Today's Event – 15th December 2021

• 1167 – Sicilian Chancellor Stephen du Perche moves the royal court to Messina to prevent a rebellion.

• 1256 – Mongol forces under Hulagu enter and dismantle the Nizari Ismaili (Assassin) stronghold at Alamut Castle (in present-day Iran) as part of their offensive on Islamic southwest Asia.

• 1270 – The Nizari Ismaili garrison of Gerdkuh, Persia surrender after 17 years to the Mongols. 

• 1467 – Stephen III of Moldavia defeats Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, with the latter being injured thrice, at the Battle of Baia.

• 1651 – Castle Cornet in Guernsey, the last stronghold which had supported the King in the Third English Civil War, surrenders.

• 1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

• 1836 – The U.S. Patent Office building in Washington, D.C., nearly burns to the ground, destroying all 9,957 patents issued by the federal government to that date, as well as 7,000 related patent models

• 1869 – The short-lived Republic of Ezo is proclaimed in the Ezo area of Japan. It is the first attempt to establish a democracy in Japan.

• 1890 – Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is killed on Standing Rock Indian Reservation, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

• 1893 – Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World" a.k.a. the "New World Symphony") by Antonín Dvořák premieres in a public afternoon rehearsal at Carnegie Hall in New York City, followed by a concert premiere on the evening of December 16

• 1899 – British Army forces are defeated at the Battle of Colenso in Natal, South Africa, the third and final battle fought during the Black Week of the Second Boer War.

• 1903 – Italian American food cart vendor Italo Marchiony receives a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that makes ice cream cones. 

• 1905 – The Pushkin House is established in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to preserve the cultural heritage of Alexander Pushkin.

• 1906 – The London Underground's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opens.

• 1945 – Occupation of Japan/Shinto Directive: General Douglas MacArthur orders that Shinto be abolished as the state religion of Japan.

• 1960 – Richard Pavlick is arrested for plotting to assassinate U.S. President-Elect John F. Kennedy.

• 1960 – King Mahendra of Nepal suspends the country's constitution, dissolves parliament, dismisses the cabinet, and imposes direct rule.

• 1961 – Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.

• 1965 – Project Gemini: Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. Four orbits later, it achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7.

• 1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully lands on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet.

• 1973 – John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10.

• 1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

• 1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People's Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan).

• 1981 – A suicide car bombing targeting the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, levels the embassy and kills 61 people, including Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon. The attack is considered the first modern suicide bombing.

• 1989 – Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights relating the abolition of capital punishment is adopted.

• 1993 – The Troubles: The Downing Street Declaration is issued by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

• 1997 – Tajikistan Airlines Flight 3183 crashes in the desert near Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, killing 85.

• 2000 – The third reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down.

• 2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 spent to stabilize it, without fixing its famous lean.

• 2005 – Introduction of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor into USAF active service.

• 2010 – A boat carrying 90 asylum seekers crashes into rocks off the coast of Christmas Island, Australia, killing 48 people.

• 2013 – The South Sudanese Civil War begins when opposition leaders Dr. Riek Machar, Pagan Amum and Rebecca Nyandeng vote to boycott the meeting of the National Liberation Council at Nyakuron.

• 2014 – Gunman Man Haron Monis takes 18 hostages inside a café in Martin Place for 16 hours in Sydney. Monis and two hostages are killed when police raid the café the following morning.

• 2017 – A 6.5Mw earthquake strikes the Indonesian island of Java in the city of Tasikmalaya, resulting in four deaths.

National Events- 

•  The Lok Sabha proceedings were adjourned until 2 pm after the Opposition disrupted the Question Hour demanding action against Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra’s whose son is an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence.

•  The Indian Air Force (IAF) Wednesday said Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the IAF chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on December 8, had succumbed to injuries.

•  Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday gave an adjournment of business notice in the Lok Sabha to discuss a report submitted by the Special Investigation Team of the Uttar Pradesh police on the Lakhimpur Kheri violence. He stated that the Centre must sack Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra, whose son Ashish Mishra has been arrested in the case.

•  Amid concerns over Omicron, India’s Covid Task Force chief V K Paul on Tuesday said there is a potential scenario that “our vaccines may become ineffective in emerging situations” and emphasised the need to be ready to modify the vaccines as per requirement.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several Union Ministers paid tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on his 71st death anniversary on Wednesday.

International Events- 

•  Dozens of people are trapped on the rooftop of a Hong Kong skyscraper after a major fire broke out Wednesday, as firefighters rushed to rescue them and put out the blaze.

•  The detection of the omicron variant has brought renewed attention, and a new urgency, to the worldwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign, which experts say remains among the most powerful tools at our disposal when it comes to preventing dangerous new variants. Most wealthy countries have vaccinated significant shares of their populations and have rapidly moved into the booster-dose phase. But one year into the global vaccine rollout, the gap between vaccination rates in high- and low-income countries is wider than ever.

•  District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine on Tuesday announced a civil lawsuit against two extremist groups over their role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol Hill. The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, along with more than 30 individuals who are associated with the groups, have been accused of “conspiring to terrorise the District of Columbia,” according to Racine.

• Former US Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada didn’t attend a renaming ceremony Tuesday making him the namesake of the busy international airport in Las Vegas, but praise was heaped upon him for his foresight and state infrastructure advocacy. 

• Researchers in Hong Kong have urged people to get a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible, after a study showed insufficient antibodies were generated by the Sinovac and BioNTech products to fend off Omicron.

Job alerts-

• Jammu Postal Circle Jobs for Postal Assistant and other posts. Last date 20th December 2021

• IISER Berhampur Jobs for Non-Teaching and other posts. Last date 25th December 2021

• Anna University jobs for PA, peon and other posts. Last date 24th December 2021

• OSSC Jobs for welder, assistant, fitter and other posts. Last date 19th January 2022

• OPSC Jobs for Civil Judge and other posts. Last date 20th January 2021

Sports-

•  Tony Estanguet, the Olympic gold medalist who is in charge of delivering the Paris Games, predicted that it will be a “true moment of marvellous madness” after revealing the grand plans, also a potential security nightmare, on Monday. For the first time ever, an Olympic opening ceremony will be taken out of the stadium and in the middle of the city, with the public being allowed to watch it for free.

•  The Sports Authority of India (SAI) received 17 complaints of sexual harassment since 2018, the government said during the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

•  Stephen Curry has shot his way to the top of the NBA record book for 3-pointers. Curry hit his 2,974th 3-pointer Tuesday night in the first quarter of the Golden State Warriors’ game against the New York Knicks, breaking the record set by Ray Allen.

•  India’s return to the hockey field was littered with basic errors and lack of discipline as the Olympic bronze medallists squandered a two-goal lead to be held to a 2-2 draw by South Korea in their Asian Champions Trophy opener in Dhaka on Tuesday.

• Three years before he made his Test debut, two years before he masterminded his domestic side Gujarat to its first-ever Ranji Trophy title, Jasprit Bumrah stopped by at the Vizianagaram Stadium, aglow in his Indian Premier League fame, wooing scattered crowds to the ground.

Technology-

• WhatsApp started causing random crashes on iPhone for some users on early Wednesday. The issue was initially believed to be limited to iOS 15.2, though some affected users later reported on social media that it was disrupting the experience on earlier iOS versions as well. The complaints that emerged on the Web suggest that the crashing was not exclusive to a specific region as WhatsApp users from various parts of the world faced the same problem where the app crashes shortly after it is accessed. 

•  Jio has silently introduced a new prepaid recharge plan. The new plan is also the cheapest prepaid recharge plan in the country and also by any network providers in the country. It costs Re. 1 and has a validity of 30 days. The cheapest recharge plan is great for users who don't want to purchase more data than required. Furthermore, the recharge plan is visible on the MyJio app but not on the website, at the time of writing. Jio has also revised its Rs. 119 prepaid recharge plan, making it the most affordable offering in its unlimited plans portfolio.

•  WhatsApp has announced the launch of a programme to adopt 500 villages in Karnataka and Maharashtra as part of the company's push to promote digital payments in the country. WhatsApp offers a payment service in the country that is based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The company announced the Digital Payments Utsav programme at its Fuel For India 2021 annual event, with the goal of helping the "next 500 million" users join the digital payments ecosystem, and shared results of its two-month pilot programme.

• Microsoft Teams one-on-one calls are getting end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on the platform, the company has announced. This update intends to enhance the security and privacy of the calls. IT admins will now be able to integrate and control this feature in their organisations. Announcing the general availability of E2EE on Teams, John Gruszczyk, a technical product marketing manager for Microsoft, commented, "Multiple enterprise customers in the US and Europe across industries such as aerospace, manufacturing, telecommunications, and professional services are in the process of rolling out E2EE for Teams calls”. 

• The US agency charged with defending the country against hacking said on Tuesday the majority of attacks it has seen using a recently disclosed flaw in widely used open-source software were minor, with many of them seeking to hijack computing power to mine cryptocurrency.

Economy – 

•  Former Twitter India Head Manish Maheshwari has quit the company to work on an ed-tech venture.

•  The initial public offering (IPO) of Shriram Properties was subscribed 4.60 times over the 2.93 crore shares that were on offer during the subscription period from December 8-10, 2021. The price band was fixed at Rs 113-118 per share.

• The initial public offer of footwear retailer Metro Brands Limited was subscribed 3.64 times on the last day of subscription on Tuesday. The Rs 1,367.5-crore IPO received bids for 6,96,12,480 shares against 1,91,45,070 shares on offer, according to NSE data.

• Shares of One 97 Communications, the parent company of digital payments platform Paytm, fell as much as 13 per cent in the early morning deals on Wednesday after the lock-in period of its institutional investors expired. Paytm had a disappointing debut last month, listing at a 9 per cent discount from its issue price and hitting a lower circuit on the first day. 

•  The 30-share index slumped 212.65 points or 0.37 per cent to 57,904.44 in the opening trade. Similarly, the Nifty fell 67.55 points or 0.39 per cent to 17,257.3

Local –

• Days after a Delhi court came down heavily on the Delhi Police and called the incident of alleged gangster Rohit Gehlot being shot in the leg staged, Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana has directed a deputy commissioner of police (DCP) rank officer to conduct an inquiry. 

•  Eight more cases of the Omicron variant were identified in Maharashtra on Tuesday, taking the state’s total Omicron tally to 28 and India’s at 57. None of the new cases has any international travel history, but one had travelled to Bengaluru and another to Delhi.

•  The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed the West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) to ensure CCTV coverage in every polling booth of Kolkata during the local municipal corporation election on December 19.

• Vigilance raids were held in different parts of Tamil Nadu at the premises of senior AIADMK leader and former Minister P Thangamani, in connection with a disproportionate assets case, police said. 

• A late-night notification on Tuesday issued by the Karnataka State Law University (KSLU) on holding examinations from today has left students in a tizzy. It came hours after the Dharwad Bench of the Karnataka High Court quashed a KSLU examination notification for students of second and fourth semesters. However, with no direction for students attending five-year courses, the university announced examinations for them, beginning Wednesday.

GK – 

What is the theme of the “International Universal Health Coverage Day” 2021?

[A] Sustainable Health Coverage
[B] Leave No One’s Health Behind: Invest in Health Systems for All
[C] Universal access to Healthcare
[D] Equitable and healthy society

Island Territory of New Caledonia recently voted to stay part of which country?

[A] France
[B] USA
[C] Japan
[D] Russia

‘Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program’ is associated with which country?

[A] USA
[B] China
[C] Russia
[D] Australia

As per the updated DICGC Act, account holders can access their insured deposit amount within …… days

[A] 30
[B] 45
[C] 90
[D] 180

Buxa tiger reserve, recently seen in the news, is located in which state/UT?

[A] West Bengal
[B] Andhra Pradesh
[C] Bihar
[D] Meghalaya