Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 28 January 2021

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

The Supreme Court on Wednesday urged the Centre to set a fixed timeline for clearing appointments of judges to the higher judiciary after receiving the recommendations of the collegium. Here is all you need to know about the matter:
The request came even as a new memorandum of procedure (MoP) on judicial appointments is pending for almost four years.
The court said there were 189 proposals regarding appointments pending with the government as on December 31.
It added certain proposals remain pending before the government for over six months.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde said that all endeavours should be made to ensure appointments come through in a time-bound manner.
Of 1,079 posts of judges in the high courts, 411 are vacant.
The vacancies accounted for over a third of the total positions as of January 1.

Russia’s parliament approved a five-year extension of the New START nuclear arms control treaty with the United States, which a senior official said had been agreed on Moscow’s terms at the eleventh hour before it expires next week.
Signed in 2010, the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is a cornerstone of global arms control and limits the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers that Russia and the United States can deploy.
The White House did not immediately confirm a Kremlin announcement on Tuesday of a deal to extend the treaty but said new President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin had discussed the issue by telephone and agreed that their teams work urgently to complete the pact by Feb. 5, the expiry date.
Both Russia’s lower and upper houses of parliament, the State Duma and Federation Council, rushed through votes on Wednesday to approve the extension of the last major pact of its kind between the two nuclear powers.

India’s recently-enacted agri laws have the potential to increase farmers’ income, but there is a need to provide a social safety net to the vulnerable cultivators, IMF’s Chief Economist Gita Gopinath has said.
Indian agriculture is in need of reforms, she said.
There are multiple areas where the reforms are needed, including infrastructure, the Chief Economist of the Washington-based global financial institution said on Tuesday.
The three agri laws, enacted in September last year, have been projected by the Indian government as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove middlemen and allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country.
Gopinath, in response to a question on the new farm laws, said: “These particular farm laws were in the area of marketing. It was widening the market for farmers. Being able to sell to multiple outlets besides the Mandis without having to pay a tax. And this had the potential to raise, in our view, farmers’ incomes”.

A team of scientists has discovered that cells in the so-called "stem cell niche" are responsible for the lifelong self-renewal capacity.
The study on mice stem cells suggested that the blood vessel cells of the niche produce a factor that stimulates blood stem cells and thus maintains their self-renewal capacity. However, during aging, the production of this factor ceases and blood stem cells begin to age.
The study led by scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine* (HI-STEM) was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Throughout life, blood stem cells in the bone marrow ensure that our body is adequately supplied with mature blood cells. If there is no current need for cell replenishment, the blood stem cells remain in a deep sleep to protect themselves from damage to the genome, which can lead to cancer.
Blood loss, infections, and inflammations act like an alarm clock: immediately, the blood stem cells begin to divide and produce new cells - for example, to provide immune cells to fight viruses or to compensate for a loss of red blood cells or platelets. With each cell division, the stem cells always regenerate themselves as well, so that the stem cell pool is maintained. This is what scientists call self-renewal.
"The dormancy is the prerequisite for this unique ability of stem cells," explained Andreas Trumpp, a stem cell expert at DKFZ and HI-STEM.

Juventus eased past second-division team Spal 4-0 Wednesday to reach the Italian Cup semifinals despite resting regulars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Paulo Dybala.
Alvaro Morata and Gianluca Frabotta scored first-half goals for Juventus while Dejan Kulusevski and Federico Chiesa added late strikes.
Morata converted a penalty after a foul on Adrien Rabiot before Frabotta added the second in the 33rd minute.
Kulusevski scored Juve's third in the 78th on a counterattack after being set up by Chiesa, who completed the rout in injury time by dribbling around the goalkeeper to deposit the ball into an empty net.