Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 17 February 2022

SSC CGL Current Affairs

Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 17 February 2022

::NATIONAL::

India’s energy needs to double in 20 years: PM

India’s energy needs are expected to double in the next 20 years and denying people this energy would be the equivalent of denying life to millions, Prime Minister NarendraModi said in his inaugural address at the World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS).
“Energy requirements of the people of India are expected to nearly double in the next twenty years. Denying this energy would be denying life itself to millions. Successful climate actions also need adequate financing. For this, developed countries need to fulfil their commitments on finance and technology transfer,” he said during his address.
“We firmly believe in fulfilling all our commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We have also raised our ambitions during CoP26 at Glasgow… I firmly believe, and I am sure you would agree, that environmental sustainability can only be achieved through climate justice. Sustainability requires co-ordinated action for the global commons,” PM Modi said.
“We have heard people call our planet fragile. But it is not the planet that is fragile. It is us. We are fragile. Our commitments to the planet, to nature, have also been fragile. A lot has been said over the last 50 years, since the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Very little has been done. But in India, we have walked the talk.”
Speaking at the Glasgow climate summit on November 1 last year, PM Modi announced that India’s non-fossil energy capacity will reach 500GW by 2030, meeting 50% of the country’s energy requirements by then. He said that India will reduce its total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030, reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45% by 2030, over 2005 levels, and achieve net-zero emissions by 2070.
Modi also added in Glasgow that such ambitious action will be impossible without adequate climate finance from developed nations, calling on rich countries to make $1 trillion available as climate finance “as soon as possible.”
On Wednesday, he said equitable energy access to the poor has been a cornerstone of India’s environmental policy. Through UjjwalaYojana, more than 90 million households have been provided access to clean cooking fuel, he said. And under the PM-KUSUM scheme, “we have taken renewable energy to the farmers,” he added. The PM also referred to India’s LED bulb distribution scheme, that has been running for over seven years , and has helped save more than 220 billion units of electricity, and reduced 180 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
India is a mega-diverse country. With 2.4% of the world’s land area, it accounts for nearly 8% of the world’s species, PM Modi said adding that the International Union for Conservation of Nature has recently recognised India’s efforts. The Aravali Biodiversity Park in Gurugram was recognised an “other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM) site” for effective conservation of biodiversity by IUCN.

::INTERNATIONAL::

UK foreign minister to visit Ukraine, tells Russia to end military buildup

British foreign minister Liz Truss will reaffirm support for Ukrainian sovereignty on a trip to Kyiv this week as part of efforts to deter a possible Russian invasion, urging Moscow to end its military buildup along the border.
The United States and NATO said on Wednesday that Russia was still building up troops around Ukraine despite Moscow's insistence it was pulling back, questioning President Vladimir Putin's stated desire to negotiate a solution to the crisis.
Truss will hold talks with Ukraine's Foreign Minister DmytroKuleba and will then deliver a speech in Kyiv where she will warn Russia it faces economic pain and global isolation if it invades its former Soviet neighbour.
"I urge Russia to take the path of diplomacy. We are ready to talk," Truss will say, according to extracts of her speech released by her office.
"But we are very clear – if they decide to continue down the path of aggression, there will be massive consequences, bringing Russia severe economic costs and pariah status."
But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said moving troops and tanks back and forth did not amount to proof of a pullout.
Truss will also travel to the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday where G7 foreign ministers will meet to discuss the ongoing crisis.

::ECONOMY::

Supreme Court asks Future Group to move Delhi HC over NCLT proceedings

The Supreme Court asked the Future Group to approach the Delhi high court for a nod to go ahead with proceedings before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLT) on the group's deal with Reliance.
The high court has listed for hearing on February 24 a batch of pleas concerning the ongoing legal tussle between US e-commerce major Amazon and Future Group over Future Retail Ltd's (FRL's) ₹24,731 crore merger deal with Reliance Retail.
Also read | Decoding the multilayered Amazon-Future-Reliance legal drama
The NCLT, has meanwhile, adjourned till February 25, the hearing on the plea of Amazon, seeking an interim stay over the order passed by fair trade regulator CCI, which suspended the over-two-year-old approval for its deal with Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL).
On February 1, the Supreme Court had set aside three high court orders, including the attachment of properties of Future Group and its directors and the refusal to grant a stay on the final arbitral award which had restrained FRL from going ahead with its deal with Reliance while ordering fresh adjudication.

::SCIENCE AND TECH::

Chinese space junk, not SpaceX rocket debris, headed for Moon, say astronomers

An astronomer who claimed a piece of one of Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 booster rockets was going to slam into the moon in March has admitted making a mistake — he now says the hunk of space junk belongs to a Chinese rocket.
Bill Gray set the astronomy world abuzz when he made a very specific prediction about a moon impact on March 4, 2022.
While Gray has slightly tweaked his calculations to put the impact a few kilometers away from the original impact spot, he now thinks the “long cylinder, spinning slowly” is not part of a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. booster, but belongs to a Chinese rocket sent to the moon in October 2014.
In an amended blog post at the weekend, Gray, of Project Pluto, which supplies software to amateur and professional astronomers, wrote: “We now know that this object is not actually the SpaceX booster: that was a misidentification, by me.”
And in a fresh post entitled “Corrected identification of object about to hit the moon,” he wrote: “Back in March 2015, I (mis)identified this object as 2015-007B, the second stage of the DSCOVR spacecraft. We now have good evidence that it is actually 2014-065B, the booster for the Chang'e 5-T1 lunar mission. (It will, however, still hit the moon within a few kilometers of the predicted spot on 2022 March 4 at 12:25 UTC, within a few seconds of the predicted time.)”
Gray said his best guess is that the booster followed the DSCVR weather satellite launched by the Falcon 9 on its million-mile journey into deep space, and is now probably in an orbit around the sun.

::SPORTS::

IND vs WI 1st T20I: Bishnoi makes first impression, Rohit sets up easy win

IshanKishan, SuryakumarYadav play steady knocks after skipper's 40 off 19 balls as India win first T20 by 6 wickets with seven balls to spare at the Eden Gardens.
With the summer approaching, Eden Gardens can be notorious for its dew factor in the evening. Anything beating a fielder on the inner circle is impossible to cut off. Pulling it back for the bowlers though is a tricky two-paced Eden Gardens pitch that plays up even more when spinners come into the fore. YuzvendraChahal and debutant Ravi Bishnoi are leg-spinners but while Chahal can be loopier in his action, Bishnoi more or less built his reputation on googlies. On this pitch, it was too good a concoction for West Indies in the first T20.