Important Current Affairs 3rd September 2017

Important Current Affairs 3rd September 2017

Download Daily Gk and Current Affairs PDF (English)

Download Daily Gk and Current Affairs PDF (HINDI)

Current Affairs 3rd September 2017: NATIONAL NEWS

Lucknow Metro to be launched on 5th September

In the first phase, five trains will run between Transport Nagar and Charbagh stations. 
●    The service will be thrown open for the public from September 6.
●    Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will flag off the Lucknow Metro’s inaugural run on September 5, an official spokesman of the state government said on Tuesday. 
●    The Home Minister is the Lok Sabha MP from the state capital. 
●    Amid conflicting reports of the date of inauguration, Principal Secretary (Information) Awanish Kumar Awasthi told IANS that the programme has been fixed for September 5, Teachers Day, and added that some Central Ministers will also grace the occasion.
●    In the first phase, five trains will run between Transport Nagar and Charbagh stations. The service will be thrown open for the public from September 6.
●    Officials of the Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC) said the trains will run from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. The safety audit has already been completed.

Cabinet Reshuffle

Nirmala Sitharaman will be the country's new Defence Minister while Piyush Goyal will be the new Railways Minister after a cabinet reshuffle on Sunday that saw nine new ministers take oath. 
●    Ms Sitharaman and Mr Goyal too took oath after being promoted to cabinet rank along with Dharmendra Pradhan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. 
●    Nirmala Sitharaman is the first woman Defence Minister; Indira Gandhi held the department twice when she was Prime Minister.
●    Ms Sitharaman, 58, will now be part of the top 5 or the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), which also includes the Prime Minister, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Finance Minster Arun Jaitley.  
●    Arun Jaitley sheds Defence and will retain the Finance Ministry. 
●    He will, however, attend an international meeting of Defence Ministers in Japan, for which he left on Sunday night.
●    Apart from Railways, Piyush Goyal retains the ministry of Coal. 
●    Suresh Prabhu, who exits as Rail Minister, will be the new Commerce Minister, the department that was held by Ms Sitharaman. 
●    Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi continues in his departments as a Cabinet minister.

Madhya Pradesh government will make pilgrimage to the elderly every year in the Chief Minister's pilgrimage project

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced on Sunday that two lakh elderly people from the state would be taken on pilgrimages annually under a government-run scheme.
●    “Two lakh elderly people would be taken for pilgrimages annually,” Chouhan said at a function organised to mark the fifth anniversary of ‘Mukhyamantri Tirth Darshan Yojana’, a state-sponsored scheme.
●    Chouhan said pilgrimages are aimed at bringing happiness and spiritual bliss in the lives of elderly people.
●    “Sacred places are the essence of faiths and visit to them sanctify mind and soul,” Chouhan added.
●    As per the figures with the state government, nearly 5,03,000 elderly people - belonging to different religions were taken for pilgrimage by special trains in the last five years.
●    Under the ‘Mukhyamantri Tirth Darshan Yojana’, the senior citizens above 60 years of age can visit any of the 15 most famous pilgrimage places on the government expenses once in lifetime.
●    The pilgrimage places include Badrinath, Kedarnath, Puri (Jagannath), Dwaraka, Haridwar, Amaranth, Vaishno Devi, Kashi, Tirupati, Ajmer Shareef, Gaya, Shirdi, Rameshwaram, Amritsar (Sikh) and Sammed Shikhar (Jain) etc.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal to take charge of Water Resources ministry

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is all set to take charge of the Water Resources ministry
●    Sacked AAP leader Kapil Mishra had handled the portfolio before his ouster. 
●    It was then given to Rajendra Pal Gautam, a new minister.
●    A letter about the reshuffle will be sent to Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal in the next two or three days.
●    The Health, Electricity, and Water departments together constituted the Aam Aadmi Party's major focus during its second stint in power. 
●    Kejriwal and his party feel that while the first two have been performing satisfactorily, they haven't been able to sort out Water Resources as well as they wanted to.
●    Recent deaths of sewage workers have brought the focus back on the sector. 
●    when Kejriwal met voters in Bawana, the only complaint was about water and sewage, sources said.

Current Affairs 3rd September 2017: SPACE SCIENCE

Nasa’s Curiosity rover marks 5 years of Mars exploration

Nasa’s Curiosity rover which found evidence that ancient Mars had the right conditions to support microbial life has marked five years of exploring the red planet.
●    Curiosity, which landed near Mount Sharp five years ago, is examining clues on that mountain about long-ago lakes on Mars.
●    On 5 August 2012, the mission team at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, exalted at radio confirmation and first images from Curiosity after the rover’s touchdown using a new “sky crane” landing method.
●    Transmissions at the speed of light took nearly 14 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth, which that day were about 248 million kilometres apart, Nasa said. 
●    Those first images included a view of Mount Sharp.
●    The mission accomplished its main goal in less than a year, before reaching the mountain. 

Current Affairs 3rd September 2017: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Cooperation needed for peace : Modi at BRICS

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said trade and economy are the foundations of the co-operation among BRICS countries.
●    Modi was addressing the plenary session of the BRICS summit in Xiamen. 
●    The PM will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, trade and terror are likely to be on the agenda. 
●    The meeting attains significance as the first exchange between the two leaders after the month-long Doklam standoff.  
●    PM Modi is likely to meet Jinping on the sidelines of the event. 
●    This comes after India and China reportedly withdrew their forces at Doklam following a standoff. 
●    Meanwhile, Jinping yesterday underscored that the BRICS must uphold the value of diplomacy to resolve “hotspot issues” as the leaders of the grouping, including PM Modi, arrived here for the Summit, which has started this morning. 
●    Last year the the BRICS Summit was held in Goa.

North Korea tested hydrogen bomb

North Korea on Sunday claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb designed to be placed on a intercontinental ballistic missile — prompting a barrage of responses from President Donald Trump and for his defense secretary to say they're not looking to the "total annihilation" of the country.
●    In response, South Korea conducted a live-fire exercise targeting the North’s nuclear test site that included surface-to-surface and long-range air-to-ground missiles, a South Korean military official told NBC News.
●    This is the sixth time that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test, and the underground explosion seems likely to ratchet up already high tensions between the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, and President Donald Trump.