1. Voting in 7 high-voltage LS seats in Delhi on Thursday
i. The
stage is now set for the first substantial round of polling in the Lok Sabha
elections on Thursday involving nearly 11 crore voters in 92 seats spread
across 11 states, including Delhi and the national capital region and the
riot-hit Muzaffarnagar.
ii.
This will be the third round in the nine-phased elections which began on April
7 and will conclude on May 12. Thursday’s round will also cover three Union
Territories.
iii.
Lok Sabha Speaker Meria Kumar, seven union ministers including Kapil Sibal,
Kamal Nath, Shashi Tharoor (all of Congress), Ajit Singh of RLD and former army
chief V.K. Singh and Harsh Vardhan (both BJP) are the key nominees among the
1418 candidates in the fray in tomorrow’s round.
iv.
Ten of the 80 constituencies in politically key Uttar Pradesh will go to polls
on Thursday and they include communally-sensitive and riot-hit Muzaffarnagar,
Saharanpur, Kairana, Aligarh, Bijnor, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautambudh
Nagar and Bulandshahar.
v.
Altogether 98 candidates, including Congress stalwarts and former chief
ministers Giridhar Gamang and Hemanand Biswal, former union ministers Jual Oram
(BJP) and Bhakta Charan Das (Congress) are in the race for the ten LS seats
while Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is among the assembly candidates in fray on
Thursday.
2. India’s GDP growth likely to rise to 5.4% in 2014: IMF
i. India’s growth is
expected to improve in 2014, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
ii.
“India’s growth is expected to recover from 4.4 per cent in 2013 to 5.4 per
cent in 2014, supported by slightly stronger global growth, improving export
competitiveness and implementation of recently approved investment projects,”
the latest edition of the World Economic Outlook released by the IMF said.
iii.
Overall growth is expected to firm up on policies supporting investment and a
confidence boost from recent policy actions, but will remain below trend, it
added.
iv.
“Consumer price inflation is expected to remain an important challenge, but
should continue to move onto a downward trajectory,” the IMF report said.
v. The
outlook also estimated that India’s growth rate would increase to 6.4 per cent
in 2015. In 2012, India’s growth rate stood at 4.7 per cent.
3. Active India Facebook users
cross 100 mn, largest outside US
i. Social media giant Facebook has crossed 100 million active users
in India, its largest base outside the US.
ii.
"Today, we have more than 100 million people who access Facebook actively
in India each month," Facebook India Head of Growth & Mobile
Partnerships Kevin D'Souza told
iii.
On the outlook, D'Souza said: "We recently announced Internet.Org, a
global partnership with the goal of connecting the next 5 billion people around
the world, to make the same access and opportunity available to everyone."
iv.
According to Facebook, 84 million of its 100 million users in India access the
social networking site from their mobile devices.
v.
Facebook saw its global daily active users (DAUs) rise by 22
per cent to 757 million during December from 618 million in the year-ago
period, helped by growth in major markets, including Brazil, India and the US.
4. Man jumps 14K ft with smallest
parachute,sets world record
i. A Venezuelan daredevil has set a new Guinness record for skydiving using
the world's smallest parachute after he jumped from 14,000 feet with a canopy
the size of a bed sheet.
ii. During
his three-and-a-half-minute descent, Ernesto Gainza used a parachute measuring
only 35 square feet.
iii. Gainza
risked a spin that would have killed him but managed a perfect landing in the
Palm Drop Zone at the Skydive Dubai Club, last week. "It was awesome, amazing
and emotional. I had to keep my body really straight, as even a little input
from my hips or turning left or right could make the parachute turn," he
said.
iv. Expert
sky divers use parachutes that range in size from 80 to 200 square feet, and
even the smallest of the high-performance canopy sizes developed over the last
ten years average between 70 and 90 square feet
5. Dhawan named one of Wisden's
Five Cricketers of the Year
i. India's swashbuckling opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan has been named as
one of the Five Cricketers of the Year, an honour dating back to 1889, by
Wisden for his performance in 2013.
ii. The
28-year-old Dhawan was the highest run-scorer during India's triumph in the ICC
Champions Trophy, amassing 363 runs in five ODIs at an average of 90.75. He was
awarded Man of the Series for his performance that included centuries against
South Africa and West Indies.
iii. His
performance during the tournament in England was acknowledged by Wisden, which
also named Australian duo Chris Rogers and Ryan Harris, England batsman Joe
Root and England women's captain Charlotte Edwards in the list.
iv. The
Cricketer of the Year is chosen by the editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack,
based on their "excellence in, or performance on, the previous English
summer".
6. HSBC MF India launches new open ended fund
i. HSBC Mutual Fund,
India has launched an open ended fund of funds scheme ‘HSBC Managed Solutions’,
which will invest into various asset classes including domestic and foreign
equity, long and short-term debt and gold.
ii.
As per the fund house, the new scheme is based on the principle of active asset
allocation in which investments are managed dynamically across asset classes
and re-balanced regularly to ensure optimal allocation for risk profiles.
iii.
The new fund offer, which opens today, will close for subscription on April 23,
2014, a company release said.
iv.
“HSBC Managed Solutions allows people who do not have the time and expertise to
manage their own portfolios to benefit from flexible asset allocation executed
by our global teams in a disciplined, risk-aware and cost effective approach,
with the goal of capturing long-term growth,” Chief Executive Officer of HSBC
Global Asset Management, India, Puneet Chaddha said.
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