Paulina Vega is Miss Universe 2014

* Colombia’s Paulina Vega was crowned Miss Universe on 26 January 2015, beating out contenders from the United States, Ukraine, Jamaica and The Netherlands at the world’s top beauty pageant in Florida.

* The 22-year-old model and business student triumphed over 87 other women from around the world, and is only the second beauty queen from Colombia to take home the prize.

* Miss USA Nia Sanchez and Miss Ukraine Diana Harkusha were the runners-up

* The last time Colombia won the crown was in 1956 when Luz Marina Zuluaga took home the title.

* The 63rd edition of the Miss Universe pageant was held at Florida International University in the city of Doral, USA.

* The event is actually the 2014 Miss Universe pageant. The competition was pushed back until now to try to get a bigger television audience.

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Complete List of Padma Award 2015 Winners - PDF Download

Central Government on 25 January 2015 on the occasion of 66th Republic Day has announced the Padma Awardees for 2015. 

Complete List of Padma Award Winners 2016 - PDFDownload

* Padma Awards - one of the highest civilian Awards of the country, are conferred in three categories, namely, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri. The Awards are given in various disciplines/ fields of activities, viz.- art, social work, public affairs, science and engineering, trade and industry, medicine, literature and education, sports, civil service, etc. ‘Padma Vibhushan’ is awarded for exceptional and distinguished service; ‘Padma Bhushan’ for distinguished service of high order and ‘Padma Shri’ for distinguished service in any field. The awards are announced on the occasion of Republic Day every year.

* These awards are conferred by the President of India at ceremonial functions which are held at Rashtrapati Bhawan usually around March/ April every year. This year the President of India has approved conferment of Padma Awards to 104 persons as per the list below. The list comprises of 9 Padma Vibhushan, 20 Padma Bhushan and 75 Padma Shri Awardees.  17 of the awardees are women and the list also includes 17 persons from the category of foreigners, NRIs, PIOs and 4 Posthumous awardees.

Here is the list of Padma Vibhushan Award Winners 2015. The complete list of Padma Awards 2015 (Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri) can be viewed/downloaded from the PDF link below.

Download as PDF- Click Here or Link 2

Padma Vibhushan
S. No.	Name of the Awardee	Discipline	State/Domicile
1.	Shri L. K. Advani	Public Affairs	Gujarat
2.	Shri Amitabh Bachchan	Art	Maharashtra
3.	Shri Prakash Singh Badal	Public Affairs	Punjab
4.	Dr. D. Veerendra Heggade	Social Work	Karnataka
5.	Shri Mohammad Yusuf Khan alias Dilip Kumar	Art	Maharashtra
6.	Shri Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Swami Rambhadracharya	Others	Uttar Pradesh
7.	Prof. Malur Ramaswamy Srinivasan	Science and Engineering	Tamil Nadu
8.	Shri Kottayan K. Venugopal	Public Affairs	Delhi
9.	Shri Karim Al Hussaini Aga Khan (Foreigner)	Trade and Industry	France/UK

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Awards & Recipients November 2014 for competitive Exams

Friends.. In this post we are sharing with you some important awards and its recipients, during November 2014, useful for all upcoming exams like UIIC (Officer & Assistant), New India Assurance (Officer & Assistant), SBI Associate Clerk etc. 

1) Japan's top national award 'The Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers': Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

2) LG People's Choice Award in Cricket: Bhuvaneshwar Kumar

3) Jnanpith Award 2013: Hindi Poet Kedarnath Singh

4) Sumitra Charat Ram Award 2014 for Lifetime Achievement: Pandit Jasraj

5) International Children’s Prize 2014: Indian-American Neha Gupta

6) Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for 2014: Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)

7) CK Naidu Lifetime Achievement award by BCCI: Dilip Vengsarkar

8) Custodian of the Year 2014 Award: Deutsche Bank

9) IIM - JRD Tata Award for “Excellence in Corporate leadership in Metallurgical Industries” for the year 2014: C.S. Verma (Chairman of Steel Authority India Limited)

10) 2nd spot in Time's 25 best inventions of 2014: Mangalyaan

11) Arjuna Award 2014 (after winning court case): Boxer Manoj Kumar

12) India's Best Project-2014 award for implementation of skill development and employment generation: Arunachal Pradesh

13) ICC Cricketer of the Year: Mitchell Johnson

14) ICC Umpire of the Year: Richard Kettleborough

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Complete List of Bharat Ratna awardees - PDF Download

Friends.. As you know only the last day (24 Dec 2014) bharat has got two more ratnas with the selection of Atal Bihari Vajpayee & Madan Mohan Malviya for the prestigious award. So now it’s time to rewind all the awardees of Bharat Ratna since its inception. Before going to the list, let's have a deep look into this award. You can download this article as PDF from link given below. 

Know about Bharat Ratna?

>> Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award instituted on 2 January 1954, is given in recognition of exceptional service, performance of the highest order in any field of human endeavour. Any person without distinction of race, occupation, position or sex is eligible for this award.

>> The recommendations for Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister to the President. The number of annual awards is restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year.

>> The award was originally limited to achievements in the arts, literature, science and public services but the government expanded the criteria to include "any field of human endeavour" in December 2011.

>> Recipients receive a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a peepal-leaf–shaped medallion; there is no monetary grant associated with the award. Bharat Ratna recipients rank seventh in the Indian order of precedence, but are constitutionally prohibited from using the award name as a title.

>> However, should an award winner consider it necessary, he or she may use the following expression in their biodata or letterhead or visiting card etc. to indicate that he or she is a recipient of the award: ‘Awarded Bharat Ratna by the President’ or ‘Recipient of Bharat Ratna Award’.

 Download as PDF- Click Here

Full list of Bharat Ratna recipients:

1) C. Rajagopalachari (1954)

2) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1954)

3) C.V. Raman (1954)

4) Bhagwan Das (1955)

5) Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1955)

6) Jawaharlal Nehru (1955)

7) Govind Ballabh Pant (1957)

8) Dhondo Keshav Karve (1958)

9) Bidhan Chandra Roy (1961)

10) Purushottam Das Tandon (1961)

11) Rajendra Prasad (1962)

12) Zakir Hussain (1963)

13) Pandurang Vaman Kane (1963)

14) Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966)

15) Indira Gandhi (1971)

16) V.V. Giri (1975)

17) K Kamaraj (1976)

18) Mother Teresa (1980)

19) Acharya Vinoba Bhave (1983)

20) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987)

21) M.G. Ramachandran (1988)

22) B.R. Ambedkar (1990)

23) Nelson Mandela (1990)

24) Rajiv Gandhi (1991)

25) Vallabhbhai Patel (1991)

26) Morarji Desai (1991)

27) Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1992)

28) JRD Tata (1992)

29) Satyajit Ray (1992)

30) Gulzarilal Nanda (1997)

31) Aruna Asaf Ali (1997)

32) APJ Abdul Kalam (1997)

33) M.S. Subbulakshmi (1998)

34) Chidambaram Subramaniam (1998)

35) Jayaprakash Narayan (1999)

36) Amartya Sen (1999)

37) Gopinath Bordoloi (1999)

38) Pandit Ravi Shankar (1999)

39) Lata Mangeshkar 2001)

40) Ustad Bismillah Khan (2001)

41) Bhimsen Joshi (2009)

42) C.N.R Rao (2014)

43) Sachin Tendulkar (2014)

44) Atal Bihari Vajpayee (2015)

45) Madan Mohan Malviya (2015) 

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Bharat Ratna for Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya

* Union government on 24 December 2014 announced the prestigious Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and freedom fighter Madan Mohan Malaviya (posthumously).

* The announcement was made on the eve of Mr. Vajpayee's 90th birthday and the 153rd birth anniversary of Pandit Malviya.

* The BJP has been demanding Bharat Ratna for Mr. Vajpayee for a long time; and BJP patriarch L.K. Advani has been at the forefront of seeking the highest civilian honour for the former Prime Minister.

* A Bharat Ratna for Madan Mohan Malaviya, freedom fighter and educationist popularly known as 'Mahamana', was one of the promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his election campaigns.

* 43 people have been honoured with the Bharat Ratna since its inception, including scientist CV Raman, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, singer Lata Mangeshkar and politicians C Rajagopalachari.

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Australia’s Richard Flanagan wins Man Booker prize 2014

* Australian author Richard Flanagan took away the literary world's most coveted prize for his book 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' on 15 October 2014.

* Flanagan's book is the story of his father as a prisoner during war in a Japanese prison and was called a literary masterpiece by the jury.

* Flanagan - the Tasmanian-born author is the third Australian to win the coveted prize which, for the first time in its 46-year history, is now expanded to include entries from writers of all nationalities, writing originally in English and published in the UK.

* 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is the sixth novel from Flanagan which centres upon the experiences of surgeon Dorrigo Evans in a Japanese POW camp on the now infamous Thailand-Burma railway.

* In addition to his £50,000 prize and trophy, Flanagan also receives a designer bound edition of his book, and a further £2,500 for being shortlisted.

* On winning the Man Booker prize, an author can expect international recognition, not to mention a dramatic increase in book sales.

* Kolkata boy Neel Mukherjee was among the six short listed authors for his book 'The Lives of Others'. The other contestants for the award were US authors Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, and British authors Howard Jacobson and Ali Smith.

* This is also the first time in the British prestigious literary award's 46-year history that it was opened to writers of any nationality, writing in English and having their work published in Britain. It had hitherto been confined to writers from Commonwealth countries, Ireland, and Zimbabwe.

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Nobel prize for Economics 2014

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2014 to

Jean Tirole

Toulouse 1 Capitole University, France

“for his analysis of market power and regulation”.

--> Tirole is the third French Laureate awarded the prize in Economic Sciences.

--> Tirole who has used game theory in an attempt to find ways to control the dominance of major companies said he was incredibly surprised when he got the news.

--> 61-year-old Tirole who was awarded the economics prize — the first without an American winner or joint winner since 1999 wins eight million kroner (£700,000) prize.

--> The Academy said, "Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time. He has made important theoretical research contributions in a number of areas, but most of all he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms."

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Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 for Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 is to be awarded to

Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay

for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.

The press release issued by the Norwegian Nobel Committee read as follows:

--> Children must go to school and not be financially exploited.  In the poor countries of the world, 60% of the present population is under 25 years of age.  It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected.  In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.

--> Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.  He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.

--> Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzay has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations.  This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances.  Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.

--> The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.  Many other individuals and institutions in the international community have also contributed.  It has been calculated that there are 168 million child labourers around the world today.  In 2000 the figure was 78 million higher.  The world has come closer to the goal of eliminating child labour.

--> The struggle against suppression and for the rights of children and adolescents contributes to the realization of the “fraternity between nations” that Alfred Nobel mentions in his will as one of the criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Nobel Prize in Literature for 2014 to Patrick Modiano

Nobel Prize in Literature for 2014 

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2014 is awarded to the French author

Patrick Modiano

“for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation”.

-->  Paris' literary doyen Patrick Modiano has won literature's most coveted price for his unparalleled mastery in portraying loss and legacy.

--> The 69-years-old Modiano, legendary for shunning the limelight is the 11th literature laureate born in France and is known to be a modern master in depicting brooding themes surrounding "memory, identity and guilt".

--> He is known to be an authority on Paris with most of his epic works set in the city.

--> Modiano's struggle with his Jewish heritage is well known. He was born outside Paris to a Sephardic Jewish family with roots dating back to eminent rabbis in Greece. It haunted him for most part of his life having spent the early phase of his writing career bluffing away about his year of birth. He claimed he was born in 1947 in order to distance himself from the shame of the World War II.

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014

Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 announced 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to

Eric Betzig

Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA,

Stefan W. Hell

Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany

and

William E. Moerner

Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

“for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”

--> The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday that for a long time, optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light.

--> Helped by fluorescent molecules, the Nobel laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nano dimension.

--> In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.

--> It was all but obvious that scientists should ever be able to study living cells in the tiniest molecular detail. In 1873, the microscopist Ernst Abbe stipulated a physical limit for the maximum resolution of traditional optical microscopy: it could never become better than 0.2 micrometres.

--> Americans Betzig and Moerner and German scientist Hell have been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry 2014 for having bypassed this limit. Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld. Two separate principles are rewarded.

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Nobel Prize for Physics 2014

Nobel Prize for Physics 2014 announced 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 to

Isamu Akasaki

Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan and Nagoya University, Japan

Hiroshi Amano

Nagoya University, Japan

and

Shuji Nakamura

University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

“for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”

--> The invention of an energy source that lights up our computer and/or mobile phone screens and holds promise to brighten up the quality of life of over 1.5 billion people around the world, has been awarded the Nobel prize for physics 2014.

--> The laureates were rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source — the blue light-emitting diode (LED).

--> According to the committee, the laureates' inventions revolutionized the field of illumination technology.

--> As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving earth's resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights.

--> When Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura produced bright blue light beams from their semi-conductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a fundamental transformation of lighting technology.

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