Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 19 January 2021

::NATIONAL::

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.

Syllabus of JEE and NEET to remain unchanged for the year 202

The syllabus of JEE and NEET will remain unchanged for the year 2021.
However, unlike previous years, this year the candidates will have options to answer the questions in JEE and NEET Examinations.
The syllabus for JEE (Main 2021) to remain same as the previous year. But students will be given choice to answer 75 questions (25 questions each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics) out of 90 questions (30 questions each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics).
In JEE (Main) 2020, there were 75 questions all of which had to be answered by the candidates (25 questions each in Physics, Chemistry & Mathematics).
The exact pattern for NEET (UG) 2021 is yet to be announced. However, in view of reduction of syllabus by some boards across the country, the NEET (UG) 2021 question paper will also have options on the lines of JEE (Main).

Printed Study Materials for IBPS, SBI Bank Exam

::International::

India to give 2 million COVID 19 vaccines as gift to Bangladesh

India will give 2 million doses of COVID 19 vaccines as gift to Bangladesh. The vaccine is expected to arrive in Bangladesh.
This will be in addition to 30 million doses of the vaccine for which a tripartite agreement has been done between Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Serum Institute of India and the government of Bangladesh.
Health Minister of Bangladesh Zahid Maleque told reporters on Monday in Dhaka that the doses from India will arrive before the first shipment of the vaccine arrives from the Serum Institute of India (SII). The officials of the health ministry of Bangladesh are making preparations for receiving the vaccines from India.
The Health Minister said that the vaccination programme will be conducted in hospitals and diagnostic centres. He said that in case of any adverse effect of the vaccine, the government will provide treatment for the same. The government has planned to inoculate 5 million people every month after launching the vaccination drive. The Health Ministry has made elaborate arrangements for the vaccination programme. More than 42,000 health workers are being deployed all over the country and training programmes being conducted for them for the roll out of the vaccination programme from the first week of February.

::Economy::

FM Nirmala Sitharaman holds pre-budget consultations with Finance Ministers of states, UTs

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman held pre-budget consultations with the Finance Ministers of States and Union Territories.
The meeting was held through video conference and was attended by Chief Ministers, Deputy Chief Ministers, State Finance Ministers and Senior Officers from the States and Union Territories.
The Finance Minister highlighted the importance of the meeting as a sign of co-operative federalism and indicated the manner in which the Union Government was strongly supportive of States and Union Territories' fight against the pandemic.
The participants thanked Ms. Sitharaman for financially supporting their States and Union Territories during the worst months of pandemic, by enhancing borrowing limits and providing back to back loans to states.
The participants also gave numerous suggestions to the Finance Minister for inclusion in the Budget Speech.

Adani Group signs concession agreements with AAI for developing 3 airports

The Centre had in February 2019 privatised six major airports of the country -- Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati. Through a competitive bidding process, the Adani group won the rights to run all of them for 50 years.
The Adani Group signed concession agreements with the Airports Authority of India for the management, operations and development of Guwahati, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram airports.
"The concessionaires are required to take up the Guwahati, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram airports fulfilling certain conditions precedents within 180 days from 19th January, 2021," the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said in a press release.
The Centre had in February 2019 privatised six major airports of the country -- Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati.
Through a competitive bidding process, the Adani group won the rights to run all of them for 50 years.
The AAI had handed over the airports in Lucknow, Ahmedabad and Mangaluru in October and November last year.

::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY::

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.