Daily Current Affairs Update of 16 March 2015 | General Knowledge
1.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's
report China has overtaken Germany to become the world's third-biggest
arms exporter, although its 5 per cent of the market remains small
compared to the combined 58 per cent of exports from the US and Russia.
2. Social networking giant
Facebook acquired the shopping search engine TheFind. With the
acquisition, Facebook has moved into the e-commerce. Both Facebook and
TheFind cast the acquisition as a way to lift the digital advertising
business of Facebook. The deal aims to improve Facebook ads experience.
The Find technology would be integrated into Facebook to make the ads
more relevant and better for consumers.
3. Continuing his rapid rise in
the world of badminton, Kidambi Srikanth dethroned Viktor Axelsen of
Denmark to become the first Indian man to win the $120,000 Swiss Open
Grand Prix Gold. The top seed defeated defending champion and second
seed Axelsen 21-15, 12-21, 21-14 to clinch his third international title
in 21 months.
4. Services have won 69th
Santosh Trophy football title 2014-15. In the final match Services
defeated host Punjab by score of 5-4 at Guru Nanak Stadium in Ludhiana,
Punjab.
5. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) won
the Australian Grand Prix – first Formula 1 (F1) Grand Prix of the
season. The F1 2014 champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes continued his
dominance by winning the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park racing
arena at Melbourne. He was followed by his German teammate Nico Rosberg.
Former F1 champion Sebastian Vettel (Germany) was third on his Ferrari
debut.
6. MC Mary Kom has been declared
as the brand ambassador of the Northeast by the Union Government to
showcase the potential of the region. This announcement was made at the
10th North East Business Summit in New Delhi. MC Mary Kom is a five-time
World Amateur Boxing champion and the only woman boxer to have won a
medal in each of the six world championships. She is from Manipur.
7. With an objective to promote
financial inclusion, Nabard started a pilot project for complete
digitisation of women self help groups (SHGs) to improve the quality of
interface between members and banks for efficient and hassle free
delivery of banking services. The programme was launched by Minister of
State for Finance Jayant Sinha at Ramgarh in Jharkhand.
8. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
has presented leading industrialist G.P. Hinduja with the inaugural NRI
Foundation Award for achievements in the field of business. The
co-chairman of the Hinduja Group was honoured for establishing a global
presence across 10 different sectors and his philanthropic work in
Britain and India.
9. Pakistan successfully tested
its first indigenously built all-weather armed drone named Burraq and a
laser guided missile named Barq. By successfully testing of Burraq,
Pakistan became the 9th country in the World to develop an unmanned
combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) domestically. It is developed by a venture
of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and the National Engineering and
Scientific Commission (NESCOM).
10. In a historic event, a
bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi was unveiled at the Parliament Square in
London. With this statue, Mahatma Gandhi became the first Indian and
the only person ever to have been in a public office to be honoured with
a statue at the Parliament Square. This historic 9-foot tall Mahatma
Gandhi statue was unveiled jointly by British Prime Minister David
Cameron and Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and stands adjacent to
statues of iconic leaders such as Britain’s war-time Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.