News Flash (15th December 2020): Top 10 Stories Of The Day

1. Indian Railways to conduct a recruitment drive to fill 1.4L vacancies

The Indian Railways is going to organize a “mega recruitment drive” through its 21 Railway Recruitment Boards, in three phases starting today. The recruitment drive is being held to fill up 1.4 lakh vacancies. The first phase will be conducted till December 18 and the last is tentatively scheduled from April 2021 till June 2021. “Female and Persons with Disabilities (PWD) candidates are accommodated within their home states,” an official statement from the Indian Railways said.

2. 22-yr-old from UP tells court she had willfully converted, goes with husband’s family

Pinki, a 22-year-old pregnant woman, whose husband was arrested under UP’s anti-conversion law in Moradabad, has confessed to the magistrate that she had converted. “The girl said she was born in 1998 and that she and Rashid Ali held a nikah on July 24 in Dehradun,” Moradabad police said in a statement. The woman also added that said she wanted to return to Rashid’s family, the police said 

3. AAP will contest UP elections in 2022: Arvind Kejriwal announces

Aam Aadmi Party chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has said the party will contest the state elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2022. “A lot of people from UP who live in Delhi have told us that UP too deserves the welfare and benefits like Delhi,” he added. He also said that all parties in UP have betrayed the people.

4. To boost healthcare system, India’s think tank plans surveillance platform

NITI Aayog, the Indian government’s think tank has proposed to develop a surveillance information system to improve India’s public health surveillance. This surveillance platform will maintain and analyse information based on individual Electronic Health Records captured through the use of a Unique Health Identifier. “Public health surveillance could be integrated within India’s three-tiered health system,” NITI Aayof mentioned.

5. Google informs internal storage quota issue caused the 45-minute worldwide outage

Google services like Gmail, and YouTube were down for an hour. Giving a clarification on this, Google informed all the users that it faced an authentication system outage for 45 minutes due to an “internal storage quota issue”. “This was resolved and all services are now restored,” Google said. The company further added, “We apologize to everyone affected, and we’ll conduct a thorough follow up review to ensure this problem cannot recur in the future.” 

6. Pune schools cancel online classes due to pending fees

Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad Schools, affiliated with Federation of Schools Association in Maharashtra (FSAM), have chosen to discontinue online classes for the next three days from Tuesday as a result of non-payment of fees. The FSAM President said, “Though all the help and cooperation was provided by the schools to parents, around 50% of them haven’t paid fees. “Schools are now facing severe financial stress,” the official informed.

7. Gunman who open fired at NYC church concert, shot dead by police

A gunman who open fired from the stairs of Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, a church in New York, was shot dead by police. The gunman was yelling “kill me” right before he was shot dead by the police at least 15 times. No injuries were reported at the scene.

8. Indian Army General Bipin Rawat: High levels of preparation underway on land, sea & air 

During the launch event of the first Project 17A stealth frigate ‘Himgiri’, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat informed that robust preparation was in process on land, sea, and air, amid India-China border tensions. “We are in a standoff situation in Ladakh…based on that there is some development activity which has been ongoing in Tibet Autonomous Region of China,” the general said. 

9. UK PM Boris Johnson to be chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations

As reported by the media, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is going to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations of 2021. This was confirmed by the British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. This confirmation comes after Raab’s meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday. 

10. Canada pledges $380mn to help developing countries fight COVID-19

Canada has announced to provide an aid of $380 million to help developing countries battle the coronavirus pandemic. With this money, UNICEF will be able to buy up to 3 million courses of antibody treatments, once they are approved, the body said. Some of the funds will also be directed to the WHO-led coalition ACT [Access to COVID-19 Tools] Accelerator, and other global health organizations, to expand the help further.