Current Affairs : 2nd February 2014

First ten users of Facebook revealed : Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is at number four amongst the first few users on the social networking site. In fact, the first three accounts on Facebook were reserved for testing, leaving Zuckerberg at number four.According to The Guardian, everyone on Facebook has a user ID number, created when they joined. The numbers aren’t strictly sequential: the first few million are segmented by university, so that Harvard users were assigned 0-99999, Columbia users 100000-199999, Stanford users 200000-299999, and so on.

The first ten users on Facebook include co-founders Chris Hughes, Dustin Moscovitz, first non-founder to sign up for Facebook, and Zuckerberg’s roommate at the time Arie Hasit, an acquaintance of Zuckerberg from a computer class Andrew McCollum, and a Facebook engineer Chris Putnam .

Meghalaya’s first Padma Shri awardee dies at 103 : Meghalaya’s oldest voter and the first Padma Shri awardee from the State, Silverine Swer, passed away at the age of 103 at her residence in the city on Saturday after a brief illness, family sources said.Kong Sil, as she was affectionately called, passed away around 10:40 a.m. at her “step phyrnai” home at Riatsamthiah, a few hundred metres above the Umkhrah River.“She had not been eating well for the past two weeks. She became very weak and on Saturday morning, she passed away peacefully. Doctors declared her dead,” one of her relatives told PTI.

Kapil Sibal, Ananth Kumar challenge Arvind Kejriwal’s ‘corrupt’ list : BJP leader Ananth Kumar and Congress MP Avtar Singh Bhadana sent legal notices to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday for accusing them of being corrupt. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader, who stirred the hornet’s nest by accusing several politicians of being corrupt, was today bombarded with threats of legal action by a number of them if he fails to apologise.In his legal notice, Ananth Kumar said Kejriwal’s allegations were “motivated, baseless and malicious”.

US, EU slug it out with Russia over Ukraine : The United States traded barbs with Russia on Saturday over Ukraine’s future as key opposition figures met US Secretary of State John Kerryamid concerns that Kiev could call in the military to end anti-government protests. Neither side pulled any punches, with Kerry saying that what happens in Ukraine is crucial for Europe’s future while his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov blasted what he called wilful and two-faced Western interference.

India’s forex reserves up $157 million : India’s foreign exchange (forex) reserves increased by USD 157.3 million to USD 292.23 billion for the week ended Jan 24, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed.
The foreign exchange reserves had decreased by USD 1.20 billion to USD 292.08 billion for the week ended Jan 17.According to the RBI’s weekly statistical supplement, foreign currency assets, the biggest component of the forex reserves, grew by USD 117.3 million to USD 266.05 billion.The foreign currency assets had fallen by $1.20 billion to USD 265.93 billion in the previous week.

Tatas to exit Indonesia mine for $500m : Tata Power has decided to exit one of the two coal mines it holds in Indonesia for $500 million in a bid to raise cash for covering losses from operating the Centre’s first showcase project at Mundra in Gujarat and reduce consolidated debt. Tata Power would sell its 30% stake in the PT Arutmin Indonesia (Arutmin) mine and associated companies in coal trading and infrastructure to an entity of Indonesia’s Bakrie Group, the promoter of Bumi Resources.

Govt revises FY13 GDP growth to 4.5% from 5% : The government on Friday revised downwards economic growth for 2012-13 to 4.5% from the previous 5% due to sluggish performance of farming, manufacturing sectors and a decline in mining activity, raising fresh concerns about the health of the economy.The growth is the slowest in a decade and is expected to pile more pressure on the UPA coalition as it heads into general elections later in the year.