Daily Gk Update 04-Nov-2014

Ashwin continues to top Test rankings for all-rounders

i) Ravichandran Ashwin is the lone Indian to feature in the top 10 of the latest Reliance ICC

Test Player Rankings as he continues to lead the way in the all-rounders list.

ii) South Africa’s Vernon Philander is second in the Reliance ICC Test Player Rankings for All-rounders behind Ashwin, while Bangaldesh’s Shakib Al Hasan is placed third.

iii) Pakistan batsmen Younis Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq and Azhar Ali have all improved their rankings in the latest Reliance ICC Test Player Rankings, which were released on Tuesday.

iv) Younis gained five places and 101 ratings points, and is now just three ratings points behind South Africa’s fifth-ranked Hashim Amla.

Alibaba Posts Strong Earnings in First Report Since I.P.O.

i.) Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, reported on Tuesday a jump in profit in its first earnings announcement since its initial public offering (IPO)in September. ii.) Shrugging off a slowdown in the Chinese economy, Alibaba’s profit grew 16 percent from the same period a year earlier as the company’s sites benefited from the growing number of Chinese turning to the Internet to shop.

iii.) Shares in the company, China’s largest e-commerce retailer by transactions, have risen about 50 percent since it raised nearly $21.8 billion in the highly anticipated initial stock sale.

iv.) In a sign of the growing power of Chinese Internet companies, the listing surpassed the offering of Facebook, the American social media giant. Now with a market value of almost $250 billion, Alibaba is worth more than Facebook.

RBI likely to hold rates through 2014-15: ICRA

i.) the Reserve Bank of India is likely to keep status quo on the policy rates this fiscal to check price rise expectations, says a report.

ii) “We expect the central bank to stick to a firm anti-inflationary stance over the remainder of the current fiscal to rein in inflation expectations and impart credibility to its targets,” ICRA Ratings chief economist Aditi Nayar said in a report.

iii. ) The apex bank to begin a rate-easing cycle in the first quarter of the next fiscal, with repo rate cuts of up to 50 basis points.

RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan will announce the fifth bi-monthly monetary policy on December 2, 2014.

iv.) The rating agency sees CPI inflation in January 2015 to be well below the target of 8 per cent as per the glide path announced by the RBI, despite base effect waning after this month.

v.) Retail inflation eased to 6.46 per cent in September, lowest since January 2012, from 7.73 per cent in August.

Thomas Cook arm to buy stake in MFXchange

i) Travel firm Thomas Cook India on Tuesday said its arm IKYA had entered into a definitive agreement with Fairfax Financial Holdings to acquire 49 per cent stake in MFXchange Holdings, Inc (MFX), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fairfax.

ii) The integration of MFX with IKYA will result in the formation of the Global Technology Services Group (GTS Group), marking IKYA’s entry into the IT services and solutions space in the North American market, Thomas Cook said in a BSE filing.

iii) “IKYA, a subsidiary of Thomas Cook, entered into a definitive agreement on November 3, 2014 with Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd to acquire 49 per cent stake in MFXchange Holdings, Inc (MFX), a wholly owned subsidiary of Fairfax,” the company said.

iv) Thomas Cook has also appointed Vikram Gulati as President of GTS Group.

NCAER lowers India GDP growth forecast to 5%

i) The National Council of Applied Economic Research(NCAER) has lowered India’s GDP growth forecast to 5 per cent in the current financial year on weak economical fundamentals and uncertainties in growth prospects.

ii) The economic think-tank in its earlier projection had suggested that the Indian economy was likely to grow at 5.7 per cent in 2014-15.“Whether that will help us revive our growth prospects will depend on a number of factors including revival of the external economy and the extent of damage on agriculture due to deficit rainfall,” it said in a release on Tuesday.

iii) The NCAER said that the overall economy is looking weak with uncertain growth prospects. “The economy is giving mixed signals. On one hand, we had the Sensex reaching record levels partly driven by record foreign institutional investment and FDI.”

NASA rocket to click 1,500 images of Sun in 5 minutes

i) A sounding rocket fitted with technology to gather 1,500 images of the Sun in flat five minutes is set for launch on Monday.

ii) Capturing five images per second, the Rapid Acquisition Imaging Spectrograph Experiment (RAISE) mission will focus in on the split-second changes that occur near active regions on the Sun.

These are areas of intense and complex magnetic fields that can give birth to giant eruptions on the Sun that shoot energy and particles out in all directions, the U.S. space agency said in a statement.

“Even on a five-minute flight, there are niche areas of science we can focus on well. 

iii) There are areas of the Sun that need to be examined with the high-cadence observations we can provide,” said Don Hassler, solar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Hasmukh Adhia is New Financial Services Secretary

i) Government today appointed Hasmukh Adhia, a 1981 Gujarat cadre IAS officer, as the

new Financial Services Secretary replacing G S Sandhu.

ii) Sandhu, a 1980 Rajasthan cadre IAS officer, has been made Chairman of the National Authority for Chemical Weapons Convention.

iii) The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved appointment of Adhia as Secretary of Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, according to a late night.

Appointment of Next CBI Director May Take Time

i) Prime Minister Narendra Modi might not be able to appoint a successor to controversial CBI Director Ranjit Sinha in a hurry.

ii) After the enactment of the Lok Pal Act - meant to give more teeth to the CBI - the director of the agency has to be appointed by a collegium of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of India or his nominee and the Leader of the Opposition.

iii) The government was keen to go ahead with the appointment without the leader of Opposition and has been told by the Law Ministry it can technically do so. But that will raise questions regarding its haste in appointing a CBI director in absence of a key participant of the collegium.

One World Trade Center open for business

i) More than 13 years after the original towers were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, New York's World Trade Center has re-opened for business.Employees at publishing giant Conde Nast are starting to move into the 104-storey One World Trade Center.

ii) The $3.8bn (£2.4bn) skyscraper took eight years to build and is now the tallest building in the US.

It is 60% leased and the government's General Services Administration has signed up for 275,000 square feet.

iii) "The New York City skyline is whole again," Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority, which owns the restored site, said in a statement.