{"id":72462,"date":"2025-11-08T12:47:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T07:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=72462"},"modified":"2025-11-08T15:31:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T10:01:45","slug":"christmas-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/christmas-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Christmas Island Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google plans to build a large artificial intelligence data centre on Australia&#8217;s remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Department of Defence earlier this year.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Christmas Island<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is an island in the <\/span><b>Indian Ocean.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It lies about 360 km <\/span><b>south of the island of Java <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><b>1,400 km<\/b> <b>northwest of Australia.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is <\/span><b>administered <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as an <\/span><b>external territory of Australia.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The island is the <\/span><b>summit of an oceanic mountain whose highest point <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the island is <\/span><b>Murray Hil<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l, rising to 1,184 feet (361 metres) in the western part of the island.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>main settlement and chief port<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is at <\/span><b>Flying Fish Cove <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the northeastern part of the island.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>History<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although <\/span><b>Europeans sighted Christmas Island in 1615,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> it was <\/span><b>named for the day of its rediscovery in 1643.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>discovery of phosphate on the island in 1887 led to the UK annexing it<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the following year.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b>In 1900 Christmas Island was incorporated in the British crown colony<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the Straits Settlements with its capital at Singapore.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During<\/span><b> World War II<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the island was <\/span><b>occupied by the Japanese.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b>In 1958<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the island became an <\/span><b>Australian territory.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Tropical rainforest covers most<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of Christmas Island, and fauna includes large numbers of seabirds, small reptiles, land crabs, and insects.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the island\u2019s <\/span><b>best-known animal residents<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is the <\/span><b>Christmas Island red crab <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Gecarcoidea natalis), whose <\/span><b>spectacular annual emergence and migration<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> draws large numbers of tourists.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>population <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">includes many <\/span><b>ethnic Chinese,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a <\/span><b>small number of people of European ancestry,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>Malay labourers <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">recruited mainly from Malaysia, Singapore, and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Economy<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The territory\u2019s economy <\/span><b>was long based<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> almost<\/span><b> entirely on the mining and extraction of phosphate.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b>With the recoverable reserves of phosphate nearly exhausted,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> efforts were turned toward developing <\/span><b>tourism<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b style=\"font-size: inherit;\">Small-scale subsistence cropping and fishing <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are practiced, but <\/span><b style=\"font-size: inherit;\">most food is imported.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/google-planning-powerful-ai-data-centre-tiny-australian-indian-ocean-outpost-2025-11-06\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">REUT<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas Island is an island in the Indian Ocean. Read more about Christmas Island, Location, History, Economy, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":72526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3602,246,21,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-72462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-christmas-island","9":"tag-prelims-current-affairs","10":"tag-prelims-pointers","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}