The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is organizing the first-ever Startup India Innovation Week from today to 16th of this month. This virtual week-long innovation celebration aims to commemorate the 75th year of India’s independence ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and is designed to showcase the spread and depth of entrepreneurship across India.

Interestingly, in the startup world, 2021 has been recognised as the 'year of unicorns,' with 40 Plus unicorns added in the year.

India is emerging as a global innovation hub, boasting the world's third-largest startup ecosystem. DPIIT has recognised more than 61 thousand startups as on date. The startups representing 55 industries, spread across 633 districts with at least one startup from every State and UT of the country have created over 6 lakh jobs since 2016. 45 per cent of the startups are from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and 45 per cent of them are represented by women entrepreneurs.

The week-long event will be launched today by Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal.

On 15th January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to interact with startups and address Startup India Innovation Week at 10.30 AM via video conferencing in closed-door event.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday flagged-in India’s first multi-dimensional adventure sports expedition conducted by National Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports in France. The expedition was conducted in November last year and the team comprising 12 people - eight Army personnel and four youths of Arunachal Pradesh. Mr Singh interacted with some of the members of the team present in New Delhi. He distributed appreciation certificates and commended the team for completing the expedition without any injuries to the members.
 
The expedition team carried out over 250 kilometres of winter trekking in the Alps Mountain Ranges, which included Tour De Mont Blanc trek covering the French, Swiss and Italian Alps. The expedition was organised as part of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.

Legendary Hollywood Actor, Sidney Poitier, who broke through racial barriers as the first black winner of the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Lilies Of The Field' in 1963 and inspired a generation during the civil rights movement, has died at the age of 94, an official from the Bahamian Ministry of foreign affairs said on Friday.
 
Former US President Barack Obama said Poitier epitomised dignity and race and had singular talent. His other notable movies were To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night, and  ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’.  Born in Miami on February 20, 1927, he was raised on a tomato farm in the Bahamas, and had just one year of formal schooling.
 
He struggled against poverty, illiteracy and prejudice to become one of the first Black actors to be known and accepted in major roles by mainstream audiences. In 2009, Poitier was awarded the highest U.S. civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Barack Obama.

The Sports Ministry’s Mission Olympic Cell (MOC) has approved the inclusion of Alpine Skiing athlete Md Arif Khan in the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) Core group, until the Winter Olympics, scheduled this February in Beijing, China.

Khan will take part in the Winter Olympics in the Slalom and Giant Slalom events. He has also been approved an amount of Rs 17.46 Lakh under TOPS towards training in Europe and procurement of equipment, ahead of the grand event in China. Khan’s current training base is in Austria, where he is accompanied by his coach and physio.

The MOC approved the European training camp for Khan for a total of 35 days, which started since his qualification for the Winter Olympics. He won the quota in giant slalom in a competition in Montenegro in December last year. A month prior, he earned the quota place for the Slalom event. The feat earned Khan the unique distinction of becoming the first Indian to win direct quota spots in two different Winter Olympics events, besides being the first athlete from the country to seal a berth at the Winter Olympic games 2022.

Level Up Citizen Experience with Passport Seva Programme V2.0

- E-Passports for Enhanced Customer Experience Soon

With an aim to enhance customer service and give a major tech upgrade for the delivery of passport related services to citizens, the ministry of external affairs has signed an agreement with TATA Consultancy Services for second phase of the Passport Seva Programme (PSP-V2.0).
The ministry has appointed them as the Service Provider for the project.

The PSP-V2.0 is a continuation and enhancement of PSP-V1.0 with focus on having a transparent, more accessible and reliable platform.

French MPs on Thursday approved a controversial vaccine pass bill which requires people to be fully vaccinated to be a part of social gatherings, sporting, leisure and cultural activities. The bill was passed by 214 votes against 93 and 27 abstentions. For a bill to pass in the French parliament, it requires at least 157 MPs to vote for it.

The bill requires people to be fully vaccinated to access “leisure activities, restaurants and drinking establishments, fairs, seminars and trade shows as well as interregional transport” along with cinema halls, theatres, museums and other public places.

France earlier required people to show a health pass to enter public places and access public life, but with this bill it has moved to replace the health pass with a vaccination pass.

The government on Thursday approved Rs 12,031 crore intra-state transmission scheme for evacuation of renewable energy from 20 Gw power projects in seven states including Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

The Green Energy Corridor (GEC) Phase-II, approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, targets addition of 10,750 circuit kilometres (ckm) of transmission lines and 27,500 Mega Volt-Amperes (MVA) transformation capacity of substations, an official statement said.

Union Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Jitendra Singh, inaugurated India’s first Open Rock Museum, here on Thursday.

The museum displays around 35 different varieties of rocks from different parts of India with ages ranging from 3.3 billion years to around 55 million years. These rocks also represent the deepest part of the Earth, up to 175 km of distance from the surface of the earth.

Addressed the scientists at the CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) later, Singh said that ‘Big Earth data’ occupies the strategic high ground in the era of knowledge economies and India is fully exploiting this new frontier, contributing to the advancement of earth science.

An international team of researchers has now reported a new tropical tree from the Ebo Forest in Cameroon and named it after American actor and conservationist Leonardo DiCaprio. The paper published yesterday in the journal PeerJ explains that the actor’s name was chosen as he had “lobbied extensively on social media to draw attention to threats for the numerous rare Ebo species from the logging concession that had been announced at Ebo earlier that year.”

The tree, named Uvariopsis dicaprio, is four metres tall, with 15 cm long leaves, and bears bunches of large, glossy, bright yellow-green flowers on its trunk. The tree is endemic to the Ebo forest and is so far only known from the lower submontane forest which has an elevation of 850 metres. The area of occupation of U. dicaprio is estimated as 4 sq. km.

The Cabinet has cleared a plan to build a new bridge connecting India and Nepal, Union Minister for Information Broadcasting Anurag Thakur announced on Thursday. The two countries are set to sign a memorandum of understanding regarding the bridge, which will be built over the Mahakali river and link Dharchula in Uttarakhand with Nepal’s Dharchula.

Thakur said the bridge will strengthen the relationship between the two countries. It will be completed within three years, he added.

The government said in a statement that with the signing of an MoU, the “diplomatic relation between the two countries will further improve”.

“As close neighbours, India and Nepal share unique ties of friendship and cooperation characterised by an open border and deep-rooted people-to-people contacts of kinship and culture. Both India and Nepal have been working together on different regional forums,” the government statement said.