Today's Event – 17th January 2022

• 1773 – Captain James Cook leads the first expedition to sail south of the Antarctic Circle.

• 1799 – Maltese patriot Dun Mikiel Xerri, along with a number of other patriots, is executed.

• 1811 – Mexican War of Independence: In the Battle of Calderón Bridge, a heavily outnumbered Spanish force of 6,000 troops defeats nearly 100,000 Mexican revolutionaries.

• 1852 – The United Kingdom signs the Sand River Convention with the South African Republic.

• 1873 – A group of Modoc warriors defeats the United States Army in the First Battle of the Stronghold, part of the Modoc War.

• 1885 – A British force defeats a large Dervish army at the Battle of Abu Klea in the Sudan.

• 1893 – Lorrin A. Thurston, along with the Citizens' Committee of Public Safety, led the Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the government of Queen LiliÊ»uokalani. 

• 1899 – The United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean

• 1903 – El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico becomes part of the United States National Forest System as the Luquillo Forest Reserve.

• 1904 – Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard receives its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre.

• 1912 – British polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.

• 1915 – Russia defeats Ottoman Turkey in the Battle of Sarikamish during the Caucasus Campaign of World War I.

• 1917 – The United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.

• 1918 – Finnish Civil War: The first serious battles take place between the Red Guards and the White Guard.

• 1920 – Alcohol Prohibition begins in the United States as the Volstead Act goes into effect

• 1945 – The SS-Totenkopfverbände begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as the Red Army closes in.

• 1945 – Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is taken into Soviet custody while in Hungary; he is never publicly seen again

• 1946 – The UN Security Council holds its first session.

• 1948 – The Renville Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia is ratified.

• 1950 – The Great Brink's Robbery: Eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car company's offices in Boston

• 1950 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 79 relating to arms control is adopted.

• 1961 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military–industrial complex" as well as the dangers of massive spending, especially deficit spending.

• 1961 – Former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States.

• 1966 – Palomares incident: A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, killing seven airmen, and dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.

• 1969 – Black Panther Party members Bunchy Carter and John Huggins are killed during a meeting in Campbell Hall on the campus of UCLA.

• 1977 – Capital punishment in the United States resumes after a ten-year hiatus, as convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by firing squad in Utah.

• 1981 – President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos lifts martial law eight years and five months after declaring it.

• 1991 – Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning as aircraft strike positions across Iraq, it is also the first major combat sortie for the F-117. LCDR Scott Speicher's F/A-18C Hornet from VFA-81 is shot down by a Mig-25 and is the first American casualty of the War. Iraq fires eight Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.

• 1992 – During a visit to South Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery during World War II.

• 1994 – The 6.7 Mw  Northridge earthquake shakes the Greater Los Angeles Area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent),leaving 57 people dead and more than 8,700 injured.

• 1994 - The Airbus A330 is introduced with Air Inter, A now defunct airline.

• 1995 – The 6.9 Mw  Great Hanshin earthquake shakes the southern Hyōgo Prefecture with a maximum Shindo of VII, leaving 5,502–6,434 people dead, and 251,301–310,000 displaced.

• 1996 – The Czech Republic applies for membership of the European Union.

• 1997 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: A Delta II carrying the GPS IIR-1 satellite explodes 13 seconds after launch, dropping 250 tons of burning rocket remains around the launch pad.

• 1998 – Clinton–Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the story of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair on his Drudge Report website.

• 2002 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.

• 2007 – The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea's nuclear testing.

• 2010 – Rioting begins between Muslim and Christian groups in Jos, Nigeria, results in at least 200 deaths.

• 2013 – Former cyclist Lance Armstrong confesses to his doping in an airing of Oprah's Next Chapter.

• 2016 – President Barack Obama announces the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

• 2017 – The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is announced to be suspended

National Events-

• India’s Covid-19 infections rose by 2,58,089 in the past 24 hours, taking the overall tally to 37.38 million, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday. There were 385 fatalities and the country’s death toll has gone up to 4,86,451, the ministry added. While the number of Covid-19 cases is slightly lower than Sunday, the deaths are higher, the ministry’s data showed.

• Rear Admiral Raja Menon, who retired as the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff in 1994 and is the author of A Nuclear Strategy for India, recently wrote a paper advocating a reorientation of India’s military grand strategy from a continental one to an offensive oceanic strategy, keeping in view the threat from China. The paper has been shared with the government.

• The income of 84 per cent of households in the country declined in 2021, but at the same time the number of Indian billionaires grew from 102 to 142, an Oxfam report has said, pointing to a stark income divide worsened by the Covid pandemic.

• Seven out of 10 adults in the country have received two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, as India completed one year of the world’s largest vaccination drive on Sunday.

• Nepal on Sunday asked India to stop “unilateral construction and expansion” of roads in its East of Kali River territory but stopped short of lodging a formal diplomatic protest.

International Events-

• Mesale Tolu, who was arrested in Turkey in 2017 on terrorism-related charges and is facing trial, is confident that justice will be done when the court hands down its verdict on Monday.

• A migrant caravan made up of several hundred men, women and children was stopped by authorities in Guatemala. Authorities said the group, who had set off from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Saturday, was attempting to make its way across Mexico to the US border, nearly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) away.

• Prince Harry has filed a claim for a judicial review against the British government’s decision not to let him personally pay for police protection while in the U.K.

• Global warming is smashing temperature records all over the world, but Kuwait - one of the hottest countries on the planet - is fast becoming unlivable. In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years. Last year, for the first time, they breached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in June, weeks ahead of usual peak weather. Parts of Kuwait could get as much as 4.5C hotter from 2071 to 2100 compared with the historical average, according to the Environment Public Authority, making large areas of the country uninhabitable.

• Greece from Monday intends to fine all people ages 60 and over who aren't vaccinated against Covid-19 as a way to boost lagging inoculation levels and reduce pressure on health care.

Job alerts-

• CDAC Bangalore Jobs for Project Engineer, Member Technical Staff, C-DAC Adjunct Engineer and other posts. Last date 18/01/2022

• UPPCL Jobs for Assistant Engineers and other posts. Last date 31/01/2022

• Currency Note Press Nashik Jobs for Supervisor (Technical - Operation – Printing) and other posts. Last date 25/01/2022

• SEBI Jobs for Officer Grade A (Assistant Manager) (IT) and other posts. Last date 24/01/2022

• ECGC Jobs for Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and other posts. Last date 21/01/2022

Sports-

• Defending champions Bangladesh suffered a seven-wicket loss against England in a lop-sided contest to make a poor start to their campaign at the ICC U-19 World Cup here.

• Novak Djokovic arrived early Monday in Dubai after his deportation from Australia over its required COVID-19 vaccination ended the No. 1-ranked men’s tennis player’s hopes of defending his Australian Open title.

• Pitso Mosimane has done enough winning in the past year, plus change, to talk about nothing else. In November 2020, only three months after he was appointed manager of Egyptian club Al Ahly, he won the African Champions League title. He did so by beating Zamalek, Al Ahly’s fiercest rival. The final was cast as the derby of the century. Nobody in Egypt thought it was an exaggeration.

• Pat Cummins has left little doubt that he can captain Australia while tending to his fast bowling duties. The 28-year-old Cummins was handed the captaincy on the eve of the Ashes series after Tim Paine stepped away from cricket when a sexting scandal became public.

• Real Madrid were crowned Spanish Super Cup champions after goals from Luka Modric and Karim Benzema earned them a 2-0 win over Athletic Bilbao in Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

Technology-

• Kyiv believes a hacker group linked to Belarusian intelligence carried out a cyberattack that hit Ukrainian government websites this week and used malware similar to that used by a group tied to Russian intelligence, a senior Ukrainian security official said. Serhiy Demedyuk, deputy secretary of the national security and defence council, told Reuters that Ukraine blamed Friday's attack - which defaced government websites with threatening messages - on a group known as UNC1151 and that it was cover for more destructive actions behind the scenes.

• Russia has dismantled ransomware crime group REvil at the request of the United States in an operation in which it detained and charged the group's members, the FSB domestic intelligence service said on Friday.

• Apple said on Saturday it would allow developers of dating apps in the Netherlands to offer non-Apple payment options to their users, complying with an order from the country's market regulator to do so by January 15 or face fines. The country's Authority for Consumers and Markets found in a decision published on December 24 that Apple had abused its market position by requiring dating app developers, including Tinder owner Match Group, to exclusively use Apple's in-app payment system.

• Volunteers interested in astronomy and curious about celestial objects have helped NASA find a super giant planet outside our solar system. This exoplanet is three times the size of Jupiter and located about 379 light-years away from Earth. The super-Jupiter orbits a star with the same mass as our Sun. NASA said this discovery was made possible by a group of “citizen scientists” who studied data from the agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). NASA regularly allows citizen scientists access to its telescope data so that they can explore and understand the world beyond the solar system.

• A measuring system that measures the thermal conductivity of bridgmanite in the laboratory, under the pressure and temperature conditions that prevail inside the Earth, has been developed by a team of researchers.

Economy –

• Starting on a positive note, the BSE gauge was trading 122.58 points or 0.20 per cent higher at 61,345.61 in early trade. Likewise, the Nifty advanced 37.65 points or 0.21 per cent to 18,293.40.

• Reflecting the development priorities of the five poll-bound states, an analysis of data from the Reserve Bank of India’s report on state finances shows that the two big states, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, fell below the national average in terms of spending on education.

• Royalty payments by multinational corporations (MNCs) contracted by about 10 per cent in FY21 compared to a contraction in the pre-tax, pre-royalty profits of 5 per cent, a study by proxy advisory firm IiAS, of 30 firms, reveals.

• With the third wave of the pandemic likely to disrupt businesses and households, economists are paring their growth estimates for FY22. The anaemic growth in factory output in November may be partly the result of supply shortages and the recovery may regain momentum in March and April. But for the moment, some retracing of the demand for services, high inflation could slow demand and shave off two percentage points of growth in the March quarter. GDP in Q4 may now grow only at around 3-3.2 per cent.

• With stock markets witnessing a bullish phase and the Sensex gaining 22 per cent in 2021, equity mutual funds (MFs) saw record net inflows of Rs 91,000 crore during the year, as against just Rs 9,100 crore in the previous year.

Environment –

• “Mortalities from the ingestion of (lead) reduced the long-term growth rate and resiliency of bald eagles in the northeast United States over the last 3 decades,” the study said.

Local –

• Over 90 inmates and 80 jail officials have tested positive for Covid-19 at prisons in Delhi, officials said on Monday. The Delhi Prisons department have setup 50-100 bed medical centres inside jails to treat coronavirus patients amid the surge in cases. Most of the patients are being treated by the jail doctors.

• The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to allow private agencies to put up advertisements on centrally located municipal properties, eyeing annual revenue around Rs 200 crore.

• As Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter on Sunday to acknowledge the contribution of healthcare and frontline workers after India completed one year of its Covid-19 vaccination drive, Opposition parties in West Bengal slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government for alleged vaccine shortage in the state and for indulging in “vaccine politics”.

• The Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has asked Zee Entertainment to issue an apology for a programme that was broadcasted on the group’s Tamil channel, which, according to the party, “deliberately made obnoxious comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

• Karnataka on Sunday reported 34,047 fresh Covid-19 cases, with the positivity rate reaching 19.29 per cent in the last 24 hours. The Karnataka health and family welfare department said that the number of total active cases in the state was 1,97,982. A total of 5,902 people recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours. Till now, 479 cases of the Omicron variant have been recorded in the state.

Person in News –

• Kathak legend Pandit Birju Maharaj died at his home in Delhi in the early hours of Monday after suffering a heart attack, according to news agency PTI. He was 83.

GK –

Which zone received maximum share of complaints under Ombudsman schemes, as per recent RBI Report?

[A] South Zone
[B] East Zone
[C] North Zone
[D] West Zone

Which country recently launched formal Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with India?

[A] USA
[B] UK
[C] Russia
[D] Japan

Which Indian company has joined hands with ‘Africa50’ investment platform to develop ‘Kenya Transmission Project’?

[A] ONGC
[B] Power Grid Corporation
[C] Power Finance Corporation
[D] Rural Electrification Corporation

Who is the head of the Working group set up to strengthen television rating point (TRP) services?

[A] Shashi Shekhar Vempati            
[B] Anurag Singh Thakur
[C] L Murugan
[D] Sukant Vatsa

What is the Crew capacity of the Gaganyaan programme?

[A] Two
[B] Three
[C] Four
[D] Five