Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 11 March 2022

SSC CGL Current Affairs

Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 11 March 2022

::NATIONAL::

Supreme Court issues notice on Media One’s plea challenging broadcast ban

The Supreme Court issued notice on a petition filed by Malayalam TV news channel Media One, questioning a ban on its broadcast imposed by the Centre on grounds of national security. The Malayalam regional channel on news and current affairs had earlier approached the Kerala high court which upheld the ban on March 2.
Posting the matter for hearing , a bench of justices Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, Surya Kant and VikramNath ordered the Centre to produce all relevant files that were relied upon by the high court before passing its order.
The channel, owned by Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited, was represented by senior advocates MukulRohatgi, Dushyant Dave and HuzefaAhmadi, who told the apex court that the high court relied on some sealed cover documents submitted by the ministry of home affairs (MHA) that the channel owners were not privy to.
“This is a gross case where a channel with 25 million viewers and more than 350 employees has been shut down without giving any reason. For a regional television channel to survive is difficult. Allow us to start. What will we feed our employees and their families who depend on us?” the petitioner counsel said.
The HC division bench, while dismissing the appeal by the channel management and employees, said, “Certain aspects relating to the security of the state are mentioned to the effect that Madhyamam Broadcasting Limited has some linkages with certain undesirable forces, which is stated to be a security threat”.
Rohatgi said, “The channel had applied for renewal of its uplinking and downlinking licence that was to expire in September last year. The renewal does not require security clearance. Yet the high court relied on it to uphold revocation of the licence.”

::INTERNATIONAL::

North Korea testing new ICBM system in ‘serious escalation’, says US

Two recent missile tests conducted by North Korea were of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system, the Pentagon said Thursday, marking what one US official called a "serious escalation" that will be punished with fresh sanctions.
According to North Korea, the February 26 and March 4 tests were focused on developing a reconnaissance satellite, but the Pentagon said rigorous analysis concluded they were actually experimental precursors to a likely full-range ICBM launch.
Any such launch would mark the end of a self-imposed moratorium Pyongyang has had in place since 2017 and send military tensions soaring on the Korean peninsula and beyond.
The North has carried out three ICBM tests; the last in November 2017 of a Hwasong-15 -- deemed powerful enough to reach Washington and the rest of the continental United States.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the recent two tests "involved a new intercontinental ballistic missile system" that Pyongyang had first showcased at a military parade in October 2020.
Those launches were made from the Sohae Satellite Launching Station on the northwest coast, and North Korea's official KCNA news agency reported Friday that leader Kim Jong Un visited the facility and ordered that it be expanded and modernized -- a move that will only fuel speculation of an imminent, disguised ICBM test.

::ECONOMY::

Digital Rupee with specific end use to improve efficacy: Deloitte

Given India’s progress on faster payments, Digital Rupee is likely to find early acceptance and commercialization and democratise financial access with features to specify the end use to improve its effectiveness, according to professional services firm Deloitte.
Digital Rupee can play a big role in reducing the cost of cash since the country India has a relatively large proportion of cash in circulation as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as compared to other countries.
Currently, most security clearing and settlement processes have a multi-day lag. With the introduction of Digital Rupee there would be significant increase in efficiencies and reduction in associated reconciliation costs.
Monish Shah, partner, Deloitte India said the non-interest bearing tokenised Digital Rupee is closest to cash and may pave the way for retail Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Multicurrency CBDCs may follow trade flows and India can participate with countries who are large and stable trading partners.
The global firm today released a study on CBDCs “Central Bank Digital Currencies: Building Block of the Future of Value Transfer”.
Digital Rupee in the Indian context will be legal tender issued by the RBI in a digital form. It will be the legal tender issued by RBI in a digital form as a medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account, it added. The Central bank is working to issue Digital rupee in the next financial year (Fy23).

::Science and tech::

C-DAC installs "Param Ganga" supercomputer at IIT Roorkee

The supercomputer infrastructure installed at various Institutes across the country have helped the R&D community to achieve major milestones, objectives and products for scientific and societal applications, according to the Ministry of Electronics & IT
The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) which is being steered jointly by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeiTY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has progressed significantly. The four major pillars of the NSM, namely, Infrastructure, Applications, R&D, HRD, have been functioning efficiently to realize the goal of developing indigenous supercomputing eco system of the nation.
C-DAC has been entrusted the responsibility to design, development, deployment and commissioning of the supercomputing systems under the build approach of Mission. The Mission plans to build and deploy 24 facilities with cumulative compute power of more than 64 Petaflops. Till now C-DAC has deployed 11 systems at IISc, IITs, IISER Pune, JNCASR, NABI-Mohali and C-DAC under NSM Phase-1 and Phase-2 with a cumulative compute power of more than 20 Petaflops. Total 36,00,000 computational jobs have been successfully completed by around 3600 researchers across the nation on the NSM systems to date. The supercomputer infrastructure installed at various Institutes across the country have helped the R&D community to achieve major milestones, objectives and products for scientific and societal applications, according to the Ministry of Electronics & IT.
Under the build approach, C-DAC is building an indigenous supercomputing ecosystem in a phased manner, which is leading to indigenously designed and manufactured supercomputers. It has designed and developed a compute server “Rudra" and high-speed interconnect “Trinetra" which are the major sub-assemblies required for supercomputers.
NSM Platform for Genomics and Drug Discovery.
Urban Modelling: Science Based Decision Support Framework to Address Urban Environment Issues (Meteorology, Hydrology, Air Quality).
Flood Early Warning and Prediction System for River Basins of India.
HPC Software Suite for Seismic Imaging to aid Oil and Gas Exploration.
As part of its tireless journey of success, NSM has now deployed “PARAM Ganga", a supercomputer at IIT Roorkee, with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops. The system is designed and commissioned by C-DAC under Phase 2 of the build approach of the NSM. Substantial components utilized to build this system are manufactured and assembled within India along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, which is a step towards the Make in India initiative of the Government. Availability of such a supercomputer will accelerate the research and development activities in multidisciplinary domains of science and engineering with a focus to provide computational power to user community of IIT Roorkee and neighbouring academic institutions.

::SPORTS::

Premier League: Focused Chelsea battle to 3-1 win at lowly Norwich

Chelsea put their off-pitch worries to one side as they beat a plucky Norwich City side 3-1 to consolidate third place in the Premier League at Carrow Road.
The players at Chelsea, whose Russian owner Roman Abramovich has been placed under sanctions by the British government, did not appear to let the controversy affect them as they swept aside struggling Norwich who look headed for relegation.
Chelsea took the lead after three minutes with a TrevohChalobah header and soon doubled the advantage when Mason Mount fired home before Kai Havertz wrapped up the win near the end. Norwich had pulled a goal back with a TeemuPukki penalty.
Chelsea, whose fans sang Abramovich's name throughout the match, are on 56 points from 27 games and moved eight points clear of Arsenal, who are fourth but have two games in hand. Norwich stayed bottom on 17 points.