News in Short

• South Africa’s star wicketkeeper-batter Quinton de Kock on December 30 announced his retirement from Test cricket with immediate effect.
• A former Test captain, De Kock is only 29 and it is believed that he will continue playing in the white-ball formats for the Proteas, with a lot of focus on franchise-based T20 leagues.
• De Kock made his Proteas Test debut against Australia in Gqeberha in 2014. In 54 matches, he scored 3300 runs with a highest score of 141 not out, at an average of 38.82 and strike rate of 70.93.

• Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit five littoral countries in the Indian Ocean Region including Maldives and Sri Lanka.
• Wang would on January 4 begin his five-nation trip in eastern Africa, visiting Eritrea and Kenya, before travelling to the island nation of Comoros, followed by Maldives and Sri Lanka.
• The visit would focus on ongoing projects and investments, while Colombo and Beijing try to iron out some differences.

• Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States have made a concept hovering rover that could levitate on the surface of the Moon and other asteroids.
• Using the surface charge of the airless space bodies and beam of ions that the levitator emits through its nozzles, the vehicle could defy gravity using electrostatic force.
• In the absence of an atmosphere, the Moon and other airless bodies like asteroids can accumulate electric fields, thanks to the constant exposure to the sun and its solar wind.

• Iran announced it had carried out a new space launch, in a move likely to irk Western powers amid tough talks on reviving a 2015 nuclear deal.
• Western governments worry that satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
• Iran insists its space programme is for civilian and defence purposes only, and does not breach the nuclear deal or any other international agreement.

• China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that it had standardised the names of 15 places in Zangnan, the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh.
• Among the official names of the 15 places, which were given precise coordinates, eight are residential areas, four are mountains, two are rivers, and one is a mountain pass.
• This is the second batch of standardised names of places in Arunachal Pradesh given by China. The first batch of the standardised names of six places was released in 2017.