Today's Event – 19th December 2021

• 1606 – The ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery depart England carrying settlers who founded, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States. 

• 1675 – The Great Swamp Fight, a pivotal battle in King Philip's War, gives the English settlers a bitterly won victory. 

• 1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled "The American Crisis".

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington's Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. 

• 1828 – Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun sparks the Nullification Crisis when he anonymously publishes the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.

• 1900 – Hopetoun Blunder: The first Governor-General of Australia John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, appoints Sir William Lyne premier of the new state of New South Wales, but he is unable to persuade other colonial politicians to join his government and is forced to resign. 

• 1900 – French parliament votes amnesty for all involved in scandalous army treason trial known as Dreyfus affair.

• 1907 – Two hundred thirty-nine coal miners die in the Darr Mine Disaster in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.

• 1912 – William Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over one thousand people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after 3+1⁄2 years in Sing Sing prison.

• 1920 – King Constantine I is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son Alexander of Greece and a plebiscite.

• 1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

• 1924 – German serial killer Fritz Haarmann is sentenced to death for a series of murders.

• 1927 – Three Indian revolutionaries, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Ashfaqulla Khan, are executed by the British Raj for participation in the Kakori conspiracy.

• 1929 – The Indian National Congress promulgates the Purna Swaraj (the Declaration of the Independence of India).

• 1932 – BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service.

• 1940 – Risto Ryti, the Prime Minister of Finland, is elected President of the Republic of Finland in a presidential election, which is exceptionally held by the 1937 electoral college.

• 1945 – John Amery, British Fascist, is executed at the age of 33 by the British Government for treason.

• 1946 – Start of the First Indochina War.

• 1956 – Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

• 1961 – India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India.

• 1967 – Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, is officially presumed dead.

• 1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.

• 1974 – Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford under the provisions of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• 1981 – Sixteen lives are lost when the Penlee lifeboat goes to the aid of the stricken coaster Union Star in heavy seas.

• 1983 – The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

• 1984 – The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from July 1, 1997 is signed in Beijing, China by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.

• 1986 – Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from exile in Gorky.

• 1995 – The United States Government restores federal recognition to the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Native American tribe.

• 1997 – SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104.

• 1998 – President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached.

• 2000 – The Leninist Guerrilla Units wing of the Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist attack a Nationalist Movement Party office in Istanbul, Turkey, killing one person and injuring three.

• 2001 – A record high barometric pressure of 1,085.6 hectopascals (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl, Mongolia.

• 2001 – Argentine economic crisis: December riots: Riots erupt in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

• 2012 – Park Geun-hye is elected the first female president of South Korea.

• 2013 – Spacecraft Gaia is launched by European Space Agency.

• 2016 – Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated while at an art exhibition in Ankara. The assassin, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, is shot and killed by a Turkish guard.

• 2016 – A vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills and injures multiple people at a Christmas market.

National Events- 

• India’s Omicron COVID count rose to 126 on Saturday after Karnataka and Kerala reported six and four cases respectively, while three more persons in Maharashtra also tested positive for the variant. According to central and state officials, omicron cases have been detected in 11 states and union territories — Maharashtra (43),Delhi (22),Rajasthan (17) and Karnataka (14),Telangana (8),Gujarat (7),Kerala (11),Andhra Pradesh (1),Chandigarh (1),Tamil Nadu (1) and West Bengal (1). 

•  Police said BJP OBC Morcha state secretary advocate Ranjith Sreenivas was attacked in Alappuzha city early morning at his house. A gang stormed into his house and hacked him several times when he was getting ready for his morning walk. Ranjith had contested the recent assembly elections as a BJP candidate.

•  The Muslim shopkeepers of the Sri Bhramaramba Mallikarjuna Swamy Temple complex in Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh have hailed the Supreme Court’s order directing that people from other faiths already holding shop licences in the temple premises must not be barred from participating in the auction for shops.

•  From linesmen to engineers, around 20,000 employees of Jammu and Kashmir’s Power Transmission and Distribution Corporations went on an indefinite strike on Saturday to protest against the administration’s decision to merge the Jammu and Kashmir divisions with the Power Grid Corporation of India.

• External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will host the 3rd meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue in New Delhi Sunday. Foreign Ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will participate. Their previous meeting was organised by India in October 2020 via video-conference. Three of these five, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, share a border with Afghanistan.

International Events- 

•  The students sat quietly as soldiers goose-stepped into the Hong Kong high school’s auditorium, hoisting a Chinese flag. The emcees spoke in Mandarin, the language of mainland China, rather than Cantonese, the city’s predominant language. Then Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, took the podium, to extol the importance of patriotism in the city’s youth.

•  Once, Marjah was the site of one of the biggest battles of the two-decade war, part of the United States’ counterinsurgency campaign to weaken the Taliban and build up a local government. But today, the grid-like patch of mud-walled hamlets and canals looks much like it did at the outset of the invasion in 2001: barely navigable roads, understaffed and damaged schools and clinics and withered crops, crippled by one of the worst droughts in decades.

•  At least 49 people have died in the central Philippine province of Bohol, which was hit hard by the powerful typhoon Rai that slammed into the country last week, provincial governor Arthur Yap said on Sunday, as relief
  operations continued.

•  Nations across Europe moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of Covid-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown.

• The Omicron variant has now been identified in 89 countries and is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant in places where community transmission is high, with a doubling time between 1.5–3 days, the WHO has said.

Job alerts-

• Software Technology Parks of India Jobs for Scientist, Technical Staff and other posts. Last date 16 January 2022

• National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology Jobs for Scientist-B and other posts. Last date 18 January 2022

• Jammu and Kashmir Directorate of Indian System of Medicine Jobs for Manager, Data Entry Operator and other posts. Last date 31 December 2021

Sports-

•  Cricket Australia Chief Executive Nick Hockley has called on fans to respect social distancing and other COVID-19 protocols in the wake of the incident that ruled Australia captain Pat Cummins out of the second Ashes Test.

•  England captain Joe Root was injured during the pre-game warm-ups and did not take the field for the start of day four of the second Ashes Test.

•  Chelsea forward Christian Pulisic has been named US Soccer’s male player of the year.

•  Second-placed Borussia Dortmund slumped to a year-ending 3-2 defeat at Hertha Berlin on Saturday to go into the winter break nine points behind leaders Bayern Munich.

• Look within, they say, to find the burning embers of ambition. Kidambi Srikanth had searched for last few years and found not even dying flickers as his career careened of its once promising course. On Saturday, the act of looking within, acquired a larger dimension, when Srikanth found the blazing fight staring him in the face with cool un-twinkling Lakshya Sen eyes. His younger compatriot drew out the winner in him, with chisel strikes and hammer-net shots, before Srikanth won 17-2, 21-14, 21-18 to become the first Indian to make the World Championship finals.

Awards and honours-

• TBA 

Technology-

•  App Privacy Report was one of the most powerful privacy features revealed by Apple when it announced the iOS 15 update in June during the company's WWDC 2021 event. The feature allows users to keep an eye on apps accessing their data on their iPhone, such as their camera, microphone, contacts or their location. When Apple released iOS 15 in September, it did not include a way for users to check the privacy report — this was finally included in the iOS 15.2 update that landed on December 13. Users can now easily monitor which apps are constantly accessing their information and deny permissions to those apps, while also keeping track of which URLs apps are connecting to all day.

• WhatsApp has a feature called View Once in place for both Android and iOS devices to let you send photos and videos that stay on the recipient's phone for a single view, and disappear after. It helps you share content which you don't want to remain available in your chat forever. The photos and videos shared using View Once will also not be saved in Photos or Gallery of the recipient's phone. WhatsApp brings ephemerality to some extent through the View Once feature. 

•  Google Photos is one of the most widely used photo and video backup services in the world, thanks to the popularity of Android smartphones. The service offers users the ability to back up their photos and videos from their smartphones or tablets, allowing access on other signed-in devices. However, Google also allows users the ability to share their images and videos with other Google users, as well as people who do not have a Google Account with the help of public links.

Economy – 

•  The government is working on providing enabling environment and market access to the gems and jewellery sector, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday.

•  The latest licensing round for setting up of city gas infrastructure saw as much as Rs 80,000 crore of investment being proposed for 61 geographical areas (GAs) that were put on auction, including Jammu, Nagpur, Pathankot and Madurai, oil regulator PNGRB said.

•  For the third straight week, the nation’s forex reserves recorded a fall, this time by $77 million to reach $635.828 billion during the week ended December 10, as per RBI data. In the previous week ended December 3, the reserves had slid by $1.783 billion to $635.905 billion.

•  The government has received an undisclosed number of financial bids for sale of its stake in Pawan Hans, moving the disinvestment process of the ailing helicopter operator to the last stage.

• As part of the pre-Budget consultation meeting, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday met experts from sectors including health, education, rural development, and water and sanitation. Some of the stakeholders are learnt to have suggested that the government keep up the focus on creation of health infrastructure and take steps to ensure that the country is adequately prepared to tackle any Covid-like health emergency in future.

Environment –

•  TBA

Local –

• Passengers traveling on the Violet Line on Sunday morning were stranded at the metro stations for nearly about 30 minutes after the train services were delayed due to a signal failure on Sunday. The Delhi Metro in an official tweet said: “Services were delayed due to minor signalling issue but it is resolved now. It was small issue and the services on the section are fine and normal now.” 

•  YASMEEN WANKHEDE, sister of Narcotics Control Bureau(NCB) Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede on Saturday approached a magistrate court in Andheri with a criminal complaint seeking action against cabinet minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik for alleged defamatory statements against her.

•  Three farmers have been found dead in West Bengal’s rice bowl Purba Bardhaman district in the last two days, police said on Sunday. The deceased farmers’ families claimed that they have died by suicide after Cyclone Jawad-induced untimely rain destroyed potato and paddy crops, while the district administration is probing the incidents.

•  Tamil Nadu on Saturday requested the Centre to issue further set of guidelines on testing international passengers arriving in the state after a person from a ‘non-risk country’ tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid-19 recently, becoming the first such case reported in the state.

• Six more cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected in Karnataka, taking the state’s tally to fourteen on Saturday. Of these, one is a passenger from the UK, while five others have been detected in two educational institutions in Dakshina Kannada district.

Person in News – 

• TBA 

GK – 

What is the rank of India in Organ Donation, as per Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation (GODT)?

[A] First
[B] Third
[C] Fifth
[D] Seventh

‘HAECHI-II’, which was seen in the news recently, is an operation undertaken by which institution?

[A] Central Bureau of Investigation
[B] INTERPOL
[C] Federal Bureau of Investigation
[D] International Monetary Fund

Which institution released ‘The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2021’ report?

[A] Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
[B] NABARD
[C] NITI Aayog
[D] World Bank

What is the rank of India in Organ Donation, as per Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation (GODT)?

[A] First
[B] Third
[C] Fifth
[D] Seventh

‘HAECHI-II’, which was seen in the news recently, is an operation undertaken by which institution?

[A] Central Bureau of Investigation
[B] INTERPOL
[C] Federal Bureau of Investigation
[D] International Monetary Fund