Today's Event – 6th January 2021

• 1838 – Alfred Vail and colleagues demonstrate a telegraph system using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code)

• 1847 – Samuel Colt obtains his first contract for the sale of revolver pistols to the United States government

• 1907 – Maria Montessori opens her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy. 

• 1912 – New Mexico is admitted to the Union as the 47th U.S. state.

• 1929 – King Alexander of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes suspends his country's constitution (the January 6th Dictatorship). 

• 1929 – Mother Teresa arrives by sea in Calcutta, India, to begin her work among India's poorest and sick people.

• 1930 – Clessie Cummins arrives at the National Automobile Show in New York City, having driven a car powered by one of his diesel engines from Indianapolis. 

• 1941 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech in the State of the Union address. 

• 1946 – The first general election ever in Vietnam is held

• 1950 – The United Kingdom recognizes the People's Republic of China. The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with the UK in response.

• 1960 – The Associations Law comes into force in Iraq, allowing registration of political parties

• 1989 – Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh are sentenced to death for conspiracy in the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; the two men are executed the same day

• 1993 – Indian Border Security Force units kill 55 Kashmiri civilians in Sopore, Jammu and Kashmir, in revenge after militants ambushed a BSF patrol.

• 2019 – Muhammad V of Kelantan resigns as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, becoming the first monarch to do so. 

• 2021 – Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump attack the United States Capitol to disrupt certification of the 2020 presidential election, resulting in five deaths and evacuation of the US Congress.

National Events-

• The organisers of Haridwar “Dharam Sansad” have announced to hold a “pratikar sabha” or protest meeting on January 16 against the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and lodging of FIRs against them following a series of alleged hate speeches delivered at the event. They also alleged FIRs were lodged against them as the Uttarakhand government was scared of “jihadis”.

• Days after Pakistan’s Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi reiterated Islamabad’s offer to host the long-pending summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC),India on Thursday said that there has been no material change in the situation since 2014 and there is no consensus that would allow the holding of the summit.

• A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cavalcade was stranded on a flyover in Punjab, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has constituted a committee to probe the security lapse.

• The Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) and the BJP may not see eye to eye on various issues, such as the JD(U)’s persistent demand for special category status for Bihar, but their coalition government has urged the BJP-led central government to clear the state’s pending dues running into several thousand crore.

• India’s home-grown testing kit OmiSure, developed by the Tata Medical and Diagnostics (Tata MD) to identify the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in samples taken from the nose and throat, was approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Wednesday and will be available for commercial use from January 12.

International Events-

• Russia sent paratroopers into Kazakhstan on Thursday to quell a countrywide uprising after deadly violence spread across the tightly controlled former Soviet state. Police said they had killed dozens of rioters in the main city, Almaty. According to the state television 13 members of the security forces had died, including two who had been decapitated.

• With Thursday’s count still incomplete, Australia so far has reported 72,392 new infections easily exceeding the high of 64,774 set a day earlier. Western Australia is due to post its new cases later.

• Three Indian nationals, who had initially come to Singapore to study, were sentenced to prison for participating in a transnational money mule syndicate that was perpetrating “tech support scams,” a media report said. On Wednesday, Nandi Niladri, 24, was handed the stiffest sentence of 18 months in prison, after he pleaded guilty to three charges under the Payment Services Act and one count of obstructing the court of justice, the Straits Times newspaper reported.

• France’s parliament on Thursday approved President Emmanuel Macron’s plans for a vaccine pass to help curb the spread of the Omicron variant after a tumultuous debate whipped up by Macron’s comments that he wanted to “piss off” the unvaccinated.

• President Joe Biden on Thursday accused his predecessor Donald Trump of posing a continuing threat to American democracy in a speech on the anniversary of the deadly US Capitol attack by Trump supporters who tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Job alerts-

• Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute Jobs for Counsellor, DEO, Consultant and other posts. Last date 20 January 2022

• Women and Child Development Jobs for Anganwadi Worker, Anganwadi Helper and other posts. Last date 31 January 2022

• Mazagon Dock Ship Builders Limited Jobs for Apprentice and other posts. Last date 25 January 2022

• Odisha Mining Corporation Limited Jobs for Junior Accountant, Electrician and other posts. Last date 07 February 2022

• Centre for Development of Advanced Computing Jobs for Project Engineer, Project Associate and other posts. Last date 18 January 2022.

Sports-

• Defending champion Novak Djokovic’s visa cancellation, hours after landing in Australia after getting an exemption though he has not revealed his vaccination status, has snowballed into a hot button issue. His lawyers have appealed his deportation and the world’s best player will know his fate after a hearing on Monday.

• The official draw for the 75th edition of the Santosh Trophy was held in New Delhi on Thursday where 10 teams who came through the qualifiers were drawn into two groups of five each for the main event which will be held in Kerala from February 20, 2022 onwards.

• Manchester United on Thursday promoted insider Richard Arnold to the role of chief executive officer, effectively replacing executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward as the soccer club’s boss.

• Four games involving the Indian hockey teams, including the men’s side’s historic Olympic bronze medal-winning contest in Tokyo, have been nominated by the world body (FIH) for the Favourite Match of the Year 2021.

• Rafael Nadal began fine-tuning his quest for a 21st Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open with a 6-2, 7-5 win over Ricardas Berankis 6-2, 7-5 on Thursday in a warm-up tournament at Melbourne Park.

Technology-

• Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is giving 5GB of free data to customers switching to the state-owned telecom network from an existing service provider. The free data will be valid for 30 days. The new offer is aimed at helping BSNL expand its user base in the country. Users switching to BSNL need to share their reason for the move on social media and send its proof to the service provider to get the additional data benefit.

• Reliance Retail has bought a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, India's leading quick delivery player, for $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,490 crore) as it looks to expand its presence in online grocery delivery business.

• Kevin O'Leary, the popular Shark Tank investor and known crypto optimist, strongly believes that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would be much bigger than Bitcoin. O'Leary, who's chairman of O'Shares Investment Advisers, in an interview mentioned that the NFT trend will favour the fluid market, as compared to real estate taxes and insurance policies for the next few years. The Canadian TV personality's comments marked a U-turn in stance as he was earlier quoted to have stated that no crypto asset stood a chance against Bitcoin.

• PUBG: Battlegrounds developer Krafton has announced its update 15.2, which brings drones to the popular battle royale game. The update has entered public test servers and will arrive on live servers next week. The new update adds a bunch of tactical gear in addition to drones and new tutorial modes. PUBG: Battlegrounds has also received some improvements for Win94 and VSS rifles. Krafton has also improved how the mini-map looks in the game, making it more detailed. Furthermore, the battle royale title also gets a new lobby theme.

• Infinix Note 11 and Infinix Note 11S are receiving a software update which brings an extended RAM feature. This will help users receive an improved multitasking experience by virtually extending the inbuilt RAM to up to 3GB. Infinix claims that using the extended RAM technology, the number of apps that Infinix Note 11S can run simultaneously increases from nine to 20. The average launch speed of apps running all at once will also be increased by 60 percent to 300 milliseconds on the Infinix Note 11 series, the company said.

Economy –

• The Cabinet on Thursday approved Rs 12,000 crore for the second phase of the Green Energy Corridor to facilitate grid integration and power evacuation of about 20 GW of renewable energy projects in seven states.

• Booking cancellations for Christmas and New Year celebrations, along with those of weddings and planned events, due to a surge in COVID-19 cases have so far resulted in a loss of around Rs 200 crore in the hospitality industry, the Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) said on Thursday.

• Reliance Retail has bought a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, India’s leading quick commerce player, for USD 200 million (around Rs 1,488 crore) as it looks to expand its presence in online grocery delivery business.

• Reliance Industries Ltd, the nation’s most valuable company, on Thursday said it has raised USD 4 billion debt in the largest ever foreign currency bonds issuance from India.

• The S&P BSE Sensex crashed 621.31 points (1.03 per cent) to end below the 60,000-mark at 59,601.84 while the Nifty 50 fell 179.35 points (1.00 per cent) to settle at 17,745.90. Earlier in the day, the indices had begun on a negative note and slipped over 1.5 per cent with the Sensex hitting an intraday low of 59,290.58 and the Nifty slipping to 17,655.55.

Local –

• Delhi Covid cases in the capital breached the 15,000-mark, with 15,097 new cases being reported in Thursday’s health bulletin. Six more deaths due to the infection were also reported, taking the total toll to 25,127.

• Mumbai recorded 15,014 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day surge witnessed since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The daily positivity rate, too, shot up to 25%.

• Day after the organisers decided to go ahead with the Kolkata International Film Festival by limiting the capacity of its screening venues at 50 per cent, the state government on Wednesday put the event on hold citing the massive surge in Covid-19 cases across the state.

• Covid-19 cases continued to rise in Tamil Nadu Thursday, with the state recording 6,983 fresh infections, pushing the caseload to 27,67,432. With 11 deaths, the toll reached 36,825. As many as 721 patients were discharged in the last 24 hours, leaving 22,828 active cases. The positivity rate stood at 5.42 per cent.

• The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday announced the arrest of the chairman of a credit co-operative society in Karnataka in a Rs 250 crore cheating case. The agency arrested Anand Balakrishna Appugol, chairman of Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna Urban Co-operative Credit Society in Belagavi City under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002. He has also produced the Kannada film ‘Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna’ starring Darshan Thoogudeepa.

GK –

Which Union Ministry has released draft National Air Sports Policy (NASP)?

[A] Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports
[B] Ministry of Civil Aviation
[C] Ministry of Renewable Energy
[D] Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs

‘PM’s Excellence Award’ is being awarded for which sector?

[A] Sports
[B] Public Administration
[C] Entrepreneurship
[D] Education

What is the annual export target of India, for the year 2021-22?

[A] 100billion

[B]200 billion
[C] 400billion

[D]500 billion

What is the theme declared for the DRDO Day 2021?

[A] Atmanirbhar Bharat
[B] Export
[C] Critical defence technologies
[D] Strength and Science

INSACOG is the forum set up by which country to monitor genome sequencing and variation of Covid strains?

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