fernando Lugo, forcing him to step down. Both houses of congress had voted to begin impeachment proceedings over his handling of the recent clashes between farmers and police in which at least 17 people died. Vice-President Federico Franco has already been sown in as president and will serve the remainder of Lugo's five-year term, which ends in August 2013.

Gunter Grass

Israel declared Gunter Grass persona non gratia on April 8, 2012, deepening a spat with the Nobel-winning author over a poem that deeply criticized the Jewish state and suggested it was as much as danger as Iran. He was awarded the Nobel Prized for literature in 1999.

Khalil Chisti

Pakistani virologist Mohammed Khalil Chisti, who was handed a life sentence for a murder that took place in the premises of the eum of the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in 1992, was released on bail from Rajasthan's Ajmer Central Jail in April 11, 2012 following a Supreme Court's order on April 9.

 Liu Yang

Liu Yang, a former Chinese air force pilot, became the country's first female astronaut as she along with two male colleagues blasted off into space aboard the Shenzhou IX Spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satyellite Launch Centre on June 16, 2012. 

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney clinched the Republican Presidential nomination on May 29, 2012 with a resounding victory in Texas to face Demoractic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election. Romney finally cleared the benchmark of 1,144 delegates needed to become the Republicans' presidential candidate after a lone, bitter primary battle with a host of conservative rivals.

Rajat Gupta

Rajat Gupta, one of the most successful Indian American on Wall Street, was found guilty on June 15, 2012 of passing confidential market information to Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam in one of America's biggest in sider trading cases. A Manhattan court held the 63-year-old former Goldman Sachs director guilty of providing insider information to his former friend, Rajaratnam, who was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for insider trading.

Snigdha Nandipati

Indian American Snigdha Nandipati won the Scripps National Spelling Bee at National Harbor in Maryland on May 31, 2012 Nandipati (14), an eight-grade student from San Diego, California, correctly spled the French word 'guetapens' to be declared the national champion for the year 2012.

Sarath Fonseka

The former Sri Lankan Army Chief, Sarath Fonseka walked out of a prison in Colombo on May 21, 2012 following a presidential pardon. He was arrested by the military police on February 8, 2010 on unspecified charges and sentenced to Jail by a court-material.

Sheikh Hasina

Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari on January 12, 2012 conferred the honorary Doctor of Literature (Honoris Causa) of Tripura University on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Agartala. 

Thomas Lubanga

The International Criminal Court on March 14, 2012 convicted Congolese militia Chief Thomas Lubanga of ware crimes for conscripting children into this army, the tribunal's first ever verdict. Lubanga was fouynd guilty in the Hague of enlisting child soldiers as young as 11 to fight during a bloody four-year war in a gold-rich region of the Demoractic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Tamae Watanabe

A 73-year-old Japanese woman Tamae Watanabe climbed to Mount Everest's peak on May 19, 2012 smashing her own record to become the oldest woman to scale the world's highest mountain. Tamae Watanabe reached the Everest's 8,850-metre-high (29,035 feet) summit from the northern side of the mountain in tibed with four other team members. The oldest person to climb the Everest is a Nepalese man, Min Bahadur Sherchan, who scaled the peak in 2008, at 76.

Yusuf Raza Gilani

Pakistan Supreme Court on June 19, 2012 disqualified Pakistan People's Party Yusuf Raza Gilani as Prime Minister after his conviction for contempt in May 2012. Gilani had refused to follow the court's directive to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. 

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali

Tunisia's ousted president Zine al Abidine Ben Ali was on June 13, 2012 given a life sentence in absentia by a military court in Tunis over the killing of protesters in the country's revolution in 2011. Ben Ali is now in exile in Saudi Arabia, where feld with his wife in January 2011 after weeks of protests against his rule of more than 20 years.

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