Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 27 December 2020

SSC CGL Current Affairs

Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 27 December 2020

::NATIONAL::

PM Modi to launch AB-PMJAY SEHAT scheme for Jammu and Kashmir

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on 26-12-2020 launch the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) SEHAT scheme for the residents of Jammu and Kashmir. The scheme will benefit as many as 21 lakh eligible people on the basis of Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011.
With the launch of AB-PMJAY SEHAT, all residents of Jammu and Kashmir, irrespective of their socio-economic status, will be covered under the scheme.
“The government is collecting details of beneficiary families who may be missing from the SECC 2011 database. This will ensure that all beneficiaries are enrolled at the earliest so that they can avail free healthcare services.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the scheme would work in convergence with Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY).
“The scheme would operate in insurance mode in convergence with Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY),” the statement read, adding that the benefits of the scheme would be portable across all 24,148 hospitals enlisted under ABPM-JAY in India.
The PM-JAY, world’s largest health insurance/assurance scheme fully financed by the government, provides a cover of Rs 500,000 per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation across public and private empanelled hospitals in India. The benefit of Rs 5,00,000 is on a family floater basis, which means that it can be used by one or all members of the family.

::ECONOMY::

India will become the fifth largest economy in 2025

India, which appears to have been pushed back to being the world’s sixth biggest economy in 2020, will again overtake the UK to become the fifth largest in 2025 and race to the third spot by 2030.
India had overtaken the UK in 2019 to become the fifth largest economy in the world but has been relegated to 6th spot in 2020.
“India has been knocked off course somewhat through the impact of the pandemic. As a result, after overtaking the UK in 2019, the UK overtakes India again in this year’s forecasts and stays ahead till 2024 before India takes over again,” the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said in an annual report published on Saturday. The UK appears to have overtaken India again during 2020 as a result of the weakness of the rupee, it said.
The CEBR forecasts that the Indian economy will expand by 9 per cent in 2021 and by 7 per cent in 2022.
“Growth will naturally slow as India becomes more economically developed, with the annual GDP growth expected to sink to 5.8 per cent in 2035.” “This growth trajectory will see India become the world’s third largest economy by 2030, overtaking the UK in 2025, Germany in 2027 and Japan in 2030,” it said.

::INTERNATIONAL::

UK and EU agree Brexit trade deal

A historic deal on the UK’s future trading and security relationship with the European Union has been struck on Christmas Eve, a week before the end of the Brexit transition period, triggering a victory cry from Downing Street and sombre reflection in Brussels.
As the country leaves the single market and customs union on 31 December, new arrangements allowing for tariff-free trade in goods and close police and judicial cooperation will come into force.
The announcement followed a final call between Boris Johnson in Downing Street and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in her Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels – at least the fifth such call over the last 24 hours.
The trade agreement – running to 2,000 pages – is unprecedented in scope, containing provisions on subjects ranging from civil nuclear cooperation and energy interconnections to fishing and aviation.
A No 10 spokesperson said: “The deal is done. Everything that the British public was promised during the 2016 referendum and in the general election last year is delivered by this deal.
The deal guarantees “zero tariff and zero quota” trade on goods that were worth £668bn in 2019. But it will also mean significant costs to businesses as exporters face a host of border checks from 1 January and freedom of movement in the EU will end for most UK nationals.

Science and Tech

Climate change: Extreme weather causes huge losses in 2020

The world continued to pay a very high price for extreme weather in 2020, according to a report from the charity Christian Aid.
Against a backdrop of climate change, its study lists 10 events that saw thousands of lives lost and major insurance costs.
Six of the events took place in Asia, with floods in China and India causing damages of more than $40bn.
In the US, record hurricanes and wildfires caused some $60bn in losses.
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While the world has been struggling to get to grips with the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people have also had to cope with
the impacts of extreme weather events.
Christian Aid's list of ten storms, floods and fires all cost at least $1.5bn - with nine of the 10 costing at least $5bn.
An unusually rainy monsoon season was associated with some of the most damaging storms in Asia, where some of the biggest losses were. Over a period of months, heavy flooding in India saw more than 2,000 deaths with millions of people displaced from their homes.
The value of the insured losses is estimated at $10bn.
China suffered even greater financial damage from flooding, running to around $32bn between June and October this year. The loss of life from these events was much smaller than in India.
While these were slow-moving disasters, some events did enormous damage in a short period of time.
Cyclone Amphan struck the Bay of Bengal in May and caused losses estimated at $13bn in just a few days.
"We saw record temperatures in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, straddling between 30C-33C," said Dr Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.

Sports

Australian Open: Roger Federer to miss the 2021 tournament

Six-time champion Roger Federer will miss the Australian Open for the first time in his career as he continues his recovery from knee surgery.
The 39-year-old Swiss, a 20-time Grand Slam winner, has not played since January because of two operations.
He hoped to return at the delayed Australian Open, which starts on 8 February in Melbourne.
"Roger ran out of time to get himself ready for the rigours of a Grand Slam," said tournament director Craig Tiley.