Today's Event – 18th December 2021

• 1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán),officially marking the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China

• 1499 – A rebellion breaks out in Alpujarras in response to the forced conversions of Muslims in Spain.

• 1622 – Portuguese forces score a military victory over the Kingdom of Kongo at the Battle of Mbumbi in present-day Angola.

• 1655 – The Whitehall Conference ends with the determination that there was no law preventing Jews from re-entering England after the Edict of Expulsion of 1290.

• 1777 – The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by the American rebels over British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October.

• 1787 – New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

• 1793 – Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by French Royalists to Lord Samuel Hood; renamed HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck.

• 1833 – The national anthem of the Russian Empire, "God Save the Tsar!", is first performed.

• 1854 – The Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada abolishes the seigneurial system.

• 1865 – US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the USA.

• 1878 – The Al-Thani family become the rulers of the state of Qatar.

• 1892 – Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

• 1898 – Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the first officially recognized land speed record of 63.159 km/h (39.245 mph) in a Jeantaud electric car.

• 1917 – The resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress.

• 1932 – The Chicago Bears defeat the Portsmouth Spartans in the first NFL playoff game to win the NFL Championship.

• 1935 – The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Ceylon.

• 1958 – Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched.

• 1966 – Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by astronomer Richard Walker.

• 1973 – Soviet Soyuz Programme: Soyuz 13, crewed by cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from Baikonur in the Soviet Union.

• 1977 – United Airlines Flight 2860 crashes near Kaysville, Utah, killing all three crew members on board. 

• 1977 – SA de Transport Aérien Flight 730 crashes near Madeira Airport in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, killing 36. 

• 1981 – First flight of the Russian heavy strategic bomber Tu-160, the world's largest combat aircraft, largest supersonic aircraft and largest variable-sweep wing aircraft built.

• 1995 – A Lockheed L-188 Electra crashes in Jamba, Cuando Cubango, Angola, killing 141

• 1999 – NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.

• 2002 – California gubernatorial recall: Then Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier.

• 2005 – The Chadian Civil War begins when rebel groups, allegedly backed by neighbouring Sudan, launch an attack in Adré.

• 2006 – The first of a series of floods strikes Malaysia. The death toll of all flooding is at least 118, with over 400,000 people displaced.

• 2006 – United Arab Emirates holds its first-ever elections.

• 2015 – Kellingley Colliery, the last deep coal mine in Great Britain, closes.

• 2017 – Amtrak Cascades passenger train 501, derailed near DuPont, Washington, a city in United States near Olympia, Washington killing six people, and injuring 70 others.

• 2018 – List of bolides: A meteor exploded over the Bering Sea with a force over 10 times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

• 2019 – The United States House of Representatives impeaches Donald Trump for the first time

National Events- 

•  A plea has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking direction to the Centre and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to formulate a policy to issue Rs 50 coins to provide equal opportunity and ease of doing business to the visually impaired citizens of the country.

•  The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Saturday successfully tested the new generation nuclear-capable ballistic missile Agni Prime from APJ Abdul Kalam Island off the coast of Odisha. This is the second time the missile was tested this year after June.

•  INDIA HAS told friendly countries like the US, Russia and France that defence equipment for the country should be made within India now, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Saturday. He mentioned that India cannot remain dependent on other nations for its security needs.

• The Court of Inquiry being conducted by a tri-services inquiry team will be a fair process and mandate given to it is to investigate every single angle of the incident, Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari on Saturday. 

• India on Saturday successfully tested the new generation nuclear-capable ballistic missile ‘Agni P’ from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam island off the Odisha coast, the Defence Research and Development Organisation said.

International Events- 

• For over a year now, 41-year-old Tashi Thondup Bhutia has been selling Indian food in the night market in Taipei’s Shida neighborhood. In his street-side stall called ‘Namaste Taiwan’, covered with Indian pipli lanterns and the Indian national flag hanging on a string, Bhutia sells plates of freshly prepared chana masala, chicken curry and masala chai, among other foods. 

•  China’s oldest person, Alimihan Seyiti, has died at the age of 135 in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, local authorities said on Saturday.

• At least 12 people were killed and 11 others injured in Pakistan’s financial capital of Karachi on Saturday when a massive blast, apparently triggered by a gas explosion in a sewage canal, ripped through the building of a private bank situated on it, police said. 

•  Two years into the pandemic, the surging desire for tests in the face of limited supply threatens to thwart President Joe Biden’s response, but it is hardly a new problem. The United States has bungled testing from the outset of the pandemic, experts say, and matching supply with demand has been a persistent challenge for both the Trump and Biden administrations.

• Nearly a year into his presidency, Biden’s promise to “shut down the virus, not the country” remains only partly fulfilled. Stubborn resistance to vaccines among millions and the arrival of the fast-spreading new variant have upended the president’s plans for a hopeful, end-of-the-year holiday season.

Job alerts-

• Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences Jobs for Administrative Officer, Executive Engineer, Assistant Director, Assistant Engineer, LDC and other posts. Last date 25 January 2022

• Bandhan Bank Limited Jobs for Administration/ Back Office Activities and other posts. Last date 30 December 2021

• Survey Settlement and Land Records Jobs for Land Surveyor and other posts. Last date 31 December 2021

Sports-

• The All-India Senior selection committee has named KL Rahul as vice-captain for the upcoming 3-match Test series against South Africa. KL Rahul replaces Rohit Sharma as vice-captain, who was ruled out of the Test series owing to a hamstring injury. 

•  The chair umpire for Saturday’s Lakshya Sen vs Kidambi Srikanth semifinal ought to carry a fire extinguisher with him, climbing up his perch. Fires will be lit, flames will crackle at the net on Saturday as two of India’s pyrotechnicians of shuttle hover around the net to get the better of each other in a historic World Championship men’s singles showdown.

•  The Premier League lost another match to a COVID-19 outbreak in a squad when Aston Villa’s home game against Burnley was postponed around two hours before kickoff on Saturday.

•  Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh courted a controversy during the Under-15 Nationals in Ranchi when he slapped a grappler, who insisted on competing in the tournament after being disqualified for being over-aged.

• Former champions ATK Mohun Bagan on Saturday parted ways with their most successful coach, Antonio Lopez Habas, the first head to roll amid a forgettable outing in the ongoing Indian Super League.

Awards and honours-

•  TBA

Technology-

•  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Friday that four telecom providers will pay a total of $6 million (roughly Rs. 45,60,81,000) to settle investigations into compliance with the agency's 911 reliability rules during 2020 network outages.

•  Alibaba this week revealed an ambitious vision to grow its Southeast Asian e-commerce business to $100 billion (roughly Rs. 7,60,140 crore) in transacted sales as well as a pledge to reach carbon neutrality in its operations by 2030.

•  Shortly after announcing that they would introduce NFTs linked to Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl, the developers of the upcoming post-apocalyptic game have said that they were abandoning the plan “after receiving feedback” from the public. “The interests of our fans and players are the top priority for the team,” the company said. The first-person shooter game is being developed and published by GSC Game World and is set to release in April 2022 on Microsoft Windows and the Xbox Series X/S. GSC Game World has announced that it will lead the community to own a piece of the game using blockchain technology.

•  Several employees of a Foxconn India unit, which makes iPhones for Apple, were hospitalised on Saturday after a bout of food poisoning, a source familiar with the matter said.

• The power sector is undergoing a rapid change globally as the world shifts to renewable energy and cuts down on using fossil fuels. However, a big roadblock to generating electricity from wind and solar energy is their intermittent nature due to unfavourable environmental conditions. To address this problem, storage was found in hydrogen batteries. But these, too, suffered from poor efficiency and required massive space to build, which made them complex for thermal management. Now, researchers at a Japanese institute say they have found a way to make renewable energy more efficient.

Economy – 

• Although the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is yet to jack up key policy rates, interest rates are slowly showing signs of rising in the financial system, in line with the global trend. At a time when global central banks are scheduled to tighten their monetary policies and hike rates, Indian banks and financial entities have started announcing rate hikes. 

•  The number of spam calls in India rose significantly over the last year, with over 202 million spam calls being made by just one spammer in 10 months, from January to October, Truecaller said in a report. The company, however, refused to identify the spammer.

•  The Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday discussed various aspects, including the status, of the central bank digital currency (CBDC). RBI officials informed the board that a pilot project for the introduction of CBDC will be launched soon.

•  Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said Friday India was likely to enter negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with Canada in March or April 2022, and that members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had as a group approached India to begin free trade negotiations. FTA talks are ongoing with the UAE, Australia, EU and Israel, and are set to start with the UK next month.

• Even as pressure intensifying as the session progressed, the benchmark Sensex plunged by 889 points to 57,011.74 and the Nifty Index lost 263 points at 16,985.20. The rupee closed at 76.06 against the US dollar. Foreign investors pulled out another Rs 2,069 crore from Indian markets on Friday, taking the total outflows to Rs 26,600 crore in December so far. Weak global sentiments inundated domestic indices as markets are digesting the hawkish stance of major international central banks amid surging omicron cases. Sensex has fallen 1,775 points in the current week.

Environment –

•  TBA

Local –

•  Hours after arresting a 49-year-old man for allegedly planting a tiffin bomb inside Rohini district court to kill his neighbour, who is an advocate, the Delhi Police Saturday said the accused is a DRDO scientist who was locked in a court battle with the advocate.

•  A 29-year-old man with a travel history to the US has been diagnosed with the new variant Omicron in Mumbai. He has been vaccinated with three doses of Pfizer, according to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

•  West Bengal has secured the top slot in the country in primary education, as per a report by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. Reacting to the report, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted on Friday, “Great news for West Bengal. We have secured the top rank among larger states on the ‘Foundational Literacy & Numeracy Index’. I congratulate all teachers, guardians & members of our Education Department for this outstanding achievement!”

•  A large number of women workers of a company near here, which assembles and manufactures smart phone spares, resorted to a flash protest, blocking the busy Chennai-Bengaluru highway that led to traffic snarl on Saturday. The protest, which also spilled over to two other locations, affecting traffic on the Chennai-Tirupati route as well for sometime, was called off after the intervention of authorities.

• Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) facility Aircraft Upgrade Research & Design Centre (AURDC) has launched a new upgrade programme for MiG-29K of Indian Navy to enhance its lethality through the integration of Laser Pod and new laser guided bomb.

Person in News – 

•  TBA

GK – 

Which organisation released the ‘State of the world’s land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW 2021) report?

[A] IMF
[B] FAO
[C] World Bank
[D] WEF

Which institution released the “Tracking Universal Coverage – 2021 Global Monitoring Report”?

[A] WTO
[B] WHO
[C] FAO
[D] WEF

“bob World Wave”, launched by Bank of Baroda (BoB) is a …………..

[A] Global Debit Card
[B] Wearable Device
[C] AI Chatbot
[D] Investment Platform

Researchers at which institution have developed an RT-PCR based kit to detect Omicron variant?

[A] IISC
[B] IIT- Delhi
[C] NIV
[D] AIIMS

Which institution has developed the supersonic missile assisted torpedo system, recently launched by India?

[A] DRDO
[B] ISRO
[C] NSIL
[D] BHEL