Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 10 April 2021

::NATIONAL::

Indian Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Bharat Pannu broke two Guinness World Records for fastest single cycling

New Delhi's Lieutenant Colonel Bharat Pannu broke two Guinness World Record for fastest solo cycling in October last year.
The first record was when he cycled from fromLeh to Manali (472 km distance) on October 10, 2020, in just 35 hours and 25 minutes.
The second record was even more historic as he cycled the 'Golden Quadrilateral' route, connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, in 14 days, 23 hours and 52 minutes over a distance of 5,942-km.
Lieutenant Colonel Bharat Pannu of #IndianArmy has created #GuinnessWorldRecord of “Fastest Cycle Journey of Manali – Leh Highway” in 35 Hours 32 Minutes & 22 Seconds to cover the arduous route of 472 km.

India's cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage nears 10 crore

Covid-19 vaccination drive across the country is near to a landmark achievement.
The Health and Family Welfare Ministry informed that over nine crore eighty lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine been already been administered to beneficiaries across the country. In the last 24 hours, over 34 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been inoculated to the beneficiaries.
The Ministry informed that maximum number of over one lakh 45 thousand new cases have been reported in the country in the last 24 hours taking the total positive cases to over one crore thirty-two lakh. This is the highest number of cases since the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in the country. A total of seven hundred ninety-four deaths have been reported in the country within one day taking the toll to over one lakh sixty-eight thousand across the country.
Meanwhile, rapid rise in the new Covid-19 cases has increased the active caseloads in the country. At present, there are more than ten lakh forty six thousand active cases in the country which comprises 7.92 per cent of the total positive cases. Five states, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala cumulatively account for over 72 per cent of India’s total active cases.

Printed Study Materials for IBPS, SBI Bank Exam

::International::

ICCR Foundation Day celebrated at Indian Embassy in Beijing, “Little Guru” app launched

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) celebrated its 71st Foundation Day on Friday. Swami Vivekanand Cultural Centre at Indian Embassy in Beijing celebrated ICCR Foundation Day in the presence of a huge gathering of ICCR scholars in China and their disciples who learnt Indian dance and music.
On the occasion, the ICCR has unveiled ‘Little Guru’ app, world’s first Gamified Sanskrit learning App which was jointly launched in Beijing by Ambassador VikramMisri and renowned Chinese scholar on Sanskrit and India studies, Professor Wang Bangwei. Many Sanskrit Professors from Peking University and the students were also present.
Ambassador VikramMisri highlighted ICCR’s role in promoting cultural, academic, and intellectual exchanges between India and the rest of the world.
He said nearly 300 students in China in last few years have availed ICCR scholarships and hoped that more Chinese students will avail of these scholarships. Appreciating the launch of Sanskrit Guru app, Prof. Wang said that outside India, China has a very long history of Sanskrit research along with studies on Buddhism.
The number of Sanskrit universities across the world have also been keen on an App which would help not only the students who are currently studying in these universities but also to act as a feeder for young scholars to learn Sanskrit before joining universities.
This year, ICCR has also announced two new fellowships dedicated to music – Bhimsen Joshi fellowship for music and UstadGhulam Mustafa Khan Fellowship for Music to encourage research in the field of Indian music.

::Economy::

FM NirmalaSitharaman attends Plenary Meeting of International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) of IMF through video-conference

Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs NirmalaSitharaman on Thursday attended the Plenary Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the virtual Spring Meetings 2021.
The meeting was attended by Governors/Alternate Governors representing 190 member countries of the IMF.
The discussions at the meeting were based on IMF Managing Director’s Global Policy Agenda (GPA) titled, “Bolstering the Recovery, Countering Divergence”. The members of the IMFC updated the committee on the actions and measures taken by member countries to combat COVID-19 pandemic and facilitate economic recovery.
Finance Minister Smt. Sitharamanemphasised that the GPA’s suggestion to hasten the transition to a low-carbon economy for promoting growth that benefits all needs to be viewed in the context of its implications for the Emerging Market and Developing Economies and low-income economies. The burden of economic transformation to a low carbon economy would disproportionately be higher for these countries, and positive benefits may not accrue in the short run. The focus needs to remain on the agreed principles of equity and differentiated responsibility of climate action.

Natural gas, jet fuel may come under GST

At least two petroleum products – natural gas and aviation turbine fuel (ATF) – could be brought under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) net to promote a gas-based economy and to provide a stimulus to the pandemic-hit aviation sector after the GST Council’s approval, two people aware of development .
As the matter has been raised by the top leadership, members of parliament (MPs) and the industry, a proposal to levy GST on petroleum products and its revenue implications for the Centre and states would be worked out and placed before the GST Council soon, which will take a final call on this matter, they said requesting anonymity. Five petroleum products – crude oil, natural gas, ATF, petrol and diesel are outside the GST structure.
While laying the foundation stone for oil and gas projects in Tamil Nadu on February 17, 2021, Prime Minister NarendraModi said the government is “committed to bringing natural gas under the GST regime” as uniformity of tax would lead to a reduction of cost of natural gas and increase its usage across industries.

::SCIENCE AND TECH::

SwarnaJayanti Fellow to explore the signatures of New Physics in Neutrino experiments

Sanjib Kumar Agarwalla, Associate Professor, Institute of Physics (IOP), Bhubaneswar, a Swarnajayanti Fellow of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India, will unravel the fundamental properties of massive neutrinos and explore the interesting signals of New physics in upcoming high-precision neutrino oscillation experiments.
Over the last two decades, several world-class experiments have firmly established the phenomenon of neutrino flavor oscillation which implies that neutrinos have mass and they mix with each other.
Since neutrinos are massless in the new particle physics, also called Basic Standard Model of particle physics, there is a need to invoke BSM physics to accommodate non-zero neutrino mass and mixing. Several interesting BSM scenarios such as sterile neutrinos, non-standard neutrino interactions, neutrino decays, dark matter - neutrino secret interactions, and so on may affect the production, propagation, and detection of neutrinos.
Sanjib will probe these BSM effects at very high (TeV-PeV) energies (beyond the reach of modern colliders) by detecting astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic distances using giant neutrino telescopes such as IceCube at the South Pole, future IceCube-Gen2, and KM3NeT in the Mediterranean Sea.
He has plans to investigate these BSM scenarios at low (MeV-GeV) energies using accelerator and atmospheric neutrinos travelling terrestrial distances.
Future high-precision accelerator long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments such as DUNE in USA, T2HK in Japan, and atmospheric neutrino experiment at the upcoming India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) facility are supposed to measure the mass-mixing parameters with a precision of around a few %.

::Sports::

Sonam, Anshu seal Tokyo Olympics wrestling berths

Teenage wrestling sensations Anshu Malik and Sonam Malik booked Tokyo Olympics berths as they stormed into the final of Asian Olympic qualifiers in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Anshu was relentless as she punched her ticket to Tokyo Olympics in 57 kg with force and steely composure. The teenager proved too strong for her rivals and won all her bouts through technical superiority and reached the final with a 12-2 victory over ShokhidaAkhmedova of Uzbekistan.
She started with an impressive victory over Korea's Jiuen Um 10-0 and then defeated Kazakhstan's Emma Tissina with the same margin. The 19-year-old conceded her first point in the semi-final against Shokhida when the Uzbek wrestler made it 4-2.