Today's Event – 8th January 2022

• 1735 – The premiere of George Frideric Handel's Ariodante takes place at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. 

• 1746 – Second Jacobite rising: Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Stirling. 

• 1790 – George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City. 

• 1806 – The Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa becomes the British Cape Colony as a result of the Battle of Blaauwberg. 

• 1811 – Charles Deslondes leads an unsuccessful slave revolt in the North American settlements of St. Charles and St. James, Louisiana

• 1828 – The Democratic Party of the United States is organized. 

• 1835 – US President Andrew Jackson announces a celebratory dinner after having reduced the United States national debt to zero for the only time

• 1867 – The United States Congress passes the bill to allow African American men the right to vote in Washington, D.C. 

• 1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle against the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain, Montana Territory. 

• 1889 – Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' — his punched card calculator. 

• 1900 – President William McKinley places Alaska under military rule

• 1912 – The African National Congress is founded, under the name South African Native National Congress (SANNC). 

• 1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson announces his "Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I. 

• 1920 – The steel strike of 1919 ends in failure for the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers labor union. 

• 1926 – Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc VÄ©nh Thuỵ is crowned king of Vietnam, the country's last monarch. 

• 1926 – Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud is crowned King of Hejaz

• 1936 – Kashf-e hijab decree is made and immediately enforced by Reza Shah, Iran's head of state, banning the wearing of Islamic veils in public

• 1946 – Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the Finnish Allied Commission, submitted to the Finnish War Criminal Court an interrogation report by General Erich Buschenhagen, a German prisoner of war, on the contacts between Finnish and German military personnel before the Continuation War and a copy of Hitler's Barbarossa plan.

• 1959 – Charles de Gaulle is proclaimed as the first President of the French Fifth Republic. 

• 1961 – In France a referendum supports Charles de Gaulle's policies in Algeria. 

• 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a "War on Poverty" in the United States. 

• 1972 – Bowing to international pressure, President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto releases Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from prison, who had been arrested after declaring the independence of Bangladesh. 

• 1973 – Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.

• 1975 – Ella T. Grasso becomes Governor of Connecticut, the first woman to serve as a Governor in the United States other than by succeeding her husband. 

• 1977 – Three bombs explode in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. 

• 1981 – A local farmer reports a UFO sighting in Trans-en-Provence, France, claimed to be "perhaps the most completely and carefully documented sighting of all time".

• 1982 – Breakup of the Bell System: In the United States, AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions. 

• 1989 – Kegworth air disaster: British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashes into the M1 motorway, killing 47 of the 126 people on board. 

• 1994 – Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space. 

• 2002 – President of the United States George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act.

• 2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. 

• 2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.

• 2004 – The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.[45]

• 2005 – The nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.

• 2021 – Twenty-three people are killed in what is described as a police ″massacre″ in La Vega, Caracas, Venezuela

National Events-

• A day after a 32-year-old Zeeshan Khan was assaulted and forced to lick his spit in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad city, the state Bharatiya Janata Party unit Saturday said that those accused in the incident were its own workers and called for action — against the victim.

• Bharat Biotech on Saturday said trials have indicated that its vaccine Covaxin is safe for booster dosage against COVID-19.

• The Bhubaneswar corporation on Saturday declared a hostel wing of the premier Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, here a containment zone after 30 students tested positive for Covid-19.

• The World Health Organization on Saturday called for stringent implementation of public health and social measures as Covid-19 cases surged in most countries in the South-East Asia region, with some nations witnessing an exponential rise.

• India reported over 1,41,986 daily Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours ending 8 am on Saturday, taking the country’s total caseload to 3,53,68,372. With 40,895 recoveries, the active caseload stands at 4,72,169. The death toll increased to 4,83,463 with 285 patients succumbing to the infection.

International Events-

• Pakistan’s popular hill station Murree was declared a calamity-hit area on Saturday after at least 21 people, including nine children, froze to death in their stranded vehicles due to unprecedented snowfall and rush of tourists to the picturesque town in Punjab province.

• Thailand’s livestock authorities vowed to investigate the death of a pet pig after a university lab test indicated it died from African swine fever, the first such report in the country.

• It came as no big surprise when a crumbling oil town in western Kazakhstan stirred in protest Sunday, 10 years after security forces there killed more than a dozen workers who had gone on strike over pay and poor conditions. But it remains a mystery how peaceful protests over a rise in fuel prices last weekend in Zhanaozen, a grimy, Soviet-era settlement near the Caspian Sea, suddenly spread more than 1,000 miles across the full length of Central Asia’s largest country, turning the biggest and most prosperous Kazakh city into a war zone littered with dead bodies, burned buildings and incinerated cars.

• In a yet another case of suspected hate crime, an Indian-origin Sikh taxi driver in the US has been assaulted by an unidentified man, who knocked off his turban and also used expletives against him outside the JFK International Airport in New York, according to a video on social media. The undated 26-second video was uploaded by Navjot Pal Kaur on Twitter on Jan 4, showing a man assaulting the Sikh taxi driver outside the airport. She said the video was shot by a bystander at the airport.

• US President Joe Biden will deliver his first State of the Union address on March 1, the White House confirmed Friday, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the president a formal invitation to speak to Congress and the American public one year into his term.

Sports-

• Rapidly rising COVID-19 cases across the country may force the BCCI to reduce the number of venues for the upcoming white-ball series against the West Indies but the cricket body has not yet formally discussed options.

• Czech tennis player Renata Voracova left Australia on Saturday, the Czech Foreign Ministry said, after complications with visas that got her swept up in a furore over the handling of the country’s COVID-19 vaccine exemptions.

• Second-tier Huddersfield created the first shock of the third round of the FA Cup by coming from behind to beat Premier League team Burnley 2-1 on Saturday.

• Paris Saint-Germain trained on Saturday without Lionel Messi as the record seven-time Ballon d’Or winner continues to recover from COVID-19 and will likely miss PSG’s Sunday trip to Lyon.

• After beating the Indian team at the Wanderers by 7 wickets, South Africa are at the 5th position in the ICC World Test Championship Points Table while India are just a place above them.

Technology-

• NASA has shared an image of a stunning cosmic duo of galaxies, located roughly 215 million light-years away from Earth in the Pisces constellation. The image was clicked by the Hubble telescope, NASA's current workhorse to study the mysteries of deep space. NASA said the galaxies appear to be plunging into each other, but in reality, the two are far apart. The main spiral galaxy is called NGC 105 and its elongated neighbour appears to be touching its edge. That is, however, just “a circumstance of perspective,” the agency said.

• Social media platform Reddit, whose message boards became central to meme stock trading frenzy in 2021, is tapping Wall Street banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group for its initial public offering, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday

• Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, said in an interview that the secret services in many countries are using the Pegasus software to combat crime and corruption.

Economy –

• Credit demand is expected to pick up in the economy on account of growth in retail segments, better macroeconomic prospects and improving financial health of borrowers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday in a review meeting with the heads of public sector banks.

• The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has selected Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for the second phase of the Passport Seva Programme, the country’s largest mission-critical e-governance programme till date. While the company didn’t announce the financial details, the deal is expected to be over Rs 6,000 crore, according to market estimates.

• The Sensex ended 142.81 points, or 0.24 per cent, higher at 59,744.65. The Nifty rose 66.80 points. or 0.38 per cent, to close at 17,812.70.

• After availing the option of four-year moratorium on payment of adjusted gross revenue (AGR) and spectrum dues, Bharti Airtel on Friday told the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that it will not go for conversion of the interest component into equity.

• CGST officials in Navi Mumbai have arrested the director of Omnipotent Industries Ltd, a recently listed SME, and the proprietor of Shree Bitumax Trading in connection with an alleged input tax credit (ITC) fraud amounting to Rs 70 crore.

Local –

• The daily tally of Covid-19 cases crossed the 20,000-mark on Saturday, with the capital reporting 20,181 new cases of the infection. Delhi also scaled up testing further with 1,02,956 tests conducted on Friday as reported in Saturday’s bulletin.

• With cases of Covid-19 rising exponentially, the Maharashtra government has announced more stringent measures in the state including night curfew from 11 pm to 5 am. No movement of people on roads will be allowed during the curfew hours except for essential purposes. In addition, there should be no movement of people in groups of five or more between 5am to 11pm as per the latest restrictions, according to the order issued by the Department of Revenue and Forest, Disaster Management, Relief and Rehabilitation.

• Kolkata’s test-positivity rate on Friday shot up to 53.1 per cent Friday, which means that the result of every second sample for Covid-19 test is returning positive in the city.

• In view of the full lockdown announced by the Tamil Nadu government to contain the spread of coronavirus, the Chennai division of Southern Railway has revised the schedule of suburban trains on Sundays with effect from January 9.

• Karnataka on Saturday reported 8,906 fresh Covid-19 cases and four deaths. Out of this, Bengaluru reported 7,113 infections and three fatalities, as the city’s positivity rate also crossed 10 per cent.

GK –

‘Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)’ is located in which country?

[A] USA
[B] Chile
[C] Australia
[D] Russia

The subsidiary of which Indian company signed agreements on jointly developing the Trincomalee oil tank farm?

[A] Indian Oil Corporation
[B] Bharat Petroleum
[C] Hindustan Petroleum
[D] Oil and Natural Gas Corporation

‘Khuntkatti’ law, which was seen in the news recently, is practised in which Indian state/UT?

[A] Uttar Pradesh
[B] Jharkhand
[C] Punjab
[D] Chhattisgarh

Japan recently signed ‘Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA)’ with which country?

[A] USA
[B] Australia
[C] Brazil
[D] Russia

‘Integrated Approach in S&T for Sustainable Future’ has been declared as the theme of which special day?

[A] World Science and Technology Day
[B] National Science Day
[C] World Research and Development Day
[D] National Innovation Day