Noted Kannada writer and literary critic Professor Chandrashekar Patil, popularly known as Champa, passed away late Sunday night at a private hospital in Bengaluru. He was 83 and suffering from age-related illnesses.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate 11 New Government Medical Colleges across Tamil Nadu and the new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil in Chennai tomorrow. The new medical colleges are being established at an estimated cost of about 4 thousand crore rupees. Of this amount, around 2 thousand 145 crore rupees has been provided by the Union government and rest by the Tamil Nadu government.

The districts in which the new Medical Colleges are being established are Virudhunagar, Namakkal, The Nilgiris, Tiruppur, Thiruvallur, Nagapattinam, Dindigul, Kallakurichi, Ariyalur, Ramanathapuram and Krishnagiri. Establishment of these medical colleges is in line with the Prime Minister's constant endeavour to promote affordable medical education and improve health infrastructure in all parts of the country. The new medical colleges, with cumulative capacity of 1 thousand 450 seats, are being established under the Centrally Sponsored scheme of ’Establishing of New Medical Colleges attached with existing district and referral hospital’.
Under the scheme, medical colleges are established in districts which do not have either a government or private medical college. 

The establishment of a new campus of Central Institute of Classical Tamil  in Chennai is in line with the Prime Minister’s vision to protect and preserve Indian heritage and promote classical languages.

India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) Vikrant, the largest warship to be built in the country, on Sunday set sail for crucial sea trials ahead of its scheduled induction into the Indian Navy this year, officials familiar with the matter said. The latest trials are the third set of trials since August 2021.

“While the maiden sea trials in August last year were to establish propulsion, navigational suite and basic operations, the second sea trials in October-November witnessed the ship being put through its paces in terms of various machinery trials and flight trials,” the navy said in a statement.

President Ram Nath Kovind visited the carrier in Kochi on December 22 followed by a visit by Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on January 2.

Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Urjit Patel has been appointed as the vice-president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development bank based in Beijing.

He will take over from DJ Pandian, a former Gujarat chief secretary who has been AIIB’s vice-president and chief investment officer since 2016, the year the bank was set up with India as its second largest shareholder after China.

Patel is currently the chairperson of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, a research centre affiliated to the finance ministry.

China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander has found the first-ever on-site evidence of water on the surface of the moon, lending new evidence to the dryness of the satellite.

The study published on Saturday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances revealed that the lunar soil at the landing site contains less than 120 parts-per-million (ppm) water or 120 grams water per ton, and a light, vesicular rock carries 180 ppm, which are much drier than that on Earth.

The presence of water had been confirmed by remote observation but the lander has now detected signs of water in rocks and soil.

Three Chinese astronauts in the core module of the country's under-construction space station have for the first time successfully completed the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, China's national space agency said on Saturday. The astronauts in the core module teleoperated the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft to leave the front docking port of the core module's node cabin and move to the planed parking point, with the coordination of ground control engineers, state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

World Hindi Day is observed to commemorate first anniversary of World Hindi Conference that took place in 1975, while Hindi Divas is celebrated to mark the day Hindi was adopted as official language of India.

Millions of people around the world are observing the World Hindi Day 2021 or the Vishwa Hindi Divas today (January 10). The basic aim of observing this day is to promote the Hindi language worldwide.

However, there are some people who confuse World Hindi Day with the National Hindi Divas which is celebrated annually on September 14.

While National Hindi Divas is observed to commemorate the day the Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi as the official language of the Republic of India in 1949, the World Hindi Day is aimed at promoting Hindi at the global level.

Every year on Jan 10, World Hindi Day is marked to commemorate the anniversary of the first World Hindi Conference that took place in 1975 in Nagpur, Maharashtra. The then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, had inaugurated the conference.

The Union government has restored the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licences of Jawahar Lal University (JNU), Delhi University (DU), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT- Delhi), Ramakrishna Mission and 70 other non-government organisations (NGOs). The NGOs are said to have submitted documents and annual returns - mandatory requirements for renewal of licences, after which the licences were restored, said officials.

To receive foreign grants, NGOs have to register with the ministry of home affairs (MHA), which assigns a unique FCRA registration number, to be renewed every five years. Earlier, West Bengal-based Missionaries of Charity (MoC)'s FCRA licence was restored by the MHA after denying it citing "adverse inputs". Officials familiar with the process told ET that applications of several other prominent NGOs, including Oxfam, were under consideration but were yet to be processed. A home ministry official ..

Today is Pravasi Bharatiya Divas. It was on this day in 1915, Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Pravasi Bharatiya, returned to India. India is proud of its largest diaspora across the globe which consists of around 31 million people.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted people, especially the Indian diaspora on the day.

The Prime Minister said that Indian diaspora has distinguished itself all over the world and has excelled in different spheres. He said India is proud of their accomplishments.

External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar also greeted the Indian diaspora.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the 25th National Youth Festival on Wednesday, 12th January which is Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary. In a tweet, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur has urged people to register to join this grand event. People can register at the website -
pmevents.ncog.gov.in
. More than 20 thousand people have already registered for the event.

Mr Thakur said, youth across the country can share suggestions and innovative ideas for the Prime Minister’s speech on the occasion. The Prime Minister may include some of the suggestions in his speech. National Youth Festival aims to galvanize, ignite, unite and activate the young citizenry towards nation building, to unleash the true potential of our demographic dividend. A National Youth Summit will be organised on 13th January that aims to bring diverse cultures of India and integrate them into a united thread of Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat.