Daily Current Affairs : 1st November 2013

1. India has slipped by five places to 106th spot in the World Prosperity Index, largely due to poor 'safety and security' environment. In the 'Prosperity Index' ranking of 142 countries compiled by London-based Legatum Institute, India dropped from 101st position last year, while Norway continues to remain at the top. India's position has dropped below neighbouring China (51), Sri lanka (60), Nepal (102) and Bangladesh (103).

2. Syria's entire declared stock of chemical weapons has been placed under seal, inspectors said on Thursday, as international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi wrapped up a visit to muster support for peace talks. All stocks of chemical weapons and agents have been placed under seals that are impossible to break," Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons spokesman Christian Chartier said, adding that the seals were "tamper proof." 

3. MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) has appointed Gopal Krishna Pillai IAS (Retd.) as Chairman and Thomas Mathew T., as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. SEBI has approved Pillai’s election as Chairman. Last month, SEBI had granted renewal to the exchange. Pillai was in the Indian Administrative Service and retired as Home Secretary to the Government of India. He belongs to the Kerala cadre of the 1972 batch of IAS.

4. Microsoft appointed Gurdeep Singh Pall as the corporate vice president of Skype, a popular and free international voiceover and messaging service and Lync communications product. He will replace the Mark Gillett. Gurdeep Singh Pall, 46, born in Chandigarh. He joined in Microsoft Company in January 1990 as a software design engineer. 

5. India has developed a new tactical surface-to-surface missile 'Pragati' with a range between 60-170 km and will offer it to friendly countries. The new missile, now on display at a defence exhibition in South Korea, is based on the Prahaar missile developed by the DRDO for the Army and can be termed as its export variant with minor differences.

6. Scientists discovered a new planet called Kepler 78b which has a similar mass and density to that of Earth. It orbits a star 400 light years away. Kepler78b is composed mostly of rock and iron, very similar to our own planet. It is extremely close to its host star which is a hundredth of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

7. Foreign lenders' wholly owned subsidiaries in India will receive near-national treatment, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) assured on Tuesday. In its recently published policy, the central bank said that foreign banks would be incentivized to convert into wholly owned subsidiaries (WOS) by providing them with near-national treatment.

8. India and Vietnam on Friday signed a treaty for transfer of sentenced prisoners languishing in jails in the two countries. Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Vietnam Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang signed the agreement on transfer of sentenced prisoners at a function here. The pact will help Indian prisoners imprisoned in Vietnam or vice-versa to be near their families for serving remaining part of their sentence.

9. Six major central banks in the world made currency swap arrangements permanent on 31 October 2013 as a prudent liquidity backstop  in case of future global financial strains. Previously these banks had temporary bilateral currency swap arrangements.

Names of Six major central banks are

 
1. The Bank of Japan
2. U.S. Federal Reserve
3. European Central Bank
4. Bank of England 
5. central bank of Canada
6. central bank of Switzerland

Central bank liquidity swap: Central bank liquidity swap/Currency is a type of currency swap used by a country's central bank to provide liquidity of its currency to another country's central bank.

Currency Swap: A currency swap is a foreign-exchange agreement between two institutions /Countries to exchange aspects (namely the principal an interest payments) of a loan in one currency for equivalent aspects of an equal in net present value loan in another currency.

10. Google Inc, the world's most-popular search engine, on Thursday announced Indian winners of its Global Impact Challenge funding. The Internet search giant announced that 10 Indian non-profit organisations had been selected for a funding of Rs 21 crore under its Global Impact Challenge. Agastya, Indian Digital Green Trust, Janaagraha and Social Awareness-Newer Alternatives (SANA) will receive grants of Rs 3 crore each. The remaining six non-profit groups will receive Rs 1.5 crore each.

11. India and Australia are to hold the 3rd round of negotiations to finalise a civil nuclear agreement that could enable the sale of Australian uranium to India, in Delhi during the week beginning November 25, it was announced on Friday.

12. India won Gold in 18th Asian Archery Competition at Chinese Taipei. Abhishek Verma, Ratan Singh, Sandeep Kumar forming the compound team defeated the Korean trio of Lihong Min, Yong Hee Choi and Jongho Kim 233-231 to win the gold. 

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