Today's Event – 19th November 2021

• 1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island called Borinquen he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed again Puerto Rico)

• 1816 – Warsaw University is established

• 1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railroad, is opened.

• 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

• 1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claims two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.

• 1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army captures Bitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia.

• 1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.

• 1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.

• 1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe.

• 1952 – Greek Field Marshal Alexander Papagos becomes the 152nd Prime Minister of Greece.

• 1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe's oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.

• 1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.

• 1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.

• 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

• 1969 – Association football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.

• 1977 – TAP Air Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 131.

• 1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.

• 1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud.

• 1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Miloševi? publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.

• 1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

• 1996 – A Beechcraft 1900 and a Beechcraft King Air collide at Quincy Regional Airport in Quincy, Illinois, killing 14.

• 1998 – Clinton–Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.

• 1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.

• 1999 – John Carpenter becomes the first person to win the top prize in the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

• 2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 76,000 m3 (20 million US gal) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.

• 2004 – The worst brawl in NBA history results in several players being suspended. Several players and fans are charged with assault.

• 2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand. Twenty-nine people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914.

• 2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.

National Events- 

• At an event in Jhansi in the poll-bound state, PM Modi laid the foundation of a 600-megawatt Ultra Mega Solar Power Park. 

•  The Indian diaspora community in the UK, especially Sikhs and Punjabis who have been continuously supporting the farmers’ struggle in India financially and otherwise, expressed satisfaction over the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to repeal the controversial agri laws, but some say it should have come much earlier and hundreds of lives could have been saved.

•  Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has written an open letter to farmers, congratulating them on their “historic victory” after the Centre announced its decision to repeal three contentious farm laws, and assured them of his party’s support in their future struggles.

•  While arguing against petitions challenging the three farms laws, the government had told the Supreme Court in January that their enactment was preceded by “two decades of deliberations” and termed demands for their repeal as “neither justifiable nor acceptable”.

• Days after restoring all trains that were stopped due to the pandemic over a year ago, Indian Railways Friday decided to bring back cooked meals on trains too, which were stopped citing Covid-19 restrictions last year.

International Events- 

•  Except for a few charity-aided cases, poor Venezuelan children have not received organ or bone marrow transplants since 2017. Dozens of children have died since, including 25 this year, according to a parent organization. Only the wealthy in this socialist country can get a transplant.

•  The massive rains that unleashed floods and mudslides in the Canadian province of British Columbia exposed the country’s supply chain vulnerability as crucial railways and roads were severed from the country’s biggest port.

•  President Joe Biden will transfer power briefly to Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday while he is under anaesthesia for a routine colonoscopy, making her the first woman to hold presidential power in US history.

•  U.S. regulators on Friday opened up COVID-19 booster shots to all adults, expanding the government’s campaign to shore up protection and get ahead of rising coronavirus cases that may worsen with the holidays.

• A scientist who has pored over public accounts of early Covid-19 cases in China reported Thursday that an influential World Health Organization inquiry had likely gotten the early chronology of the pandemic wrong. The new analysis suggests that the first known patient sickened with the coronavirus was a vendor in a large Wuhan animal market, not an accountant who lived many miles from it.

Job alerts-

• Central Bank of India Jobs for Specialist Officer and other posts. Last date 17 December 2021

• Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) Jobs for Nurse, Technician, Professor and other posts. Last date 29 November 2021

• Punjab and Sind Bank Jobs for Risk Manager, IT Manager and other posts. Last date 28 November 2021

• Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) Jobs for Technical Assistant, Assistant Director, Officer and other posts. Last date 27 December 2021

• Air India Jobs for Manager, Officer and other posts. Last date 07 December 2021

Sports-

•  EFA said its appeal body upheld Atletico Madrid's request that Antoine Griezmann serve only the mandatory one-match ban for his red card in a 3-2 loss against Liverpool last month.

•  Bayern Munich head coach Julian Nagelsmann said on Thursday that Joshua Kimmich missed training that day because he had contact with a person suspected of having COVID-19.

•  Martin Guptill, who surpassed India's Test and ODI captain during the second T20I of the three-match series, has 3248 runs to his name compared to Virat Kohli's 3227

•  Italian Matteo Berrettini said on Friday that he will not compete at the Davis Cup Finals starting this month due to injury and described his withdrawal as “painful and disappointing.”

• China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday stuck to its line that it wasn’t aware of the controversy surrounding tennis professional Peng Shuai, who disappeared after accusing a former top official of sexually assaulting her.

Technology-

• The US government has seized approximately $56 million worth of cryptocurrency -- the largest ever in the country  

•  Currently, Samsung is Apple’s largest OLED supplier followed by LG.

Economy – 

• The Rs 1,013.6 crore initial public offering (IPO) of Go Fashion (India) is available from November 17-22, 2021. It has a price band of Rs 655-690 per share. 

•  On Thursday, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex had ended 372.32 points (0.62 per cent) lower at 59,636.01, and the broader Nifty 50 on NSE had fallen 133.85 points (0.75 per cent) to settle at 17,764.80.

•  Paytm got listed at Rs 1,955, a discount of 9 per cent, on the BSE and plunged to close at Rs 1564.15, down by 27.24 per cent from the IPO price.

•  The recent decision to advance an instalment of tax devolution to states, in addition to the one to be given in November, will help in cash flow for Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim and Manipur, which had negative cash balances as of October 30.

• The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has tweaked the criteria for determining “fit and proper person”, as per a notification issued Wednesday.
  Under the framework, these criteria will be principle-based and/or rule-based.

Local –

•  Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal termed the decision to repeal the three farm laws on Friday as a “historic day” in Indian history, akin to Independence Day and Republic Day. He also said the BJP government at the Centre had to finally “bow down” to the farmers’ protest after trying everything to “break the movement”.

• Two people, including a firefighter, sustained injuries in a massive fire that broke out at the Prime Mall in Irla Market in Vile Parle West, on Friday morning. The blaze had erupted on the first floor of the ground-plus-three-storey structure around 10 am, when many shops in the otherwise-crowded market had not opened for business. 

• The hunger strike by nurses outside Kolkata’s SSKM Hospital entered the fourth day with seven nurses falling ill on Thursday. They want the government to withdraw an order transferring 35 nurses, including 11 who were part of the protest. The protest began in July with the demand of addressing alleged inequality in pay.

• Two doctors of a Chennai government hospital were arrested Thursday for raping a colleague at a city hotel where they were quarantined after Covid-19 duty. According to the police, the doctors, aged 35 and 28, had allegedly committed the crime in August amid the lockdown.

•  Expressing resentment to Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s recent statement that the state will soon implement an anti-conversion law, Bangalore Archbishop Reverend Peter Machado wrote to the former appealing the Cabinet not to promote the “undesirable and discriminatory” bill.

GK – 

Checkmate, a new stealth aircraft seen in the news, is being developed by which country?

[A] USA
[B] Russia
[C] China
[D] Israel

Which country has launched a campaign to attract over 30000 talents globally to study, work and establish start-ups by 2023?

[A] Germany
[B] Finland
[C] Australia
[D] Norway

Which institution has launched the ‘Swavalamban Challenge Fund (SCF)’?

[A] NABARD
[B] SIDBI
[C] SEBI
[D] RBI

Mannu Bhandari, who passed away recently, was associated with which field?

[A] Sports
[B] Literature
[C] Politics
[D] Business

As per the data on e-Shram portal, which occupation sector has seen the maximum registrations from informal workers?

[A] Construction
[B] Agriculture
[C] Domestic and household workers
[D] None of the above