Today's Event – 16TH October 2021

• 690 – Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire.

• 1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.

• 1590 – Prince Gesualdo of Venosa murders his wife and her lover.

• 1736 – Mathematician William Whiston's predicted comet fails to strike the Earth.

• 1793 – French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette is executed.

• 1841 – Queen's University is founded in the Province of Canada.

• 1843 – William Rowan Hamilton invents quaternions, a three-dimensional system of complex numbers.

• 1846 – William T. G. Morton administers ether anesthesia during a surgical operation.

• 1847 – The novel Jane Eyre is published in London.

• 1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

• 1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".

• 1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women.

• 1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah.

• 1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.

• 1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place.

• 1916 – Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States.

• 1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded.

• 1964 – China detonates its first nuclear weapon.

• 1964 – Leonid Brezhnev becomes leader of the Soviet Communist Party, while Alexei Kosygin becomes the head of government.

• 1968 – Tommie Smith and John Carlos are ejected from the US Olympic team for participating in the Olympics Black Power salute.

• 1968 – Kingston, Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.

• 1968 – Yasunari Kawabata becomes the first Japanese person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

• 1970 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act during the October Crisis.

• 1973 – Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

• 1978 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523.

• 1984 – Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

National Events- 

•  Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday said he was hoping for the best after the Adani Group took over the operation and management of the Thiruvananthapuram international Airport.

•  Dr Subramanian Swamy, BJP’s Rajya Sabha member said in Colombo that bureaucrats should not be allowed to meddle in the ties between Sri Lanka and India. “The relation between the two countries dates back to centuries and it is a time tested one.

•  Kerala on Friday logged 8,867 new Covid-19 patients from 79,554 samples tested during the last 24 hours. The State recorded 67 deaths taking the fatalities to 26,734 till date.

•  The special investigation team (SIT) probing the Lakhimpur Kheri violence on Friday brought two accused persons, Ankit Das and Latif alias Kale, to a flat in Hussainganj area of Lucknow and recovered a revolver and a gun from there, police sources said.

• Hundreds of royal families --- like those of Cooch Behar, Krishnagar, Sova Bazaar, Burdwan, Vishnupur --- who have been organizing Pujas for centuries too immersed their idols on Friday.With Goddess Durga worshipped as the daughter who comes to her parents’ place once in a year from her husband Lord Shiva’s abode in Kailash along with her two daughters Laxmi and Saraswati and two sons Ganesha and Kartikeya, for many Dashami tends to become a tearful affair.

International Events- 

• British Conservative MP, Sir David Amess, was on Friday repeatedly stabbed by a knife-wielding man at his constituency in Essex, and succumbed to his injuries later, media reports said. 

•  Football’s world governing body FIFA on Friday said it has evacuated almost 100 members of the “football family”, including women players, from Afghanistan after “complex negotiations” and with support from Qatar. The evacuation, especially of women footballers, was necessitated by Taliban’s takeover of the strife-torn country in August this year.

•  The European Union reiterated on Friday that anti-Semitism “has no place” in the 27-nation bloc after Slovenian Prime minister Janez Jansa posted a message on social media that was criticized by some European lawmakers as anti-Semitic.

•  Apple has taken down one of the world’s most popular Quran apps in China after a request from Chinese officials, the BBC reported. Quran Majeed is available across the world on the App Store, and has nearly 150,000 reviews.

• For more than seven decades, China and Taiwan have avoided coming to military face-offs. The two entities have been separated since 1949 following the civil wars in the 1940s. Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state. 

Job alerts-

• Western Coalfields Limited (WCL) Jobs for Mining Sirdar and other posts. Last date 20th November 2021

• Food Corporation of India Jobs for FCI Watchman and other posts. Last date 10th November 2021

• Jammu and Kashmir Staff Selection Board Jobs for  JE, Jr Steno, Jr Assistant and other posts. Last date 9th November 2021

Sports-

•  Having endured a topsy-turvy beginning to their campaign before a fine turnaround, seven-time champions India will start title favourites when they take on first-time finalists Nepal in the summit clash of the SAFF Championships here on Saturday.

•  Pakistan emerged as "one of the best teams in the world" playing in UAE and Babar Azam and his men will fare well in the men's T20 World Cup due to familiarity with the conditions, says the country's former women's skipper Sana Mir.

•  Neymar started the week facing criticism after a poor performance in a World Cup qualifying match and his suggestion that the next tournament in Qatar might be his last.

•  India’s batting stalwart and former captain Rahul Dravid is all set to take over as the national cricket team’s head coach following the T20 World Cup in the UAE, having agreed to the BCCI’s offer after initial reluctance.

• India captain Virat Kohli said that former captain MS Dhoni is very excited about getting back to the environment of the Indian team. He also said that Dhoni's eye for practical inputs and intricate details will help improve the team's game by one or two percent. Dhoni has been appointed as the mentor of the Indian team for the men's T20 World Cup in the UAE and Oman.

Technology-

• Samsung is planning to launch its next premium flagship, Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+, soon. As per a recent report, S22 generation will be a bit wider and less "skinny and tall" than the current S21. 

•  Consumer electronics brand TCL has released the first binocular full-colour MicroLED AR glasses 'Thunderbird Smart Glasses Pioneer Edition' in China.

•  A three-year-long study involving nearly 28,000 adults has shown that a smartphone app and a connected monitor were able to help them significantly lower their blood pressure.
  The programme, called Hello Heart, let people track their blood pressure, weight, and physical activity and offered tips on how to manage blood pressure.

Economy – 

•  The coal ministry on Friday said it has taken various measures, including diverting the output from captive coal mines, to augment fuel supply to the power sector. The development assumes significance in the wake of country's power plants grappling with coal shortages.

•  With COVID-19 cases coming down in the country, the government on Friday removed export curbs on all diagnostic kits and reagents including instruments, which are used in detection of coronavirus infections.  India logged 16,862 new coronavirus infections, taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,40,37,592

•  Aluminium plants in the country are grappling with critically low level of coal stocks and if the fuel supply is not restored immediately it would lead to irrevocable collateral damage, industry body AAI warned on Friday. 

• Amid the low stock position at the electricity generating plants, state-owned CIL has asked its subsidiaries to refrain from conducting any further e-auction of coal, except special forward e-auction for the power sector, till the situation stabilises. 

• Lender HDFC Bank on Saturday reported a year-on-year rise of 17.6 per cent in its net profit for Q2FY22. The bank's net profit increased to Rs 8,834.3 crore during the period under review over the quarter ended September 30, 2020. 

Local –

•  300 kg of marijuana bound for Maharashtra seized in Hyderabad

•  Karnataka has reported 264 covid cases and 6 deaths

•  West Bengal has registered 530 new covid cases and 10 deaths

•  Rainfall hits Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) affecting flight services

• Illegal arms trade ring busted in Chandigarh. 5 arrested and under custody

GK – 

Fumio Kishida, who was seen in the news recently, is the next Prime Minsiter of which country?

[A] Japan
[B] North Korea
[C] Thailand
[D] Vietnam

Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE),which received 2021 Right Livelihood Award, is based in which state/UT?

[A] Hyderabad
[B] Delhi
[C] Chennai
[D] Gandhi Nagar

CIPET: Institute of Petrochemicals Technology has been inaugurated with which city?

[A] Gandhi Nagar
[B] Jaipur
[C] Chennai
[D] Hyderabad