Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 15 December 2020

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

The first GRSE-built Project 17A stealth frigate 'Himgiri', which will add to the might of the Indian Navy, was launched on Monday, with Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat describing it as a historic moment.
The CDS said the new generation Project 17A ships with advanced stealth features, state-of-the-art weapons and sensor systems will be a major boost to Indian Navy's mobility to undertake a variety of challenging tasks.
He complimented the workforce at the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) Limited here for the launch of the first of the three Project 17A warships within schedule despite the COVID-19 pandemic situation, terming it as a singular achievement.
P17A ships are the most advanced guided missile frigates, each of which is 149 metres long, with displacement of approximately 6,670 tonnes and a speed of 28 knots, according to an official.
The contract of Rs 19,294 crore for construction of three highly advanced stealth frigates under Project 17A is the largest ever order won by the GRSE, he said.
The contract was signed between the Ministry of Defence and the GRSE on February 20, 2015 and the first ship is expected to be handed over to the Navy in 2023 and the next two ships in 2024 and 2025 respectively, the official said. PTI

Retail inflation slowed to a three-month low at 6.93% in November as vegetable prices eased, data released by the statistics department.
RBI is unlikely to cut interest rates anytime soon as inflation still remains well above the upper limit of its tolerance level of 6%. In November, food inflation eased to 9.43% from 11% a month ago, with the vegetable price index softening to 15.6% from 22.5% in October. However, inflation for protein-based items such as meat and fish (16.7%), egg (20.3%) and pulses (17.9%) remained high.
Data released by the industry department showed wholesale price inflation inching to a nine-month high at 1.55% in November as inflation for manufactured items accelerated.
RBI, in its latest monetary policy review earlier this month, kept its policy rate unchanged at 4% but signalled it would keep its policy accommodative to support growth.
It, however, raised its inflation forecast to 6.8% in Q3, 5.8% in the fourth and 4.6-5.2% in the first half of next fiscal. RBI has cautioned that the inflation outlook has turned adverse relative to expectations in the past two months. “The substantial wedge between wholesale and retail inflation points to supply-side bottlenecks and large margins being charged to consumers.

UK unemployment surged in the three months through October, exposing the brutal impact of the coronavirus on the economy.
The figures will revive criticism that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak acted too late when he expanded programs to support jobs and businesses hit by the worst downturn in 300 years. Many firms had already taken the decision to axe jobs.
The number of people looking for work jumped surged by 241,000 in the period, taking the jobless rate to 4.9%, the highest since 2016.
It followed an increase of 243,000 in the third quarter, a rise last seen in the financial crisis of 2009. Job cuts, known as redundancies in the UK, increased by a record 217,000 through October, while the number of people on payrolls was 819,000 below pre-pandemic levels in November.
The government expects the jobless rate to rise to 7.5%, and a potential no-deal exit from the European Union’s single market will make it even harder for the economy to bounce back.
Since October, the emergence of vaccines for the virus have raised hopes that the UK economy can start getting back to normal in 2021, albeit with new barriers to trade from Brexit.
Bloomberg Economics now sees unemployment peaking at 7% next year, instead of 7.3%. Nevertheless, the Confederation of British Industry doesn’t see output returning to pre-pandemic levels until the following year.

India, Iran and Uzbekistan will hold their first trilateral meeting on joint use of the strategic Chabahar port next week against the backdrop of reports that the incoming Joe Biden administration in the US will re-engage Tehran on the nuclear issue.
The first trilateral working group meeting will be held virtually on December 14, and will be jointly chaired by deputy ministers of Iran and Uzbekistan and a secretary from India, the external affairs ministry.
The announcement came a day after Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev proposed during a summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that a trilateral meeting should be held with Iran to promote Chabahar port.
India currently operates one of the terminals of Chabahar port that it has developed. The strategic project has been given a waiver from sanctions imposed by the US on Iran in view of its importance in shipping cargo and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and re-imposed crippling sanctions as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign. However, president-elect Joe Biden has said he will offer Iran a “credible path back to diplomacy” since dealing with Tehran’s nuclear programme is the best way to achieve stability in the region.

Google has a subsidiary called Project Loon, which comprises of helium-filled balloons that aim to deliver internet access to remote parts of the world.
These high-altitude balloons are found in the stratosphere and create aerial wireless networks.
The subsidiary announced that its balloons reached 1 million hours of stratospheric flight. And in October, it was revealed that Loon set a new record for the longest stratospheric flight by staying in air for 312 days, which means almost a year.
It also covered a distance of some 135,000 miles (roughly 2.1 lakh kms). Now, in the Nature journal, Loon executive has explained how these helium balloons were able to stay in air for almost a year.
As it turns out, a lot of it has to do with the wind currents and machine learning.

The International Cricket Council announced that as many as 86 teams will fight for the 15 spots in the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia, the qualifying phase comprising 225 matches across 13 months.
The 15 spots will be decided through a four-step qualifying process which starts in April next year. Eleven regional qualification tournaments across five regions have been rescheduled to 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and will now feed into the 2022 Australia event.
For the first time ever Hungary, Romania and Serbia will be competing for men’s T20 World Cup qualification and Finland will play host to an ICC event for the very first time.
It will also be the first time that Japan will host a men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier, on the back of the U19 World Cup Qualifier they will host two weeks before.
At regional level there will be 67 associate members taking part.