Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 21 August 2021

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

Ummalaneni Raja Babu, Outstanding Scientist and Programme Director, AD, has been appointed Director, Research Centre Imarat (RCI), a premier avionics laboratory of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Missile Complex, DRDO, Hyderabad.
Raja Babu is renowned for his significant contributions as Programme Director, AD, at RCI. He provided the necessary thrust to the design, development and successful demonstration of ballistic missile defence system capabilities.
Under his leadership, Programme AD successfully demonstrated Mission Shakti, India’s first Anti-Satellite Missile Test (A-SAT), strengthening indigenous defencecapabilities, a release said.

China has announced that it will allow couples to have up to three children, after census data showed a steep decline in birth rates.
China scrapped its decades-old one-child policy in 2016, replacing it with a two-child limit which has failed to lead to a sustained upsurge in births.
The cost of raising children in cities has deterred many Chinese couples.
The latest move was approved by President Xi Jinping at a meeting of top Communist Party officials.
It will come with "supportive measures, which will be conducive to improving our country's population structure, fulfilling the country's strategy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining the advantage, endowment of human resources", according to Xinhua news agency.
But human rights organisation Amnesty International said the policy, like its predecessors, was still a violation of sexual and reproductive rights.
"Governments have no business regulating how many children people have. Rather than 'optimising' its birth policy, China should instead respect people's life choices and end any invasive and punitive controls over people's family planning decisions," said the group's China team head, Joshua Rosenzweig.

Facebook India on Friday announced a new programme called the "Small Business Loans Initiative", in partnership with online lending platform Indifi, to help small and medium businesses (SMBs) that advertise on Facebook to get quick access to credit through independent lending partners.
India is the first country where Facebook is rolling out this programme. It is open to businesses registered across 200 towns and cities of India.
Indifi is the first lending partner that Facebook has tied up with and the programme is built with the potential to bring more partners on board.
The goal of the initiative is to make business loans more easily accessible to small businesses, and reduce the credit gap within India’s MSME sector, the technology giant said.
According to the "Future of Business" survey conducted by Facebook in collaboration with OECD and the World Bank last year, almost a third of operational SMBs on Facebook in 2020 said that they expected cash flow to be one of their primary challenges.

ZydusCadila said it got emergency use authorization for its ZyCoV-D coronavirus vaccine on Friday, becoming the first jab to be cleared for children in the 12-18 age group in India.
The Drugs Controller General of India’s (DCGI’s) approval of the country’s second indigenously developed vaccine will also help India speed up its immunization effort to halt the spread of the deadly virus.
an expert panel recommended authorizing ZydusCadila’s three-dose covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, clearing the way for the formal approval by the DCGI.
The vaccine from the Ahmedabad-based drugmaker is the world’s first DNA-based vaccine for covid-19 to be administered in adults as well as children aged 12 years and above.
The drugmaker has also evaluated a two-dose regimen for ZyCoV-D vaccine using a 3 mg dosage, and the effectiveness of the vaccine was found to be equivalent to the three-dose regimen.

Providing India an ideal momentum in the junior boys' event, Rohit (48kg), Ankush (66kg), and Gaurav (70kg) claimed confident victories against their respective opponents and confirmed themselves and country medals, securing places in the semi-finals.
RohitChamoli, Ankush, and GauravSaini were among the six Indian boxers who registered victories on the opening day of the ASBC Youth and Junior Boxing Championships in Dubai.