Current Affairs : November 01

1.Syria's entire declared stock of chemical weapons has been placed under seal, inspectors said on Thursday, as international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi wrapped up a visit to muster support for peace talks.

2. Six Major Central Banks Permanently Made Currency Swap Accords
i. Six major central banks in the world made currency swap arrangements permanent on 31 October 2013 as a prudent liquidity backstop in case of future global financial strains.
ii. Previously these banks had temporary bilateral currency swap arrangements.

Names of Six major central banks

1. The Bank of Japan
2. U.S. Federal Reserve
3. European Central Bank
4. Bank of England
5. central bank of Canada
6. central bank of Switzerland

3. MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) has appointed Gopal Krishna Pillai IAS (Retd.) as Chairman and Thomas Mathew T., as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.

4. India and Australia are to hold the third round of negotiations to finalise a civil nuclear agreement that could enable the sale of Australian uranium to India, in Delhi during the week beginning November 25, it was announced on Friday.

5. . India developed a new tactical surface-to-surface missile Pragati which has a range between 60-170 km.

6. Scientists discovered a new planet called Kepler 78b which has a similar mass and density to that of Earth. It orbits a star 400 light years away. Kepler78b is composed mostly of rock and iron.

7. India's men's compound Archery team on 31 October 2013 won a gold medal in the 18th Asian Archery competition held at Chinese Taipei. Abhishek Verma, Ratan Singh, Sandeep Kumar forming the compound team defeated the Korean trio of Lihong Min, Yong Hee Choi and Jongho Kim 233-231 to win the gold.

8. Israel secretly provided arms to India in 1971: A book " The Blood Telegram" by Gary Bass, which focusses on the manner in which US President Richard Nixon turned a blind eye to the repression of then East Pakistan by military ruler Yahya Khan, offers a tantalizing glimpse of what was probably the first instance of military cooperation between India and Israel.

9. An estimated 14.3 crore accounts on the popular social networking site Facebook may be false or duplicate, with a major chunk of them coming from developing markets like India and Turkey.

10. India and Australia are to hold the third round of negotiations to finalise a civil nuclear agreement that could enable the sale of Australian uranium to India, in Delhi during the week beginning November 25, it was announced on Friday.