Today's Event – 20th January 2022

• 1841 – Hong Kong Island is occupied by the British during the First Opium War 

• 1877 – The last day of the Constantinople Conference results in agreement for political reforms in the Balkans.

• 1887 – The United States Senate allows the Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base.

• 1921 – The British K-class submarine HMS K5 sinks in the English Channel; all 56 on board die.

• 1921 – The first Constitution of Turkey is adopted, making fundamental changes in the source and exercise of sovereignty by consecrating the principle of national sovereignty.

• 1929 – The first full-length talking motion picture filmed outdoors, In Old Arizona, is released.

• 1936 – King George V of the United Kingdom dies. His eldest son succeeds to the throne, becoming Edward VIII. The title Prince of Wales is not used for another 22 years.

• 1937 – Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Nance Garner are sworn in for their second terms as U.S. President and U.S. Vice President; it is the first time a Presidential Inauguration takes place on January 20 since the 20th Amendment changed the dates of presidential terms.

• 1949 – Point Four Program, a program for economic aid to poor countries, is announced by United States President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address for a full term as president.

• 1954 – In the United States, the National Negro Network is established with 40 charter member radio stations.

• 1961 – John F. Kennedy is inaugurated the 35th President of the United States of America, becoming the youngest man to be elected into that office, and the first Catholic.

• 1972 – Pakistan launches its nuclear weapons program, a few weeks after its defeat in the Bangladesh Liberation War, as well as the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

• 1973 – Amílcar Cabral, leader of the independence movement in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, is assassinated in Conakry, Guinea

• 1981 – Twenty minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States of America, Iran releases 52 American hostages.

• 1986 – In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time.

• 1990 – Protests in Azerbaijan, part of the Dissolution of the Soviet Union.

• 1991 – Sudan's government imposes Islamic law nationwide, worsening the civil war between the country's Muslim north and Christian south.

• 1992 – Air Inter Flight 148, an Airbus A320-111, crashes into a mountain near Strasbourg, France, killing 87 of the 96 people on board.

• 2001 – President of the Philippines Joseph Estrada is ousted in a nonviolent four-day revolution, and is succeeded by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

• 2009 – Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America, becoming the first African-American President of the United States

• 2021 – Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States of America. At 78, he becomes the oldest person ever inaugurated. Kamala Harris becomes the first female Vice President of the United States. -

National Events-

• Asserting that an India whose thinking and approach are new and decisions progressive is emerging, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that a system is being created in which there is no place for any discrimination.

• The Supreme Court on Thursday said that reservation for backward classes is not at odds with merit but furthers its distributive impact while upholding the 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) undergraduate and postgraduate medical admissions (all-India quota).

• The Indian Army is in touch with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China regarding a youth from Arunachal Pradesh who has been missing since January 18. BJP Parliamentarian from East Arunachal, Tapir Gao, had claimed a 17-year-old boy named Miram Taron was abducted by the PLA on Tuesday.

• A Gurugram court has ordered the registration of an FIR on the charge of medical negligence for leaving a cotton swab in the abdomen of a woman during the birth of her baby after a caesarean. The court of Gurugram chief metropolitan magistrate gave the order on Tuesday on a complaint by the woman’s husband, whose pleas earlier for the registration of a criminal case against Shiva Hospital in sector 12 was turned down by the police.

• India reported more than 3.17 lakh (3,17,532) new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours ending at 9 am on Thursday, marking a 12 per cent increase in fresh cases since Wednesday. The country’s active caseload currently stands at 19,24,051, while the recovery rate stands at 93.69 per cent.

International Events-

• Sitting across a long table from President Vladimir Putin at a COVID-conscious distance, President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran reminded his Russian counterpart Wednesday that Tehran had been “resisting America for 40 years.”

• Former Chancellor Angela Merkel has turned down an offer from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a job, her office and UN sources said on Wednesday. Guterres had offered Merkel the chair of a high-level UN advisory body on global public goods, UN sources said. The advisory board is one of the flagship reform projects that Guterres proposed for the UN in his second term, which started in January.

• Coronavirus infections were soaring in Spain, causing caseloads previously unseen in the pandemic. Intensive care unit beds were filling up in hospitals. But that did not stop Tatjana Baldynjuk and Timur Neverkevits, a couple from Estonia, from buying plane tickets so they could visit the island of Lanzarote, a sunny outcrop dominated by volcanoes on the eastern edge of Spain’s Canary Islands archipelago.

• Newly declassified surveillance footage provides additional insights about the final minutes and aftermath of a botched US drone strike last year in Kabul, Afghanistan, showing how the military made a life-or-death decision based on imagery that was fuzzy, hard to interpret in real time and prone to confirmation bias.

• The US government will make 400 million non-surgical “N95” masks from its strategic national stockpile available for free to the public starting next week, a White House official said, as the Biden administration tries to curb the COVID-19 pandemic

Job alerts-

• Northern Coalfields Limited Jobs for  Operator and other posts. Last date 31 January 2022

• Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission Jobs for Mines Officers, Principal, Professor, Reader and other posts. Last date 16 February 2022

• DHFWS Puducherry Jobs for Specialist, GDMO and other posts. Last date 25 January 2022

• MAHATRANSCO Jobs for Apprentice and other posts. Last date 31 January 2022

• National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Jobs for Research Associate, Manager, Multi-Tasking Staff and other posts. Last date 26 January 2022

Sports-

• Real Sociedad fans threw objects at the team bus carrying Atletico Madrid players to a Copa del Rey match, causing some damage and upsetting Atletico coach Diego Simeone.

• Former Brazil forward Robinho had a nine-year sentence for the rape of a young woman upheld by Italy’s top court. 

• Young Indian origin golfer Akshay won The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic on the Korn Ferry Tour at Sandals Emerald Bay here.

• South African batter Rassie van der Dussen was satisfied that he could execute his sweep shots to perfection as the Indian spinners were unsettled during his team’s 31-run win over visitors in the first ODI.

• The surprises started early at the Australian Open on Thursday. No 3 seed Garbiñe Muguruza became the highest-seeded player to exit at Melbourne Park, just minutes after No 6 Anett Kontaveit lost.

Technology-

• An asteroid bigger than the tallest building on Earth safely flew by on January 19. The giant rock, named 7482 (1994 PC1),zipped past our planet, nearly 1.93 million kilometres away. That's more than five times the distance between Earth and Moon. It has been classified as "potentially hazardous” because of its size and its regular close visits to our planet, and not because it poses any threat to us. The asteroid came closest to Earth at 3:21am IST.

• Norway's Telenor said on Thursday it had partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to speed up the modernisation of its telecoms systems, boosting the use of cloud technology to offer 5G and low-latency data services to professional customers.

• Google Play Games has been launched in limited beta for Windows PCs and laptops, bringing popular Android gaming titles to larger screens with support for mouse-and-keyboard input. The beta will offer a “seamless” gameplay across smartphones, tablets, and computers, according to the company. The company lists titles such as Asphalt 9: Legends, Magic Rush: Heroes, Rise of Empires: Ice and Fire, and War Planet Online that will be available as part of the limited beta. The new Google Play Games beta is currently live in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Google is allowing users to sign up to be notified when it expands to other regions.

• Crypto.com, an international exchange which rose to prominence thanks to its deals with famous sports teams, was recently attacked by hackers. While the accounts of hundreds of Crypto.com users were compromised, the security breach also cost the company $15 million (roughly Rs. 110 crore) in Ether tokens that have been stolen. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek confirmed the attack while claiming that “no customer funds were lost” in this hack attack. In a Twitter thread, Marszalek has shared a summary of how events transpired.

• Disruption to US-bound air travel caused by the rollout of 5G services in the United States eased on Wednesday as authorities approved more flights, but a top airline warned "irresponsible" regulatory confusion would be felt internationally for days.

Economy –

• The RBI’s Digital Payment Index, which shows the deepening of payments through digital modes in India, rose by 39.64 per cent to 304.06 in September 2021 against 217.74 in the year-ago month.

• In a move that will further boost the business of foreign reinsurers in India, insurance regulator IRDAI has reduced the percentage of obligatory cession from the domestic general insurance industry for state-owned GIC Re to four per cent from five per cent.

• Issuing guidelines for the third batch of supplementary demands for grants, the Finance Ministry has asked ministries and departments to restrict their expenses within the revised estimates.

• At 2:41 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading 977.66 points (1.63 per cent) lower at 59,121.16 while the Nifty 50 declined 278.35 points (1.55 per cent) to 17,660.05.

• Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows to India in 2021 were 26 per cent lower, mainly because large M&A deals recorded in 2020 were not repeated, the UN trade body has said.

Local –

• After a PhD student alleged that a motorist tried to molest her inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus Monday night, the teachers association (JNUTA) has demanded the reinstation of the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH). The PhD student said that the incident had taken place when she was taking a stroll inside the campus around 11.45 pm. An FIR has been registered but no one has been arrested so far.

• Three subscribers of OTT (over-the-top) streaming platform Netflix have been allegedly cheated of nearly Rs 5 lakh in the last two months by cyber fraudsters who sent them phishing links asking them to renew their subscription. The latest victim is a 45-year-old woman from Worli who lodged an FIR with the Worli police station on January 11. She said that she received an email asking her to update her subscription by making a payment. She clicked on a link given to make the payment and shared her credit card details after which two one time passwords (OTPs) were received on her phone. She shared these OTPs with the fraudster after which Rs 2.50 lakh got debited from her account. She called the bank immediately to block her card and approached the police the same day.

• WEST BENGAL on Wednesday reported as many as 11,447 fresh Covid cases, taking the state tally to 19,28,961, according to a state health bulletin.

• Two men, both aged 35, died due to asphyxiation while cleaning a septic tank at a house in Chennai’s Varadharajapuram near Tambaram Wednesday, the police said. Their bodies were handed over to their families after a post-mortem and a case was lodged at the Manimangalam police station.

• Karnataka has over 2.6 lakh active Covid-19 patients of whom over 1.8 lakh are in Bengaluru. The data was shared by state Health Minister K Sudhakar. The minister added that the state positivity rate is 18.8%. Meanwhile, CM Basavaraj Bommai, who recently recovered from Covid-19, has hinted that restrictions may be eased in the state soon. He said that a decision regarding this will be made on Friday following a meeting with experts.

GK –

Which country proposed ‘P3 (Pro-Planet People) movement’ during the WEF Davos Agenda 2022?

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

Senior bureaucrat Vikram Dev Dutt is the new Chairman & Managing Director of which organisation?

[A] Air India
[B] Life Insurance Corporation
[C] Central Electronics Limited
[D] Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd

Which Union Ministry launched the ‘Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Atlas of India’?

[A] Ministry of Science and Technology
[B] Ministry of Earth Sciences
[C] Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
[D] Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs

Which Tennis star was deported from Australia, after his unvaccinated status?

[A] Rafael Nadal
[B] Novak Djokovic
[C] Roger Federer
[D] Daniil Medvedev

What is the name of the phenomenon that describes record numbers of people leaving their jobs during the Covid pandemic?

[A] Pandemic Quit
[B] The Pandemic Resignation
[C] The Great Resignation
[D] The Pandemic Brunt