6th February 2015 Important Current Affairs

1) First meeting of NITI Aayog held:

--> In the first meeting of NITI Aayog on 6 February 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took views of economists to boost growth, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

--> The ex-officio members and special invitees of the Aayog also attended the first meeting of the body.

--> The first Vice-Chairman of the Aayog, Arvind Panagariya, and full time member Bibek Debroy and V K Saraswat had joined last month.

--> The ex-officio members are Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh.

--> The Aayog's special invitees are Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot and Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani.

2) Bhalchandra Nemade wins Jnanpith:

--> Bhalchandra Nemade, whose Kosala (Cocoon) published in 1963 transformed the Marathi novel, has been selected for the 50th Jnanpith Award for 2014.

--> The award likely to be presented in April , Leeladhar Mandloi, Director, Bharatiya Jnanpith, said on 6 February 2015.

--> The 10-member selection board, chaired by Namwar Singh, scholar, writer, and critic, selected the 76-year-old litterateur for the award at a meeting in New Delhi.

--> Nemade is the fourth Marathi writer to win the honour after V.S. Khandekar in 1974; V.V. Shirwadkar, aka Kusumagraj, in 1988; and Govind Karandikar, aka Vinda Karandikar, in 2003.

3) Obama appointed Indian CEO Ajay Banga to a key administration position:

--> US President Barack Obama has appointed top Indian-American executive Ajay Banga to a key administrative position tasked with providing policy advice on international trade matters.

--> Banga, chairman of US-India Business Council, was appointed member of the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, said the White House.

4) Zoe Konstantopoulou, Youngest President of Greek Parliament:

--> Zoe Konstantopoulou will be the new President of the Greek Parliament after receiving a record 235 votes.

--> Konstantopoulou will be the second woman to preside over the Greek House after Anna Psarouda-Benaki in 2004.

--> She is also the youngest ever elected as President of the Greek Parliament.

5) Micromax appointed Shubhajit Sen as new chief marketing officer:

--> India’s largest mobile vendor, Micromax has appointed Shubhajit Sen as its chief marketing officer (CMO).

--> His appointment seeks to boost its marketing efforts as it looks to further improve its position in the surging smartphone market in the country.

--> Before Micromax, Sen served as the executive vice president - marketing of Glaxo Smith Kline Consumer Health Ltd., for 21 years and served as the key resource to accentuate the successful journey of the company.

6) Twitter & Google signed a deal to make tweets searchable:

--> Microblogging site Twitter Inc has reached a deal with Google Inc to make its tweets more searchable online according to reports.

--> Tweets will be visible in Google search results as soon as they are posted, starting during the first half of the year, the report said.

--> Twitter and Google engineers have started working on the project, it added. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

--> Google previously had to crawl Twitter’s site for the information, which will now come automatically from Twitter.