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CURRENT AFFAIRS: IMPORTANT DAYS
26 January – International Customs Day
- January 26 is celebrated as the International Customs Day (ICD).
- It is the day designated to honour the custom officials and agencies for their function in taking care of the flow of goods across the world borders.
- This year, the theme chosen by WCO for ICD is ‘Scaling up Customs Digital Transformation by Embracing a Data Culture and Building a Data Ecosystem’.
- The day was instituted by the World Customs Organization (WCO) to commemorate the day in 1953 when the inaugural session of the Customs Cooperation Council (CCC) was held in Brussels, Belgium.
- In 1994 the CCC was renamed World Customs Organization (WCO).
CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL NEWS
Union Agriculture Minister addresses 4th National Conference on Agriculture for Summer Campaign 2021-22:
- Addressing the National conference on Agriculture for Summer Campaign 2021-22 through video-conferencing, Union Agriculture Minister, Shri Narendra Kumar Tomar, summer crops not only provide extra income but also create employment opportunities in between Rabi and Kharif for the farmers thereby increasing crop intensity.
- The Government has taken new initiatives through various programmes for cultivation of summer crops such as pulses, coarse cereals, nutri-cereals, and oilseeds.
- The objective of Zaid conference is to review and assess the crop performance during the preceding crop seasons and fix crop-wise targets for summer season in consultation with State Governments.
- The Minister assured full support to ensure supply of critical inputs and facilitate adoption of innovative technologies with a view to enhance production and productivity of the crops.
- The priority of government is to increase production of oilseeds and pulses where large imports are required.
Grassroots innovator from Karnataka popular as ‘tamarind maniac’ selected for Padma Shri for 2022:
- Abdul Khader Nadakattin, a serial grassroots innovator from Dharwad, Karnataka, is amongst the 107 Padma Shri awardees announced for the year 2022 in the Others (Grassroots Innovation) category.
- Abdul Khader Nadakattin is a serial innovator, and his prominent innovations include a device to separate tamarind seeds, ploughing blade manufacturing machine, Seed cum fertilizer drill, Water-heating boiler, an Automatic sugarcane sowing driller, and a wheel tiller.
- Supported by National Innovation Foundation (NIF) – India, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India Shri Abdul Khader Nadakattin was conferred with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 during NIF’s 8th National Grassroots Innovation and Outstanding Traditional Knowledge Awards by the then Hon’ble President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee.
- True to his grassroots spirit and as a mark of respect for the award, he chose to walk barefoot and hence came to be known as the country’s “barefoot scientist”.
CURRENT AFFAIRS: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
$150-million India-UAE VC Fund set up to boost start-up ecosystem:
- A $150-million India-UAE venture capital fund to fuel growth of start-ups in India and the UAE was launched from the India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai.
- Ajai Chowdhry, HCL Founder and Chairman-Start-up Committee, FICCI, announced the launch of this fund.
- The VC Fund is a first-of-its-kind to be set up in the UAE to source, invest and nurture promising start-ups through an accelerator to fuel the growth of India-UAE start-ups.
- It will be funded by investors across UAE, India and wider GCC countries.
CURRENT AFFAIRS: STATE NEWS
South Maubuang Becomes Mizoram’s First ODF Plus Village:
- The village of South Maubuang in Aibawk block of Aizawl district in Mizoram has been declared a model ODF Plus village, having fulfilled all the criteria as per SBM-G Phase II guidelines.
- According to official data, the village which has a population of 649 individuals from 116 households has emerged as the first ODF Plus village in the State of Mizoram.
- The entire community had been involved towards achieving this status.
- ODF Sustainability: All the three schools in the village and two anganwadi centres, the community hall and the Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Seva Kendra (BNGRSK) hall have good arrangement for toilets, the schools ensuring there are separate facilities for boys and girls.
- Lately a community sanitary complex was constructed near the community hall to cater to the people that congregate there for functions and events.
CURRENT AFFAIRS: BANKING AND ECONOMY
IMGC and Muthoot Homefin enter into tie-up for offering mortgage guarantee-backed home loans:
- India Mortgage Guarantee Corporation (IMGC) has announced its partnership with Muthoot Homefin (India) Limited (MHIL) to offer mortgage guarantee-backed home loan products to MHIL’s home loan customers in the affordable housing segment.
- With increased demand for affordable and mid-income housing, Muthoot Homefin aims to leverage mortgage guarantee as a risk mitigation tool.
- The tie-up with IMGC will help Muthoot Homefin deepen its penetration in existing markets across its 108 branches/ locations, thereby enabling home ownership in the affordable housing segment,
Remove MAT for troubled firms under resolution:
- A company admitted by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for resolution should be exempt from Minimum Alternate Tax untill it sees a turnaround.
- This, and Goods and Services Tax (GST) concessions are among the expectations of asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) from the upcoming Union Budget, according to Raj Kumar Bansal, MD and CEO, Edelweiss ARC.
- Bansal, who oversees assets under management aggregating about ₹43,000 crore, also wanted the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow banks to provide credit lines to ARCs and expand the definition of qualified buyers — those who can invest in security receipts — to include high-networth individuals (HNIs), corporates and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).
ToneTag and Elocity partner to bring sound-based payment technology for EV sector:
- ToneTag and EV charging solution firm Elocity have partnered to bring sound-based technology to solve payment processing challenges for the electric vehicle sector.
- EV drivers with any mobile phone can now pay easily at Elocity HIEVTM and ToneTag-enabled EV charging stations, irrespective of their location or network availability.
- EV charging stations in India at present don’t accept cash, which makes it difficult for people who do not own smartphones or are in areas of low internet connectivity from recharging their EVs.
- ToneTag has completed over 52 million consumer transactions and expects this partnership to help in speeding up EV adoption.
Crypto industry’s revised self-regulation norms to include NFT, tighten customer protection rules:
- The cryptocurrency industry in India, which has been working on revising self-regulation rules, will include non-fungible token (NFT) start-ups under the purview.
- The ongoing work on code of conduct guidelines is also expected to expand on bringing uniform consumer protection safeguards, taxation and advertising rules
- The existing ‘Code of Conduct’ guidelines for the cryptocurrency industry, drafted by The Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council ( BACC), is being revised to take into account concerns around the lack of proper regulatory oversight on crypto transactions.
- BACC, which is part of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), had recently sought inputs from the industry to determine the revised code.
- Most of the top cryptocurrency exchanges in the country including WazirX, CoinDCX, Unocoin and CoinSwitch Kuber among others are members of this body.
CURRENT AFFAIRS : DEFENCE NEWS
Russia delivers 70,000 AK-203 assault rifles to India
- On Jan 25, 2022, Russia has delivered to India all the contracted 70,000 AK-203 Kalashnikov assault rifles as envisaged under a contract signed late last summer between India and
- The Indian Ministry of Defence intends to procure 670,000 AK-203 assault rifles, and the 70,000 delivered are part of that total.
- The rest of the 600,000 will be manufactured by an Indo-Russian joint venture company, Indo-Russia Rifles Private Limited (IRRPL), based at Amethi, Uttar Pradesh India under transfer of technology (ToT). [at Korwa Rifle Factory, Amethi].
- The total cost of the contract is around Rs 5000 cr.
- The Joint Venture is between India, represented by the Defence PSUs-Advanced Weapons & Equipment India Limited (AWEIL) & Munitions India Limited (MIL) and Russia, represented by Rosoboronexport (RoE) & Concern Kalashnikov (CK).
- The 7.62 X 39mm caliber AK-203 Rifles will replace in-service INSAS Rifle inducted over three decades back.
- AK-203 Assault Rifles have an effective range of 300 meters are lightweight and are seen as easy to use Modern Assault Rifles.
About Russia :
- President: Vladimir Putin
- Capital: Moscow
- Currency: Russian ruble
Russia-China-Iran begins joint naval exercise CHIRU-2Q22 in Northern Indian Ocean
- Iran, Russia, and China navies began a joint naval exercise CHIRU-2Q22 in the Gulf of Oman from January 18 to 22, 2022.
- The drill will be staged in the northern parts of the Indian Ocean, and it will involve forces from the marine and airborne units of the Iranian Navy.
Aim :
- At deepening practical cooperation among the navies of the three countries.
- The participants in the drill will practice various tactics and operations, such as rescuing ablaze vessels, saving hijacked vessels, shooting at targets, nocturnal shooting at aerial targets, and other tactical manoeuvres.
- This is the third joint naval drill between the countries since 2019 & It coincided with a recent visit by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Russia.
- At least 140 warships and over 60 aircraft with nearly 10,000 military personnel would be taking part in the military excercises.
- The first part of the drill will take place until February 9 with the second part due to take place February 10-20 with large scale troop deployment including drills by the Air Force.
About Russia :
- President: Vladimir Putin
- Capital: Moscow
- Currency: Russian ruble
About China :
- Currency: Renminbi
- Capital: Beijing
- President: Xi Jinping
About Iran :
- Capital: Tehran
- President: Ebrahim Raisi
- Currency: Iranian rial
- Supreme leader: Ali Khamenei
Western Naval Command Conducts Joint MAritime Exercise: Paschim Lehar (XPL – 2022)
- On 25 January 2022, A joint maritime exercise Paschim Lehar (XPL-2022) conducted by the Indian Navy off the West Coast was concluded.
- The exercise was conducted over a duration of 20 days.
Objective :
- To validate operational plans of the Western Naval Command and enhance Inter-Service synergy among the Indian Navy, IAF, Indian Army and Coast Guard.
- The exercise was conducted under the aegis of FOC-in-C, Western Naval Command.
- The intra-theatre exercise included mobilisation and participation of over 40 ships and submarines of the Indian Navy.
- A variety of weapon firings in a realistic tactical scenario, besides validation of operational missions and tasks under varying settings, were undertaken during the exercise.
- The exercise provided all participating forces an opportunity to operate together under realistic conditions, in responding to contemporary maritime challenges, across the areas of the Command’s responsibility.
- In addition, the IAF deployed SU 30 MKI & Jaguar maritime strike aircraft, Flight Refuelling Aircraft and AWACs, alongside the Indian Navy’s maritime reconnaissance aircraft P8i, Dorniers, IL 38 SD, unmanned aerial systems and MiG 29K strike aircraft.
About Ministry of Defence :
- Headquarters : New Delhi
- Minister of Defence : Rajnath Singh
- Minister of State : Ajay Bhatt
- Defence Secretary : Dr. Ajay Kumar
About Western Naval Command :
- Headquarters: Mumbai, Maharashtra
- FOC-in-C: Vice Admiral Ajendra Bahadur Singh
- FOCWF: Rear Admiral Sameer Saxena
- The Western Naval Command is one of the three command–level formations of the Indian Navy.
- Other two are Eastern Naval Command (HQ- Visakhapatnam) and Southern Naval Command (HQ- Kochi).
CURRENT AFFAIRS : RANKING & INDEX
India ranks 85 in Transparency International’s corruption index 2021
- According to the Transparency International report, India is ranked 85th with a score of 40 in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 2021.
- The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
- In 2021, India ranked 86th with the same CPI score of 40.
- Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Norway topped the list with the highest score of 88.
- These are followed by Norway (85), Singapore (85), Sweden (85), Switzerland (84), the Netherlands (82), Luxembourg (81) and Germany (80).
- Pakistan dropped 16 spots in the index and was ranked at 140 with a CPI of 28.
- While the worst-performing countries were South Sudan with a corruption perception score of 11, followed by Syria (13), Somalia (13), Venezuela (14) and Afghanistan (16).
- However, most countries sit firmly below the global average of 43.
- The top performers in Asia Pacific are New Zealand (CPI score: 88), Singapore (85) and Hong Kong (76).
- However, most countries sit firmly below the global average of 43. This includes three countries with some of the lowest scores in the world: Cambodia (23), Afghanistan (16) and North Korea (16).
- The CPI, which came into existence in 1995, has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption.
About Transparency International :
- Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
- Founded: 4 May 1993
- Chairman: Delia Ferreira Rubio
- Managing Director: Daniel Eriksson
Apple retains the world’s most valuable brand title in Brand Finance Global 500 2022 Report
- According to the Brand Finance 2022 Global 500 report, Apple has retained the title of the world’s most valuable brand following a 35% increase to US$355.1 billion – the highest brand value ever recorded in the Brand Finance Global 500 ranking.
- TikTok has been named the world’s fastest-growing brand in the list & Its brand value increased from US$18.7 billion in 2021 to US$59.0 billion in 2022.
- In terms of sector, Tech remained the most valuable industry in the list & this was followed by Retail, Banking, Media and Telecoms in top 5 respectively.
Top 10 in Brand Finance Global 500 2022 Report :
- Apple – $355.1 billion
- Amazon – $360 billion
- Google – $263 billion
- Microsoft
- Walmart
- Samsung
- ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China)
- Huawei
- Verizon
- The annual Brand Finance Global 500 index sets out to calculate the value of just the brand, distinct from the value of the company.
Top Indian Brand :
- The Indian conglomerate Tata Group has emerged as the most valuable brand from India and also in South Asia.
- It is the only brand from the country in the top 100.
- The Global Rank of Tata Group 78.
- The brand value of Tata Group is US$23.9 billion
CURRENT AFFAIRS : SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Meta builds world’s fastest AI supercomputer
- Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has built a research AI supercomputer that is among the fastest in the world.
- Meta’s AI Research SuperCluster has been designed to train machine learning systems.
- According to Meta, it will become the world’s fastest supercomputer by the end of 2022.
- The RSC will be used to design things or run programs for the Metaverse.
- RSC, will help build new and improved AI models and allow for work across hundreds of different languages.
- This includes algorithms on content moderation for detecting hate speech and explicit content on Facebook and Instagram.
- The Supercomputer consists of 760 Nvidia GGX A 100 systems containing 6,080 GPUs.
- Meta already provides up to 20 times improved performance.
- It will have a total of 16,000 GPUs by the end of the second phase of its creation.
- While a traditional supercomputer’s performance is measured in 64-bit floating point operations per second (FLOPs), an AI Supercomputer is often measured in 32-bit or 16-bit FLOPs.
About Meta :
- Founded: February 2004
- Headquarters: Menlo Park, California, United States
- CEO: Mark Zuckerberg
- CTO: Mike Schroepfer
- CFO: David Wehner
- Founders: Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz
CURRENT AFFAIRS : OBITUARIES
Sydney Olympics Rings Champion Szilveszter Csollany Passes Away
- Former Olympic gymnastics champion Szilveszter Csollany Passed away at the age of 51.
About Szilveszter Csollany :
- Szilveszter Csollány born on 13 April 1970 in Sopron, Hungary.
- He was a Hungarian gymnast who won gold in the men’s rings at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
- He was a six-time medallist at the European gymnastics championships, and the recipient of Hungary’s “Sportsman of the Year” award in 2000 and 2002.
- Csollány moved to Iceland in 2011 and became a gymnastics coach at Grótta.
Achievements :
Olympic Games
- 6th place 1992 Barcelona Men’s Rings
- Silver Medal 1996 Atlanta Men’s Rings
- Gold Medal 2000 Sydney Men’s Rings
World Championships
- Gold Medal 2002 Debrecen Men’s RingsSilver Medal 1992 Paris, 1996 San Juan, 1997 Lausanne, 1999 Tianjin, 2001 Ghent Men’s Rings
European Championships
- Gold Medal 1998 Men’s Rings
- Silver Medal 2000 Men’s Rings
- Bronze Medal 1990, 1992, 1994, 2002 Men’s Rings
About Hungarian Olympic Committee :
- President: Krisztián Kulcsár
- Founded: 19 December 1895
- Secretary General: Lazlo Fabian
- Headquarters : Budapest, Hungary
Daily CA On Jan 28 :
- January 26 is celebrated as the International Customs Day (ICD).
- Addressing the National conference on Agriculture for Summer Campaign 2021-22 through video-conferencing, Union Agriculture Minister, Shri Narendra Kumar Tomar, summer crops not only provide extra income but also create employment opportunities in between Rabi and Kharif for the farmers thereby increasing crop intensity.
- Abdul Khader Nadakattin, a serial grassroots innovator from Dharwad, Karnataka, is amongst the 107 Padma Shri awardees announced for the year 2022 in the Others (Grassroots Innovation) category.
- A $150-million India-UAE venture capital fund to fuel growth of start-ups in India and the UAE was launched from the India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai.
- The village of South Maubuang in Aibawk block of Aizawl district in Mizoram has been declared a model ODF Plus village, having fulfilled all the criteria as per SBM-G Phase II guidelines.
- India Mortgage Guarantee Corporation (IMGC) has announced its partnership with Muthoot Homefin (India) Limited (MHIL) to offer mortgage guarantee-backed home loan products to MHIL’s home loan customers in the affordable housing segment.
- A company admitted by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for resolution should be exempt from Minimum Alternate Tax untill it sees a turnaround.
- ToneTag and EV charging solution firm Elocity have partnered to bring sound-based technology to solve payment processing challenges for the electric vehicle sector.
- The cryptocurrency industry in India, which has been working on revising self-regulation rules, will include non-fungible token (NFT) start-ups under the purview.
- On Jan 25, 2022, Russia has delivered to India all the contracted 70,000 AK-203 Kalashnikov assault rifles as envisaged under a contract signed late last summer between India and
- Iran, Russia, and China navies began a joint naval exercise CHIRU-2Q22 in the Gulf of Oman from January 18 to 22, 2022.
- On 25 January 2022, A joint maritime exercise Paschim Lehar (XPL-2022) conducted by the Indian Navy off the West Coast was concluded.
- According to the Transparency International report, India is ranked 85th with a score of 40 in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 2021.
- According to the Brand Finance 2022 Global 500 report, Apple has retained the title of the world’s most valuable brand following a 35% increase to US$355.1 billion – the highest brand value ever recorded in the Brand Finance Global 500 ranking.
- Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has built a research AI supercomputer that is among the fastest in the world.
- Former Olympic gymnastics champion Szilveszter Csollany Passed away at the age of 51.
