Daily Current Affairs January 16 & 17 2022 | Latest News

 

CURRENT AFFAIRS: IMPORTANT DAYS

Indian Army Day- Jan 15:

• Every year 15 January is observed as Indian Army Day because on this day in 1949 field Marshal Kodandera M Cariappa took over as the first Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from General Sir Francis Butcher, the last British Commander-in-Chief.
• This year marks the 74th Indian Army Day.
• The Indian Army is one of the most powerful militaries of the world, competing with superpowers like the US, Russia and China.
• The motto of the Indian Army is ‘service before self’ and its mission is to ensure national security and national unity, defend the nation from external aggression and internal threats, and maintain peace and security within its borders.
• Salute to the brave soldiers, who risk and sacrifice their lives to protect us.
• Even the Prime Minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1965 had given the slogan like “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL NEWS

Education Minister invites students, teachers, parents to participate in 5th edition of “Pariksha Pe Charcha 2022”:

• Union Education and Skill Development Minister Dharmendra Pradhan invited students, teachers and parents to participate in the 5th edition of “Pariksha Pe Charcha 2022”.
• Pariksha Pe Charcha is a unique interactive program where students, parents, teachers across the nation and also from overseas interact with Prime Minister Modi to discuss and overcome the stress emerging out of examinations.
• The programme will be conducted in online mode like last year. An online creative writing competition is being conducted on various topics from 28th of last month to 20th of this month to select participants.
• School students of classes 9 to 12, teachers and parents shall be selected through this competition.

KVIC rolls out innovative “Mobile Honey Processing Van”

• Chairman of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), Vinay Kumar Saxena launched the country’s first Mobile Honey Processing Van at Village Sirora in Ghaziabad, UP.
• The Mobile Van has been designed in-house by KVIC at its Multi-disciplinary Training Centre, Panjokehra, at a cost of Rs 15 lakh.
• This mobile honey processing unit can process up to 300 KG of honey in 8 hours.

About Mobile Honey Processing Van :

• The van is equipped with a testing laboratory that would instantly examine the quality of honey.
• The Van comes as a major development under KVIC’s Honey Mission which aims at training beekeepers, distributing Bee Boxes to farmers and helping rural, educated as well as unemployed youth to earn extra income through beekeeping activities.
• It enables beekeepers and farmers to get fair prices for their honey produce.
• While this will make beekeeping a more profitable business for small beekeepers; this will also maintain purity and highest quality standards of honey.
• This Mobile Honey Processing Van is likely to benefit the beekeepers in rural areas of states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan.

About KVIC :

• Founded : 1957
• Headquarters : Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
• Chairman : Vinai Kumar Saxena
• It is an apex organisation under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.
• Six zonal offices in Delhi, Bhopal, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai and Guwahati.

Aim :

• To plan, promote, facilitate, organize, and assist in the establishment and development of Khadi and Village industries in the rural areas.

About Ministry of Micro,Small & Medium Enterprises :

• Cabinet Minister : Narayan Rane
• Minister of State : Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma

CURRENT AFFAIRS: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Bilateral trade between India, China crosses 125 billion USD in 2021:

• Bilateral trade between India and China crossed 125 billion USD in 2021.
• Despite a protracted border standoff, Two-way trade between India and China in 2021 stood at 125.66 billion USD, up 43.3% from 2020 when bilateral trade was worth 87.6 billion USD.
• In 2021, China’s exports to India were 97.52 billion USD, up 46.2%, while China imported 28.14 billion USD worth of goods from India, up 34.2%, according to statistics released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
• Trade deficit between the two countries remained in favour of China – at $69 billion.
• The deficit in trade has been a constant source of friction between New Delhi and Beijing, with India complaining that China hasn’t given Indian companies access to sectors like pharmaceuticals.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: BANKING AND ECONOMY

Punjab & Sind Bank cuts MCLR by 5-10 bps:

• Punjab & Sind Bank, a public sector bank, has slashed the Marginal Cost Based Lending Rate (MCLR) by 5 to 10 basis points (bps) across the short-term loans.
• The new rates will be effective from January 16, 2022
• While the One year MCLR stands at 7.45 per cent with effect from January 16, 2022,
• One Month, Three Month and 6 Month MCLR rates have witnessed the rate cuts.
• Further, the existing Base Rate and BPLR kept unchanged.

IPO-bound Snapdeal ties up with BOB Financial to launch Rupay Credit Card:

• IPO-bound Snapdeal, a value commerce platform, has joined hands with BOB Financial and NPCI to launch a co-branded contactless RuPay credit card.
• This co-branded credit card, which will be offered on the Rupay platform, aims to popularise the adoption and usage of credit cards among the growing number of online buyers from India’s smaller cities and towns.
• As a Bharat-focused e-commerce company, Snapdeal receives more than 86 per cent of its orders from outside metro cities, with more than 72 per cent of its orders coming from buyers living in Tier 2+ cities and towns, each with a population of less than 1 million (referred to as Bharat).
• Snapdeal’s core target audience are value-seeking, middle-income, price-conscious buyers who predominantly live in the smaller cities of India.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: AWARDS AND HONOURS

Aquaconnect wins FICCI’s ‘Most Innovative AgTech Startup Award’:

• Aquaconnect, India’s pioneering full-stack aquaculture platform, has won the “Most Innovative Agtech” (Mature Startup) award at the fourth edition of the FICCI Summit and Awards for Agri Startups.
• The award was announced on January 7 virtually.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: MOUS AND AGREEMENT

Innoterra partners AEGF to serve smallholder farmers:

• Innoterra, a Swiss-Indian food and tech platform company, has partnered with Agri Entrepreneur Growth Foundation (AEGF), set up by Tata Trusts, IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative and Syngenta Foundation to serve small holder farmers through their agri entrepreneur network in the country.
• The partnership provides Innoterra Platform Services access to all AEGF clusters, setting the stage for a roll-out of its hi-tech and high-touch Farmer-360 services for taking up dairy activities.
• It will also enable Innoterra to work as a partner of AEGF for market input/output linkages. AGEF works with about five lakh small holder farmers.

CURRENT AFFAIRS : SUMMITS & CONFERENCES

Union Minister Piyush Goyal addresses 16th India Digital Summit, 2022

• Minister of Textiles, Minister of Commerce and Industry and Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India, Shri Piyush Goyal addressed the 16th India Digital Summit, 2022 through video conference.
• Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) will organise the 16th edition of IDS, scheduled for 11-12 January 2022 With the central theme – ‘Supercharging Startups’.

About the Summit :

• The summit will be a platform to deliberate upon technology and data-related policies with primary focus on digital startups.
• About 2,000 delegates will attend the event.
• The two-day summit will see over 45 sessions, 150 speakers, 500 brands.
• In the last 6 years the GoI has produced 82 Unicorns, the world’s 3rd largest no. of Unicorns with over 60,000 Startups registered at DPIIT.
• From 2018-21, in barely three years more than 6 Lakh Jobs were created by our Startups.
• The Minister also unveiled ‘LEAP’ as the way forward for Startups, – “Leverage, Encourage, Access & Promote”.

About Ministry of Commerce & Industry :

• Union Minister : Piyush Goyal
• Minister of State : Anupriya Patel, Som Parkash

CURRENT AFFAIRS : DEFENCE NEWS

Philippines to buy India’s BrahMos missile

• The Philippines will acquire three batteries of the BrahMos cruise missile jointly developed by India and Russia in a deal worth almost $375 million, a development expected to boost India’s efforts to become a major exporter of defence hardware.
• This deal will provide a big boost to India’s defence manufacturing system.
• India is aiming to target $5 billion in defence exports by 2025.

About BrahMos missile :

• The name BrahMos is a portmanteau formed from the names of two rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia.
• It is a joint venture between the Russian Federation’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
• BrahMos became the only supersonic cruise missile & it flies at a speed of 2.8 Mach or almost three times the speed of sound.
• It is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against surface and sea-based targets and has been long inducted by the Indian armed forces.

Note :

• Senior scientist Atul Dinkar Rane has been appointed as the new head of the BrahMos Aerospace Limited.

Recent News :

• On Jan 11, 2021, India’s  Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully test-fired the naval variant of the supersonic BrahMos cruise missile.
• The missile was tested from India’s warship INS Visakhapatnam.

About Philippines :

• Capital: Manila
• Currency: Philippine peso
• President: Rodrigo Duterte

CURRENT AFFAIRS : SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

ISRO successfully conducts qualification tests of Cryogenic Engine for Gaganyaan

• On Jan 12, 2022, The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the qualification test of the Cryogenic Engine for the Gaganyaan programme for a duration of 720 seconds at ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC), Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu.
• It ensures the reliability and robustness of the cryogenic engine for induction into the human-rated launch vehicle for Gaganyaan.
• Further, this engine will undergo four more tests for a cumulative duration of 1,810 seconds.
• Subsequently, one more engine will undergo two short-duration tests and one long-duration test to complete the cryogenic engine qualification for the Gaganyaan Programme.
• The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark III launch vehicle to be used for the Gaganyaan programme will use two cryogenic engines.
• This engine developed by ISRO is named as Vikas.
• The success of Vikas engine signals a great breakthrough in the Indian manned mission to outer space.
• The 1st Uncrewed mission of Gaganyaan (G1) is scheduled during the beginning of the second half of 2022.
• This will be followed by the second uncrewed mission at the end of 2022 carrying “Vyommitra” a spacefaring human-robot developed by ISRO and finally the first crewed Gagana Mission in 2023

Note :

• India’s maiden human space mission “Gaganyaan” will be launched in 2023.
• With this launch, India will become the fourth nation in the world to launch a Human Spaceflight Mission after the USA, Russia and China.
• Objective Of Gaganyaan mission : To demonstrate the capability to send humans to low earth orbit (LEO)

Recent News :

• Eminent rocket scientist S Somanath has been appointed as the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as well as the Space Secretary.

About ISRO :

• Chairman : S Somanath
• Headquarters: Bangalore, Karnataka
• Founder: Vikram Sarabhai
• Founded: 15 August 1969

CURRENT AFFAIRS : SPORTS NEWS

Gujarat’s Tasnim Mir becomes first Indian to clinch No.1 spot in under-19 girls’ singles badminton

• Young shuttler Tasnim Mir became the first Indian to claim the world no 1 ranking in the under-19 girls singles in the latest BWF junior rankings.
• The 16-year-old Mir jumped three places to reach the top position in the junior world rankings in the women’s singles category with 10,810 points.

About Tasnim Mir :

• Tasnim Mir born on 13 May 2005 in Mehsana, Gujarat, India.
• She has won a total of 22 titles in different categories thus far.
• Tasnim has been training under Indonesian coach Edwin Iriawan at the Assam Badminton Academy in Guwahati for the last four years.
• She has won four junior international tournaments, with three of them – Bulgarian Junior Championship, Alpes International, and Belgian Junior coming in 2021.
• She has also won the under-15 and under-17 titles in the Asian Junior Championships.
• She currently ranked a lowly 602 in the women’s singles.
• Tasnim’s feat has never been achieved by any Indian girl, including two-time Olympic medallist P V Sindhu and London bronze winner Saina Nehwal.
• In Boys singles, three shuttlers — Lakshya Sen, Siril Verma and Aditya Joshi had become the world no 1.

About BWF :

• President: Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen
• Headquarters: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Founded: 5 July 1934
• Membership: 194 member associations
• The BWF is the international governing body for the sport of badminton recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Canada clinches ATP Cup with 2-0 win over Spain

• Felix Auger-Aliassime clinched the ATP Cup title for Canada with a 7-6 (3), 6-3 singles victory over Roberto Bautista Agut to give his country an insurmountable 2-0 lead against Spain.
• Denis Shapovalov opened the match for Canada with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Pablo Carreno Busta.
• Auger-Aliassime, from Montreal, and Shapovalov, from Richmond Hill, Ont., won a deciding doubles match against Russia to knock out the defending champions.
• And with the title on the line, they played their best tennis Sunday to defeat two-time finalists Spain.
• It was Canada’s first appearance in the ATP Cup final.

About Canada :

• Capital : Ottawa
• Currency : Canadian dollar
• Governor General : Mary Simon
• PM : Justin Trudeau

Daily CA On January 16 & 17^th :

• Every year 15 January is observed as Indian Army Day because on this day in 1949 field Marshal Kodandera M Cariappa took over as the first Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army from General Sir Francis Butcher, the last British Commander-in-Chief.
• Union Education and Skill Development Minister Dharmendra Pradhan invited students, teachers and parents to participate in the 5th edition of “Pariksha Pe Charcha 2022”.
• Chairman of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), Vinay Kumar Saxena launched the country’s first Mobile Honey Processing Van at Village Sirora in Ghaziabad, UP.
• Bilateral trade between India and China crossed 125 billion USD in 2021.
• Punjab & Sind Bank, a public sector bank, has slashed the Marginal Cost Based Lending Rate (MCLR) by 5 to 10 basis points (bps) across the short-term loans.
• IPO-bound Snapdeal, a value commerce platform, has joined hands with BOB Financial and NPCI to launch a co-branded contactless RuPay credit card.
• Aquaconnect, India’s pioneering full-stack aquaculture platform, has won the “Most Innovative Agtech” (Mature Startup) award at the fourth edition of the FICCI Summit and Awards for Agri Startups.
• Innoterra, a Swiss-Indian food and tech platform company, has partnered with Agri Entrepreneur Growth Foundation (AEGF), set up by Tata Trusts, IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative and Syngenta Foundation to serve small holder farmers through their agri entrepreneur network in the country.
• Minister of Textiles, Minister of Commerce and Industry and Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India, Shri Piyush Goyal addressed the 16th India Digital Summit, 2022 through video conference.
• The Philippines will acquire three batteries of the BrahMos cruise missile jointly developed by India and Russia in a deal worth almost $375 million, a development expected to boost India’s efforts to become a major exporter of defence hardware.
• On Jan 12, 2022, The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the qualification test of the Cryogenic Engine for the Gaganyaan programme for a duration of 720 seconds at ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC), Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu.
• Young shuttler Tasnim Mir became the first Indian to claim the world no 1 ranking in the under-19 girls singles in the latest BWF junior rankings
• Felix Auger-Aliassime clinched the ATP Cup title for Canada with a 7-6 (3), 6-3 singles victory over Roberto Bautista Agut to give his country an insurmountable 2-0 lead against Spain.