Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 19 January 2021

SSC CGL Current Affairs

Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 19 January 2021

::NATIONAL::

Watch DD India in your Country

Here's how DTH providers in different countries can downlink Indian public broadcaster's global TV channel, DD India, on their platforms.
SDTV Broadcast is available through the satellite GSAT-17@93.5°E.
Downlink parameters are as follows: Frequency-3925 mHz, Polarisation-H, FEC-3/4, symbol rate-27.5 mbps, Compression- MPEG-2, Modulator- DVB-S-QPSK
HDTV Broadcast is available through the satellite GSAT-10@83.0°E.
Downlink parameters are as follows: Frequency-3885 mHz, Polarisation-V, FEC-3/4, symbol rate-30 mbps, Compression- MPEG-4, Modulator- 8PSK DVBS-2

PM Modi to release financial assistance to over 6 lakh beneficiaries in UP under Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release financial assistance of around Rs. 2691 crores to 6.1 lakh beneficiaries in Uttar Pradesh under Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana – Gramin (PMAY-G) on 20th January, 2021 at 12 noon via video conferencing.
Union Rural Development Minister and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh will also be present on the occasion. The assistance would include release of first installment to 5.30 lakh beneficiaries and second installment to 80 thousand beneficiaries who have already availed first installment of assistance under PMAY-G.
Prime Minister gave the clarion call of “Housing for All by 2022”, for which a flagship programme of PMAY-G was launched on 20th November, 2016. So far 1.26 crore houses have already been built across the country under the scheme. Under PMAY-G, each beneficiary is given 100% grant of Rs.1.20 lakh (in plain areas) and Rs. 1.30 lakh (in Hilly States/North Eastern States/Difficult areas/UT of J&K and Ladakh/IAP/LWE districts).
The beneficiaries of PMAY-G, in addition to the unit assistance, are also provided support of unskilled labour wages under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and assistance of Rs. 12,000 for construction of toilets through Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin (SBM-G), MGNREGS or any other dedicated source of funding.

::ECONOMY::

Amazon partners with Startup India, others to boost e-com exports from India

The Amazon Global Selling Propel (AGSP) programme has been designed to support early stage startups in the consumer products space to launch in international markets and create global brands from India.
The Amazon Global Selling Propel (AGSP) programme has been designed to support early stage startups in the consumer products space to launch in international markets and create global brands from India.
Amazon said it has partnered with Startup India, Sequoia Capital India and Fireside Ventures to launch an accelerator programme to help early-stage startups take their brands to global audiences.
The Amazon Global Selling Propel (AGSP) programme has been designed to support early stage startups (raised funding in post seed to pre-series A stage, if funded) in the consumer products space to launch in international markets and create global brands from India through Amazon's Global Selling programme.
As part of the Startup Accelerator, Amazon has constituted a mentorship board consisting of Amazon leaders from India and across the world, VCs and senior leaders from Startup India.
The application process will be open for about three weeks, following which 10 startups would be chosen for the accelerator.
The programme will feature a six-week 1:1 mentorship module for the shortlisted participants where they will get to interact with Amazon leaders from India and worldwide and get firsthand knowledge on building and scaling up exports business through e-commerce, Abhijit Kamra, Director - Global Trade at Amazon India, said.

::INTERNATIONAL::

Concerns grow over future of pandemic hit Eurostar rail service linking UK, EU

Passenger numbers on the cross-Channel train service - which reaches UK, France, Belgium and Holland - have been down 95% since March and are currently believed to be less than 1% of pre-pandemic levels.
The head of France’s state rail company has sounded the alarm over the future of the Eurostar train service, which connects the UK with continental Europe and has been hurt badly by the halt to travel during the pandemic as well as Brexit.
Jean-Pierre Farandou, the CEO of SNCF, which owns 55% of Eurostar, told France Inter radio on Tuesday that “the situation is very critical for Eurostar.”
Passenger numbers on the cross-Channel train service - which reaches UK, France, Belgium and Holland - have been down 95% since March and are currently believed to be less than 1% of pre-pandemic levels.
It comes days after UK business leaders called for a British government rescue of the Channel Tunnel rail operator as border closures enforced to stop a highly contagious virus variant threatened to push the service toward the brink of collapse.
He said that SNCF has “already put money back into Eurostar’s capital to help,” and the company is in discussions with the French and British governments.
Eurostar has asked for access to the same secured loans as airlines, and a temporary reduction on track access charges it pays to use the UK’s only stretch of high-speed rail line.

SCIENCE AND TECH

Scientists find clue to anomalous behaviour of self-propelled particles like fish schools & flocking birds

Scientists have found a clue to dynamical origin of fluctuations in systems like fish schools, swarm of insects, flocking birds and bacterial colonies, which are called active matter systems.
This understanding can be useful in nanotechnology applications like building small-scale energy-efficient bio-devices as well as biomedical applications like characterizing infection spreading in organs, antibiotic resistance and so on.
Such systems are made up of self-driven components which extract energy from their surroundings to generate mechanical work. Due to continuous energy input, such systems are driven far from equilibrium and exhibit, unlike in equilibrium, fascinating collective behaviours, like clustering, “giant” mass fluctuations and anomalous transport.
Particularly, their transport properties (molecular properties, analogous to viscosity, thermal conductivity and mobility that indicate the rate at which momentum, heat, and mass are transferred from one part of a system to another) can be perplexing at times.
The anomalous behaviour of such systems can be understood by considering a cup of coffee, stirred with a spoon. If one stops stirring, the coffee will eventually come to rest, due to the internal viscous forces, which resist the fluid motion.
In contrast, imagine “stirring” a bacterial solution, which, under suitable conditions (bacterial concentration), can exhibit perpetual or unceasing collective directed motion; in that case, the viscosity would vanish in such “active” bacterial fluids.
Probing into this anomalous behaviour, Scientists from the S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, led by Punyabrata Pradhan studied a toy model of self-propelled particles and explained the dynamical origin of ‘giant’ mass fluctuations in the system, providing insights into the emergent properties of such active matters in general.

Sports

Kiren Rijiju inaugurates Khelo India State Centre of Excellence at Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, Pune

Union Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports Kiren Rijiju launched the Khelo India State Centre of Excellence (KISCE) at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex at Mhalunge-Balewadi in Pune.
Union Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports Kiren Rijiju launched the Khelo India State Centre of Excellence (KISCE) at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex at Mhalunge-Balewadi in Pune on Monday. This is the 9th KISCE formally inaugurated by the Union Minister so far and the Maharashtra-based sports complex will focus on three Priority Olympic disciplines – Shooting, Athletics and Cycling.
“Today is a very important day not just for Maharashtra but for entire India. Maharashtra is a very big State and I have seen the potential here. We are happy to extend all kinds of support for the development of all the athletes and even in future we will continue doing so,” said Rijiju at the event.