Current Affairs - 06.08.2010

• NEW DELHI: Severe punishment awaits those involved in honour killings as the government intends to bring a law on the matter in the current Parliament session itself, Home Minister P Chidambaram said in Lok Sabha today.  
• There are 793 Indians in Pakistani jails, out of which 582 are fishermen.Of the remaining 211, who are all civilians, India has so far been given consular access to 33 prisoners only, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said, adding "it is believed that there are 178 other Indian nationals in Pakistani jails, who have not been provided consular access."  
• The government on Thursday withdrew the recognition of Hockey India (HI) for violating its guidelines, barely a few hours after HI completed its controversial elections.  
• Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani on Wednesday made a fervent appeal to the people to remain peaceful during their agitation and not burn public property. Additional deployment of troops from Delhi would not deter the people from achieving their “cherished goal.”  
• Northern Railway has suspended its operations in the Kashmir Valley for an indefinite period, following massive damage caused to trains and infrastructure and fear of violence among non-local employees.  
• The private browsing modes on modern browsers leak information about where people have visited, suggests a study.  
• The Japanese city of Hiroshima is marking the 65th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack.For the first time, a representative of the United States, which dropped the bomb on the city, is attending. 
• The US economy shed another 131,000 jobs in July, the second month in a row that jobs have been lost, the Labor Department has said.The private sector created 71,000 jobs, the government said. However, both figures were worse than expected.  
• Contrary to recent reports about water content in lunar rocks, the Moon may be quite dry, say scientists. 
• A study by US researchers, published in Science, analysed chlorine isotopes of the much-studied samples, brought to Earth by the Apollo space missions.They added that there was no or very little hydrogen in the magma ocean during the Moon's formation.And that would mean the Earth's natural satellite may have always been too dry to host life. Zachary Sharp from the University of New Mexico led the study. 
• The team used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to study the supernova 1987A, which lies 168,000 light-years away.The results show the original blast was very powerful and concentrated in one particular direction.Seen in 1987, it was the first supernova visible with the naked eye to have been observed for some 383 years. The 3-D view shows the explosion was stronger and faster in some directions than others, leading to an irregular shape with some parts stretching further out into space.