Important Current Affairs 27th November 2018 English

Space news

InSights lands on Red Planet After 6 Months
A NASA spacecraft designed to burrow beneath the surface of Mars landed on the red planet Monday after a six-month, 300 million-mile (482 million-kilometre) journey.
It was NASA’s ninth attempt to land at Mars since the 1976 Viking probes. All but one of the previous U.S. touchdowns were successful. NASA last landed on Mars in 2012 with the Curiosity rover.
InSight was shooting for Elysium Planitia, a plain near the Martian equator that the InSight team hopes is as flat as a parking lot in Kansas with few, if any, rocks.
InSight has no life-detecting capability, however. That will be left to future rovers. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, for instance, will collect rocks that will eventually be brought back to Earth and analysed for evidence of ancient life.

National News

Vice President lays foundation stone for Kartarpur corridor
Foundation stone for the construction of Kartarpur Corridor at Mann village in Gurdaspur district of Punjab. 
It will connect Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib situated at Kartarpur.
Presently, Sikh pilgrims have to go through the long visa process and have to wait for particular dates of buses to reach the Gurudwara via Wagah border. 

Lord Buddha's 70-Feet Statue In Bihar's Rajgir Unveiled
Nitish Kumar  unveiled a 70-feet tall statue of Lord Buddha at Rajgir in Nalanda district.
It is the second tallest statue of Buddha in the country.
The statue has been installed above a 16 metre radius pedestal in the middle of the lake Ghora Katora.
Tathagata Tsal – 39 m
Buddha Park of Ravangla in South Sikkim host the tallest status of Lord Buddha in India, constructed between 2006 and 2013 and Ravangla is part of the Himalayan Buddhist Circuit.

Sunil Arora next CEC
Sunil Arora is learnt to have been appointed as the next Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).
A CEC of the Election Commission can have a tenure of six years or hold office till the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. The convention is to appoint the senior-most election commissioner as chief election commissioner.
A former bureaucrat, Mr. Arora was appointed as Election Commissioner on August 31, 2017. He succeeds Om Prakash Rawat who retired .

International news

Ohio becomes first U.S. state to accept Bitcoin for tax payments
Ohio is now the first U.S. state to accept tax payments in the form of cryptocurrency.
Twenty-three different taxes are eligible for payment via Bitcoin. Payments made through OhioCrypto.com will be immediately converted to U.S. dollars before they are deposited into a state account.

Sports news

Dipa Karmakar grabs bronze in vault event at Artistic Gymnastics World Cup
She bagged a bronze medal in the vault event on the third day of Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Cottbus, Germany. 
She had become the first Indian gymnast to win a gold at the World Challenge Cup.
On 6 July 2016, FIG honored Dipa by naming her World Class Gymnast. At Rio Olympics she achieved 4th place in vaults.