7 November 2013 – Daily Current Affairs
Bill de Blasio
1) Who was elected as the new mayor of New York on 5 November, 2013 and will become the first Democrat leader to lead the city in two decades? – Bill De Blasio (Blasio was elected as the 109th Mayor of New York city in a landslide victory over Joseph J. Lhota. He will replace Michael Bloomberg)
2) The joint army training exercise of Indian and Chinese Armies named “Hand in Hand” started on 6 November, 2013 in China. This joint-exercise is being held at which place of China? – Chengdu (“Hand in Hand” will be a ten day joint army exercise. The joint training exercise is one of the major bilateral defence cooperation between the two countries and is third in the series which started in 2007. The first was held at Kuming, China in December 2007 while the second was held at Belgaum, India in Nov 2008)
3) India’s largest commercial bank State Bank of India (SBI) on 6 November, 2013 hiked both its base rate and benchmark prime lending rate (PLR) by 20 basis points. What is the new base rate and PLR of SBI? – Base rate 10% and PLR 14.75% (Base rate is the rate below which banks cannot lend. After this hike by SBI, the other state-owned banks are also expected to go in for a base rate hike. With the Reserve Bank of India increasing the repo rate by 25 basis points each in two successive monetary policy review events, it was widely anticipated that the public sector banks would follow suit through lending rate hikes)
4) Soon after ISRO placed its Mars orbiter “Mangalyaan” into Earth’s orbit on 5 November, 2013 following a historic successful launch by PSLV C-25 rocket, ISRO’s Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) became the nerve centre of all communication related to this mission. ISTRAC is situated at? – Byalalu, near Bangalore (ISTRAC will now be the nerve centre of the mission and will communicate with the spacecraft, correct its course and command it throughout the life of the spacecraft)
5) What is the name of the former Foreign Minister of Israel who was acquitted in a corruption trial on 6 November, 2013 and is expected to return to the Foreign Ministry soon? – Avigdor Lieberman (Lieberman stepped down as foreign minister after being indicted in December 2012, but retained the chairmanship of the powerful foreign affairs and defence committee in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. He is known as one of the dominant forces in Israeli politics and a man who has raised diplomatic hackles in countless western capitals)
6) Which city has the largest number of active Internet users in India according to the latest data released on Internet penetration in India recently? – Mumbai (Mumbai had around 12 million active Internet users in 2013. Mumbai is followed by Delhi with 8.1 million and Hyderabad with 4.7 million Internet users. Kolkata witnessed the highest growth in the number of Internet users in a year among the top eight cities of the country and number of Internet users stood at 4.4 million in 2013 as compared to 3.0 million in 2012. On the other hand Ahmedabad witnessed the lowest growth with total number of Internet users in 2013 at 2.8 million as against 2.3 million in 2012)
