Daily Current Affairs Updates: 24 October 2013

Daily Current Affairs Updates: 24 October 2013

Days

1) United Nations' Day: Today is the United Nations' Day. The day is celebrated to commemorate the launch of the UN Charter in 1945. The theme of this year is-‘Partnerships for Global Progress’.

2) World Polio Day: World Polio Day is being observed today. The day is observed to raise public awareness of the ravages of polio and garner support for eradication efforts. Global eradication programmes, since 1988, have significantly reduced the worldwide occurrence of polio by 99%.

National

1) I am not above law, ready to face CBI in coal scam probe, Manmohan Singh says: Holding that he was not above the law, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday offered to face the CBI or "for that matter anybody" in the coal scam probe as he has nothing to hide.

2) Actor Ranbir Kapoor was Thursday named the brand ambassador for Philips, the country's leading lighting company.

Obituaries

1) Legendary singer Manna Dey passed away: Legendary playback singer and Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner Manna Dey passed away at a Bangalore hospital in the wee hours of Thursday. He was 94. He has recorded over 3500 songs in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali over the course of his career. He is survived by his daughters Shuroma and Sumita. He was born in the year 1919. His original name was Prabodh Chandra Dey but he was nicknamed Manna.

Sports

1) Spectators wanting to cheer their country’s team at next year’s Lusofonia Games will not be able to carry flags as they have been marked as one of the banned items on all the stadia of the Portuguese Commonwealth Games.

2) Saina, Sindhu crash out of French Open: Indian shuttlers had a bad day in office at the French Super Series with Saina Nehwal and three others crashing out in the second round of the event on Thursday.

3) Legendary cricket commentator Richie Benaud was in a stable condition in hospital after driving his car into a brick wall.

4) The Sports Ministry and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) have launched 'India Sports 2014' at the 5th Global Sports Summit to promote sports among youth in the country.

Technology

1) Blackberry launches Z30 for Rs 39,990: BlackBerry has launched the new Z30 smartphone for Rs 39,990. Featuring the BlackBerry 10 operating system, the new all-touch smartphone comes with a 5-inch display and a 1.7 GHz processor with quadcore graphics that makes for faster browsing of Web pages and detailed display of games.

2) Accenture ranked 1st as ‘most sought after employer brand’ in India: Technology services company Accenture has topped the list of 20 most sought after employers in India, compiled by professional networking site LinkedIn.

3) Yahoo! buys image-recognition start-up for Flickr- Yahoo’s latest acquisition will bring image-recognition technology to its Flickr service for sharing photos. The Internet company is getting the new tools and expertise through its purchase of a start-up called LookFlow.

Banking/Economy

1) In a new initiative, Axis Bank entered into a tieup with the UIDAI that will enable the bank to open accounts by using the 12-digit Aadhaar number of the customer.

2) P. Raja Reddy has taken over as Field General Manager of SyndicateBank for Andhra Pradesh.

3)  Concurring to market expectations, ratings agency ICRA expects the RBI to hike the repo rate by 25 bps in its second quarter monetary policy review to guard against a generalisation of inflationary pressures.

4) Reserve Bank of India has constituted a GIRO Advisory Group (GAG) to implement a national Indian Bill Payment System so that households will be able to use bank accounts to pay school fees, utilities, medical bills and make remittances electronically. It is headed by Prof. Umesh Bellur, Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

5) Ahead of second quarter monetary policy review, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan today met Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and discussed the macroeconomic situation. In its last policy review on September 20, a hawkish RBI raised the policy rate by 0.25 per cent as it kept its focus on controlling inflation. It had raised the repo rate or the short-term lending rate by 25 basis points to 7.5 per cent from 7.25 per cent.

6) Rangarajan sticks to 5.3% GDP growth estimate for this fiscal: Describing IMF and World Bank’s recent downward revision of India GDP growth forecast as "unduly pessimistic", the Prime Minister’s key policy advisor C. Rangarajan today expressed optimism over economy recording 5-5.5 per cent growth this fiscal.

7) A CBI court here yesterday sentenced former Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Bank M Gopalakrishnan and four others to one year imprisonment for defrauding various branches of the bank to the tune of about Rs 6.5 crore.

International

1) China hails Manmohan’s three-day visit as ‘great success’: Praising Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a renowned statesman, China on Thursday termed his three- day visit here a "great success" as it sent a "positive and powerful message" that the two countries are committed to work together.