7 November 2015 Current Affair Updates |Daily GK Download

1. Belgium moved to the top of the latest FIFA world rankings list for the first time. The team rose from third to first after overtaking Argentina and world champions Germany. India slipped five places to 172nd in the world rankings.

 

2. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was ranked as the world’s ninth most powerful person in the Forbes list of the 73 World's Most Powerful People 2015 (7th annual ranking). In 2014, Modi was placed at 14th position. The list is topped by Russian President Vladimir Putin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is 2nd and US President Barack Obama is 3rd on the list.

 

3. Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in as Tanzania's first female Vice President. She was sworn in along with the new President John Pombe Magufuli at the swearing-in ceremony held in the country’s economic capital Dar es Salaam.

 

4. Santoor maestro Pandit Shivkumar Sharma has been named for this year's 'Aditya Vikram Birla Kalashikhar Puraskar' for lifetime achievement in Hindustani music. The Aditya Vikram Birla Kalakiran Award shall be conferred on Sarangi player Murad Ali Khan, Tabla exponent Satyajit Talwalkar and a special jury award for Shehnai will go to the two brothers -- Sanjeev Shankar and Ashwani Shankar.

 

7 November 2015 Current Affair Updates |Daily GK Download

5. Harjit Singh Sajjan, an India-born former soldier, has been appointed on the important post of Minister of National Defence in the newly constituted Cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Sajjan was elected to Canadian Parliament for the first time in last month’s (October 2015) election.

 

6. The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved a Memorandum of Understanding between India and Belgium for cooperation at the Federal and regional level in energy sector. The objective of this Memorandum of Understanding is to establish the basis for a cooperative institutional relationship to encourage bilateral cooperation on new and renewable energy issues.

 

7. V. Sivaramakrishnan was named the new Managing Director of Oxford University Press India (OUPI) with regional responsibilities including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. He succeeds Ranjan Kaul.

 

8. India's former Ambassador to Nepal Bimal Prasad, who was also a close associate of Jayaprakash Narayan, passed away at the age of 92. 

 

9. Famous French intellectual Rene Girard passed away in the United States. He was 91. He is also known as the new Darwin. He was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social sciences. Girard authored around 30 books including Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961), Violence and the Sacred (1972) and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978). His last major work was Achever Clausewitz (2007).

 

10. Romania's Prime Minister Victor Ponta resigned from his position following a deadly nightclub blaze which left 32 dead and nearly 200 injured. 

11. Indian shooter Jitu Rai won India's first senior medal at the 13th Asian Shooting Championship, finishing second behind Korea's Park Daehun in the finals of the men's 50m pistol in Kuwait.