1. Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan kept the repo rate unchanged in Bi‐Monthly Monetary Policy on 1st April since retail inflation still remains ‘sticky’, but introduced steps to increase liquidity and contain volatility in the money market. I. Bank Rate 9 % (Unchanged) II. Cash Reserve Ratio 4 % (Unchanged) III. Statutory Liquidity Ratio 23 % (Unchanged) IV. Repo Rate 8 % (Unchanged) V. Reverse Repo Rate 7 % (Unchanged) VI. Marginal Standing Rate 9 % (Unchanged) 2. The 15th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards 2014 was held in Tampa Bay, US from 23 April to 26 April 2014. I. Best Picture ‐ Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra‐ Bhaag Milkha Bhaag II. Best Direction ‐ Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra ‐ Bhaag Milkha Bhaag III. Performance in a Leading Role (Male) ‐ Farhan Akhtar ‐ Bhaag Milkha Bhaag IV. Performance in a Leading Role (Female) ‐ Deepika Padukone ‐ Chennai Express V. Music Direction ‐ Mithoon, Ankit Tiwari, Jeet Ganguly ‐ Aashiqui 2 VI. Outstanding Contribution To International Cinema ‐John Travolta VII. Lifetime Achievement ‐ Shatrughan Sinha 3. The 61st National Film Awards for 2013 was announced in New Delhi on 16 April 2014 by the Directorate of Film Festivals. i. Ship of Theseus directed by Anand Gandhi was selected as the Best feature film. ii. Best Actor Raj Kumar for Shahid in hindi and Suraj Venjaramoodu for Perariyathavar in Malyalam iii. Best Actress Geetanjali Thapa for Liar’s Dance in Hindi iv. Best Direction Hansal Mehta for film Shahid 4. Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram has been designated as new Finance Secretary. Previous Finance secretary was Sumit Bose. 5. Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha was appointed as 41st Chief Justice of India. He will succeed Justice P.Sathasivam. 6. Justice G Rohini was appointed as the Next Chief Justice of Delhi High Court. 7. Ratan Tata was appointed as a member of the Board of Boao Forum for Asia (BFA). The post is a rare distinction for an Indian in the Chinese government‐backed influential body. 8. Viktor Orban was re‐elected as Prime Minister of Hungary for the second consecutive four‐year term. 9. Rajeev Suri appointed as President and CEO of Nokia Corporation. 10. Marie‐Lousie Coleiro Preca was sworn‐in as thePresident of Malta. 11. R Gandhi was appointed as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India for a period of three years. He replaced Anand Sinha. 12. D K Pathak was appointed as the new Director General of the Border Security Force. 13. Karim Massimov, the Chief of Staff of Kazakhstan was named as the new Prime Minister of the country by the President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. 14. President Francois Hollande appointed Interior Minister Manuel Valls as next prime minister of France. 15. NR Narayana Murthy was honoured with the 2014 Canada India Foundation Chachalani Global Indian Award in Toronto, Canada. 16. Environmental activist Ramesh Agrawal won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for the year 2014. 17. Hollywood star John Travolta received the Most Popular All Time International Star in India at the International Indian Film Academy. The 15th IIFA awards were held in Tampa Bay, Florida from 23 to 26 April 2014. 18. Vijay Seshadri won the prestigious 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category. 19. Ratan Tata received the Knight Grand Cross award by UK Government. 20. Union Government announced that legendary poet and film lyricist Gulzar was selected for the 45th Dadasaheb Phalke Award 2013. 21. British‐American physicist Stuart Parkin won Millennium Technology Prize 2014. 22. Indian American novelist, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Lowland has been shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. 23. Koyal Rana won the 51st edition of the Femina Miss India 2014 crown. 24. MS Dhoni won the United Kingdom’s 2014 Asian Award for outstanding achievement in Sports. 25. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd received the Most Efficient Navratna Award for the year 2013. 26. Renowned music director Zubin Mehta won the special jury award of Times Now NRI Awards 2014. 27. George Clooney stepped down from his role as UN’s Messenger of Peace amid the reports of his engagement with the human rights lawyer, Amal Alamuddin. 28. Union Ministry of External Affairs appointed Suresh Kumar Reddy as India’s first Ambassador to the separate Indian Mission to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) & East Asia Summit. 29. Indian‐American professor Rajendra Singh was named as one of ten Solar Champions of Change by the White House. 30. Indian‐American hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal pleaded guilty at a US court for violating federal election laws by using straw donors. 31. President Barack Obama nominated Sunil Sabharwal as the next US Alternate Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 32. Election Commission confirmed Amir Khan as its national icon for the Lok Sabha elections 2014. The other four national icons were A P J Abdul Kalam, M S Dhoni, Saina Nehwal and Mary Kom. 33. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel laureate in literature died. 34. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Anja Niedringhaus shot dead by a policeman in Afghanistan. 35. Prime Minister of South Korea Chung Hong‐won resigned. He resigned over the government’s inability and untimely response to the ferry disaster that happened on 16 April 2014. 36. Nancy Powell, the US Ambassador to India announced her resignation. 37. Earthquake of magnitude 8.3 on Richter Scale struck Solomon Islands on 13 April 2014. 38. The Supreme Court reconstituted a Special Investigation Team to monitor the probe into the black money case. Court appointed retired judge MB Shah as its Chairman and retired Judge Arijit Pasayat as the Vice Chairman. 39. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited handed over a Dornier Nabhrathna light‐weight aircraft to DRDO. 40. The Supreme Court constituted a three‐member committee headed by N R Madhava Menon to frame guidelines to prevent misuse of public funds by the government and its authorities by providing advertisements in newspapers and television. 41. South Korean ferry carrying 459 passengers and crew drowned on 16 April 2014. The ferry ran into trouble some 20 kilometres off the island of Byungpoong. 42. United States and India launched a reading initiative named READ (Read‐Engage‐Achieve‐Dream) Alliance. This initiative has been launched with an aim to improve the reading skills of millions of primary school‐aged children in India. 43. Publisher Simon & Shuster announced that they will release a book named Hard Choices authored by Hillary Rodham Clinton. 44. A memoir entitled “Crusader or Conspirator? Coalgate and other Truths” authored by former Coal Secretary PC Parakh was released. 45. A memoir entitled the ‘The Accidental Prime Minister: the making and unmaking of Manmohan Singh’ authored by Sanjaya Baru was released. 46. India dropped to 78 in the latest Freedom of the Press freedom index. Sweden topped the list. 47. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its report titled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability in Yokohama, Japan. The report warns that due to global warming, poorer Nations may see fall in their GDP by 2%. 48. India successfully test fired indigenously developed surface‐to‐air Akash missile from at Chandipur Wheelers island Odisha. 49. India test‐fired an exo‐atmospheric interceptor missile, called Prithvi Defense Vehicle with capability to neutralise any long‐range missile at higher altitude. This interceptor was test‐fired for the first time from Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island, about 100 km from Balasore in Odisha. 50. Admiral Robin K Dhowan took over as the 22nd Chief of Indian Navy. He is a successor of Admiral DK Joshi, who resigned taking moral responsibility of the accident on INS Sindhuratna in Mumbai. 51. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released a report. World military expenditure declined by 1.9 percent in real terms, since 2012. The release ranked India at the ninth position in the list of top spenders in 2013 compared to 8th rank in 2012. As per the report the three highest spenders with substantial increases are China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. 52. INS Vikrant, the decommissioned aircraft carrier of the Indian Navy has been sold for 60 crore rupees to a company named IB Commercial Pvt Ltd. 53. India and Nepal started a joint military exercise named Ex‐Surya Kiran Drills VI at Saljhandi in Rupandehi district of Nepal. 54. India threatened to drag the European Union to the World Trade Organization if the 28‐nation bloc did not lift its ban on the import of Indian mangoes and vegetables. 55. Petroleum minister M Veerappa Moily has made it clear that once the Election Commission lifts its model code of conduct on May 12, its order for the deferment of a new gas pricing regime based on the Rangarajan formula will cease to exist and a price hike would come into effect. 56. Government said foreign investors will pay only 5 per cent withholding tax on interest earned from such investments till May 2015. 57. The Supreme Court lifted the nearly one‐and‐a‐half‐year ban on iron ore mining in Goa. 58. The United States named China and India among countries on its blacklist of countries failing to properly protect US copyrights and patents but kept their status unchanged from the previous review. 59. India is now the world’s third largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, ahead of Japan and behind the US and China. This was revealed by the 2011 round of the World Bank’s International Comparison Program (ICP) released. 60. Centre revealed names of 18 persons in the Supreme Court who allegedly stashed black money with LST Bank in Liechtenstein and against whom prosecution have been launched by the Income Tax department.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 09:42:47 +0000