1. NASA’s Mars exploration rover “Opportunity” creates the world record for the longest distance traveled on an alien land. The record was previously held by Lunokhod 2 – a rover from the Soviet Union. The rover has so far traveled a 25-mile distance on Mars as compared to 24 miles of Lunokhod 2 on the Moon.
2. Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha replaces outgoing Army Chief ‘General Bikram Singh’ as the Chairman of “Chief of Staff Committee (COSC)”. COSC is a forum for all the three service chiefs to co-ordinate and to act as an advisory body to the Defence Ministry. Its members include Chief of all the three armed forces (Navy, Army and Air-Force) and Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (a non-voting member).
3. Out of 1000 workers in the country only ’126′ are employed in Manufacturing Sector: National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). Daman & Diu tops the list among states/UTs with 628 whereas West Bengal is numero uno among states with a figure of 227 workers employed in Manufacturing sector per 1000 overall workers.
4. Acclaimed Hindi writer Madhukar Singh – a pioneer of ‘Samantar Kahani Andolan’ in story writing during 1970s – dies aged 87. Soviet Land Nehru Award, Bihar government’s prestigious Jannayak Karpoori Thakur Sahitya Puraskar, Udayraj Puraskar are the few among many laurels he received in his prolific career.
5. Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) grants Infrastructure Status to the hospitality sector. The privilege, however, is only limited to hotels with a project cost of more than Rs 200 crore each (excluding land costs), and to convention centres with a project cost of over Rs 300 crore each.
6. There are 17.24 lakh out-of-school children in 6-14 years age group in India as on 31st March, 2014.
