Today's Event – 7th January 2022

• 1610 – Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until the following day. 

• 1738 – A peace treaty is signed between Peshwa Bajirao and Jai Singh II following Maratha victory in the Battle of Bhopal. 

• 1782 – The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens. 

• 1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in a gas balloon. 

• 1835 – HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, drops anchor off the Chonos Archipelago. 

• 1894 – Thomas Edison makes a kinetoscopic film of someone sneezing. On the same day, his employee, William Kennedy Dickson, receives a patent for motion picture film

• 1904 – The distress signal "CQD" is established only to be replaced two years later by "SOS".

• 1919 – Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but fail. 

• 1920 – The New York State Assembly refuses to seat five duly elected Socialist assemblymen. 

• 1922 – Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64–57 vote.

• 1927 – The first transatlantic commercial telephone service is established from New York City to London. 

• 1928 – A disastrous flood of the River Thames kills 14 people and causes extensive damage to much of riverside London. 

• 1931 – Guy Menzies flies the first solo non-stop trans-Tasman flight (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing on New Zealand's west coast. 

• 1935 – Benito Mussolini and French Foreign minister Pierre Laval sign the Franco-Italian Agreement

• 1948 – Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of a supposed UFO. 

• 1954 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York at the head office of IBM

• 1955 – Contralto Marian Anderson becomes the first person of color to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. 

• 1959 – The United States recognizes the new Cuban government of Fidel Castro

• 1968 – Surveyor Program: Surveyor 7, the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral. 

• 1972 – Iberia Flight 602 crashes near Ibiza Airport, killing all 104 people on board

• 1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation. 

• 1984 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). 

• 1985 – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches Sakigake, Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft and the first deep space probe to be launched by any country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

• 1991 – Roger Lafontant, former leader of the Tonton Macoute in Haiti under François Duvalier, attempts a coup d'état, which ends in his arrest. 

• 1993 – The Fourth Republic of Ghana is inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President

• 1999 – The Senate trial in the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton begins

National Events-

• Madhya Pradesh DGP Vivek Johri ordered removal of a retired senior police officer from a WhatsApp group of state IPS officers for posting a message against the Muslim community and refusing to delete it when asked to. Maithili Sharan Gupta, who retired as Special DGP (Police Reform),recently shared a YouTube channel link on the WhatsApp group, IPS MP, that encouraged Hindus to counter Muslims who claimed that their forefathers chose to stay in India during Partition. This was in response to an argument lyricist Javed Akhtar made recently that the forefathers of present day Muslims chose India as their home.

• The Supreme Court on Friday gave the Union government “the last opportunity” to respond to a public interest petition that demands minorities be identified statewise and that Hindus be declared a minority in six states and two Union territories.

• The CBI has filed a chargesheet against six Uttar Pradesh policemen over the death of Kanpur businessman Manish Gupta at a hotel in Gorakhpur, invoking criminal conspiracy and murder charges against them, officials said Friday. In its chargesheet filed before a special CBI court in Lucknow, the CBI has slapped Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder),201 (destruction of evidence) among others read with IPC sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) on the six policemen, they said.

• At least 173 passengers on a Rome-Amritsar charter flight were found to be Covid-positive after being tested on arrival on Friday, officials said. This is the second consecutive incident wherein a large number of passengers coming from Italy to Amritsar airport have tested positive for coronavirus on arrival.

• India on Friday made seven-day home quarantine mandatory for all international arrivals and an RT-PCR test on the eighth day, as it issued revised guidelines for international passengers. The guidelines released on Friday come into force from January 11 and will remain effective till further government orders.

International Events-

• While omicron appears to be less severe than the delta variant, especially among people who have been vaccinated, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that it does not mean it should be categorised as “mild”. “Just like previous variants omicron is hospitalising people, and it’s killing people,” he said. “In fact the tsunami of cases is so huge and quick that it is overwhelming health systems around the world,” he added.

• Sri Lanka could face shortage of fuel by the third week of January, Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila warned on Friday, as he urged the Central Bank to step in and pump in foreign currency required for imports.

• Britain’s Ministry of Defence on Friday said that it had begun the deployment of the military to support hospitals experiencing staff shortages and extreme pressures due to record Covid-19 cases in the country.

• China’s lockdowns of big cities to fight coronavirus outbreaks are prompting concern about more disruptions to global industries after two makers of processor chips said their factories were affected.

• China reported fewer Covid cases on Friday as several cities have curbed movements, while a top official warned hospitals not to turn away patients after a woman’s miscarriage during a lockdown in the city of Xian sparked outrage.

Job alerts-

• Small Industries Development Bank of India Jobs for J2EE Senior Developer, Technical Lead, DevOps Lead, Architect and other posts. Last date 17 January 2022

•  Uttar Pradesh Police Recruitment and Promotion Board Jobs for Assistant Operator, Principal Operator, Workshop Staff and other posts. Last date 28 February 2022

• Government of India Ministry of Defence Jobs for Translator, Sub Divisional Officer, Typist. and other posts. Last date 15 January 2022

Sports-

• Leicester striker Jamie Vardy’s hamstring injury will keep him out for up to two more months, manager Brendan Rodgers said Friday.

• Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has lifted the one-year suspensions of its three senior cricketers — Danushka Gunathilaka, Kusal Mendis and Niroshan Dickwella — five months after they were sanctioned for a bio-security breach during the national team’s tour of England last year.

• Hundreds of Novak Djokovic’s supporters gathered at a rally in downtown Belgrade on Friday to protest his confinement in Australia after his entry was denied by border authorities because of COVID-19 vaccination regulations.

• Manchester City player Benjamin Mendy was released from prison on bail on Friday ahead of his trial on rape charges, which has been put back until June at the earliest.

• Roberto Bautista Agut clinched Spain’s spot in the ATP Cup final with a 7-6 (6),2-6, 7-6 (5) victory over Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz on Friday.

Technology-

• Intel Core i9-12900KS was announced by the company at CES 2022. The 12th Gen Intel Core ‘Alder Lake' CPU offers a 5.5GHz boost clock speed on a single core. The new Intel Core i9-12900KS is also capable of functioning at 5.2GHz on all cores while performing heavy multi-core tasks, according to the company. This is the first Special Edition processor for desktops from Intel since the Core i9-9900KS in 2019 and will be available to manufacturers in Q1 2022, according to the company.

• Stephen Hawking's 80th birthday is being celebrated by Google with a special animated Doodle. It features a two-and-a-half-minute-long video in the physicist's own computer-generated voice which depicts his contributions to the universe and illustrates the battle of life with his affected health condition — neurodegenerative disease. With his well-known views of black holes and the Big Bang, Stephen Hawking is the most recognisable scientist of our age and has an iconic status. Apart from his contributions to modern physics, his best-selling books made the field widely accessible to millions of readers across the globe.

• Lenovo Legion Y90, the company's upcoming gaming smartphone's rear design was shown off by the company on Friday. The handset has been teased by the company over the past few weeks on its Weibo account, giving enthusiasts an idea of what the phone will look like. The company has previously revealed that the upcoming Lenovo Legion Y90 will sport a large 6.92-inch E4 AMOLED display. Lenovo is yet to officially announce a launch date for the upcoming Lenovo Legion Y90 smartphone.

• Clubhouse — the popular social audio chat app — on Friday announced that it is now allowing anyone to listen to conversations taking place on the platform through the Web. The experience is initially rolling out for Clubhouse users in the US and will work for both replays and live rooms with replays enabled. It does not require listeners to have the Clubhouse app installed on their devices or signed in on the platform. Separately, Clubhouse is bringing an option to let users share sessions they are attending on the app to any social media network or via a messaging app.

• Twitter is getting a TikTok feature that will let users react to tweets with photos and videos. The microblogging platform has started testing a new 'Quote Tweet with reaction' feature that allows users to post video reactions to tweets alongside the tweet embedded. Users can tap on the 'Quote tweet with reaction' icon from the Retweet menu. By tapping on it, they will be able to react to a tweet with an image or video with the original tweet embedded. Twitter is calling these reaction videos or photos Tweet Takes. This functionality is similar to TikTok's video replies. Twitter confirmed that the new feature is currently being tested on iOS.

Economy –

• Bitcoin declined as much as 4.9% to $41,008, marking a tumble of about 40% from its record near $69,000 reached Nov. 10. Ether, the second-largest, dropped as much as 9% to its lowest level since Sept. 30. Both of those tokens, as well as others including Binance Coin, Solana, Cardano and XRP are down more than 10% in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.

• Supported by an uptick in farm, mining and manufacturing output, India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is seen growing 9.2 per cent in the current financial year as against a contraction of 7.3 per cent in the previous fiscal, the first advance estimates released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Friday showed.

• A day after appealing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for uniform Covid-19 curbs in India, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) on Friday urged mall owners and landlords across the country “to urgently resolve commercial concerns” of the industry in view of the third wave of infections.

• India is likely to overtake Japan as Asia’s second-largest economy by 2030 when its GDP is also projected to surpass that of Germany and the UK to rank as world’s No.3, IHS Markit said in a report on Friday.

• The S&P BSE Sensex rose 142.81 points (0.24 per cent) to end at 59,744.65 while the Nifty 50 climbed 66.80 points (0.38 per cent) to settle at 17,812.70.

Local –

• Continuing the upward trend, the national capital is likely to report 17,000 new Covid-19 cases with a positivity rate of nearly 17 to 18 per cent on Friday, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said. “Yesterday, there were 15,000 cases, I expect that there will be 17,000 cases today. The data is being collected right now. And, the positivity rate would be a couple of percentage points more than yesterday, it would be around 17 to 18 per cent,” he said.

• Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum, which was praised for its Covid management in the second wave, is now battling a third round. On Friday, it reported 150 cases, its highest single-day surge since the beginning of the pandemic. The peak before this was 99, in April 2021.

• Amid the surging Covid-19 cases in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said the next 15 days would be “very crucial” and added that she would opt for stringent restrictions if there is no let-up in the pandemic situation.

• Daily Covid-19 cases in Tamil Nadu reached a new high on Friday as 8,981 fresh infections were recorded, taking the overall tally to 27,76,413. With eight more fatalities, the toll reached 36,833. A total of 984 people recovered in the last 24 hours leaving 30,817 active infections.

• Karnataka continued to witness a surge in Covid infections on Friday, by reporting 8,449 new cases along with four deaths. The steep spike in the number of cases took the positivity rate of the state to 4.15 per cent. State capital Bengaluru alone registered 6,812 infections.

GK –

‘Seema Bhawani’ is the name of which team of the Border Security Force (BSF)?

[A] Camel Contingent
[B] Creek Crocodile
[C] All-women Biker Team
[D] All-women Creek Crocodile

Atal Tunnel, which was seen in the news recently, is located in which state/UT?

[A] Himachal Pradesh
[B] Arunachal Pradesh
[C] Sikkim
[D] Uttarakhand

Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi(IGRUA),which was making news recently, is located at which state?

[A] Uttar Pradesh
[B] Uttarakhand
[C] Bihar
[D] West Bengal

“Blue Book”, which was seen in the news, is the manual of which armed force/group?

[A] Central Reserve Police Force
[B] Special Protection Group
[C] National Security Guard
[D] Indian Coast Guard

Which state/UT recognised Takht Damdama Sahib, as the fifth Takht of Sikhs?

[A] Punjab
[B] Delhi
[C] Bihar
[D] Uttar Pradesh