UPSC Exam: Weekly GK and Current Affairs Quiz Nov 19 - Nov 26

Preferential Trade Agreement – Tariff liberalisation on a limited number of lines;

Free Trade Agreement – Elimination of Tariffs on items covering substantial bilateral trade between the (FTA) partner countries;

Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement – CECA or CEPA or BTIA terms are used to describe Agreements which consist of an integrated package of Agreement on Goods, Services, Investment, Mutual Recognition, Intellectual Property, etc.

The Union IT Minister Ravishankar Prasad has recently launched “Digidhan Abhiyan” to enable every citizen, small traders and merchants to adopt digital payments in their everyday financial transactions. During the campaign, citizens will be informed about various modes of digital payments by educating them to download, install and transact digital payments.

Both the statements are correct.

The Mental Healthcare Bill 2016 provides for mental healthcare and services for persons with mental illness, and also decriminalises suicide.

The bill ensures every person shall have a right to access mental health care and treatment from mental health services run or funded by the appropriate government. It also assures free treatment for such persons if they are homeless or poor, even if they do not possess a Below Poverty Line card.

One of the clauses in the bill decriminalises suicide, stating that a person who attempts suicide should be presumed to have severe stress, and shall not be punished.

Niche construction – the phenomenon by which evolving organisms modify their environment, which in turn increases or decreases their own survival rate – has become much talked about in the literature. Proponents of this theory have argued that it has been neglected in the Standard Evolutionary Theory, which therefore needs a major overhauling. This has been debunked in the paper by the authors. Proponents of niche construction use the following examples often: The use of lactose to feed adult humans – which is believed to have evolved along with cattle husbandry – and the high incidence of sickle cell anaemia in populations where there is a prevalence of malaria, due to yam cultivation. 

A nine-day mega social occasion Rashtriya Sanskriti Mahotsava exhibiting traditional folk dance and music was introduced in Tawang.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization which regulates international trade. The WTO is attempting to complete negotiations on the Doha Development Round, which was launched in 2001 with an explicit focus on developing countries. As of June 2012, the future of the Doha Round remained uncertain: the work programme lists 21 subjects in which the original deadline of 1 January 2005 was missed, and the round is still incomplete. The conflict between free trade on industrial goods and services but retention of protectionism on farm subsidies to domestic agricultural sector (requested by developed countries) and the substantiation of fair trade on agricultural products (requested by developing countries) remain the major obstacles. This impasse has made it impossible to launch new WTO negotiations beyond the Doha Development Round. As a result, there have been an increasing number of bilateral free trade agreements between governments. As of July 2012, there were various negotiation groups in the WTO system for the current agricultural trade negotiation which is in the condition of stalemate.

Dwarf Planets:  A dwarf planet is an object in orbit around the Sun that is large enough (massive enough) to have its own gravity pull itself into a round (or nearly round) shape. Generally, a dwarf planet is smaller than Mercury. A dwarf planet may also orbit in a zone that has many other objects in it. For example, an orbit within the asteroid belt is in a zone with lots of other objects. At present there are five dwarf planets- Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea.

Basel III is an international regulatory accord that introduced a set of reforms designed to improve the regulation, supervision and risk management within the banking sector. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published the first version of Basel III in late 2009, giving banks approximately three years to satisfy all requirements. Largely in response to the credit crisis, banks are required to maintain proper leverage ratios and meet certain minimum capital requirements.

Both are definitions of micro enterprise.

Explanation:

Article 148:- Comptroller and Auditor General of India

(1) There shall be a Comptroller and Auditor General of India who shall be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal and shall only be removed from office in like manner and on the like grounds as a Judge of the Supreme Court

(2) Every person appointed to be the Comptroller and Auditor General of India shall, before he enters upon his office, make and subscribe before the President, or some person appointed in that behalf by him, an oath or affirmation according to the form set out for the purpose in the Third Schedule

(3) The salary and other conditions of service of the Comptroller and Auditor General shall be such as may be determined by Parliament by law and, until they are so determined, shall be as specified in the Second Schedule: Provided that neither the salary of a Comptroller and Auditor General nor his rights in respect of leave of absence, pension or age of retirement shall be varied to his disadvantage after his appointment

(4) The Comptroller and Auditor General shall not be eligible for further office either under the Government of India or under the Government of any State after he has ceased to hold his office

(5) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution and of any law made by Parliament, the conditions of service of persons serving in the Indian Audit and Accounts Department and the administrative powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General shall be such as may be prescribed by rules made by the President after consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General

(6) The Administrative expenses of the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, including all salaries, allowances and pensions payable to or in respect of pensions serving in that office, shall be charged upon the Consolidated Fund of India.

Border road Organisation: Ministry of Defence

The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas and friendly neighbouring countries. It is staffed by officers and troops drawn from the Indian Army’s Corps of Engineers, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Army Service Corps, Military Police and army personnel on extra regimental employment. Officers from the Border Roads Engineering Service and personnel from the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF) form the parent cadre of the Border Roads Organisation. Currently, the organisation maintains operations in twenty-one states, one UT (Andaman and Nicobar Islands), and neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.

African elephants have much larger ears that look sort of like the continent of Africa, while Asian elephants have smaller, round ears. African elephants have rounded heads, while Asian elephants have a twin-domed head, which means there’s a divot line running up the head. Both male and female African elephants can have tusks, but only male Asian elephants can grow them.

Warmer water temperatures can result in coral bleaching. When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

Many of the world’s top coral reef scientists met at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Hawaii to discuss the challenges facing coral reefs. Sunscreen and other personal care product ingredients were hot topics. Of particular concern to scientists was oxybenzone, a chemical used in sunscreens to protect our skin from damaging UV light. Oxybenzone is bad news for corals, harming them by;

1. Increasing a coral’s susceptibility to bleaching
2. Damaging coral DNA which interferes with reproduction
3. Causing deformities and growth anomalies
4. Disrupting a coral’s hormonal processes for growth and reproduction

1. The National Groundwater Management Improvement Scheme(NGMIS), supported by the World Bank, is under active consideration of the Government.
2. The Scheme envisages sustainable ground water managementthrough suitable supply/demand side interventions with stakeholder participation in identified priority areas of seven States viz. Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
3. The estimated cost of the Scheme is Rs. 6,000 crore and it will be implemented over a period of six years.
4. Half of the total cost of the scheme, called National Groundwater Management Improvement Scheme (NGMIS), will be supported by the World Bank as loan while the remaining half (Rs 3,000 crore) will be funded by the government through budgetary support.
5. Infrastructure development includes building recharge structure\facilities for utilising rain water directly from roof top, creating rain water harvesting structures for conserving surplus run-off and recharging ground water in aquifers.
6. Program is being designed in coordination with existing programmes and activities including MGNREGA, the Pradhan Mantri Krishi SinchayeeYojana (PMKSY) as well as the National Hydrology Project (NHP).
7. The programme will also have a ‘performance-based incentive’ system as its key component to reward states and local authorities for improvement in groundwater management. The NGMIS will also look after the policy aspects of irrigation efficiency, crop diversification and artificial recharge in the areas which witnessed uncontrolled and unplanned groundwater extraction over the last 50 years.
8. The water resources ministry will coordinate implementation of the programme which includes clear targets for groundwater recharge, water use efficiency and aquifer protection by participating states.

Issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Both the statements are correct.

Terai Arc Landscape, The Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) extends from River Yamuna in India in the west to River Bagmati in Nepal in the east covering an area of about 50,000 km2. The landscape is part of the Tarai-Duar Savana Eco-region and has two distinct physiographic regions, the terai and the bhabar. TAL has one of the world’s densest tiger populations and houses 14 protected areas of which five are in Nepal. The tiger, the Asian elephant and the Indian rhinoceros are three flagship species of the region.

INS Viraat is an aircraft carrier.

Both statements are correct.

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN has existing free trade agreements (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand). RCEP negotiations were formally launched in November 2012 at the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia. RCEP is viewed as an alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which excludes China and India and includes several nations of the Americas. In 2016, prospective RCEP member states accounted for a population of 3.4 billion people with a total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $21.4 trillion, approximately 30 percent of the world’s GDP.

UNICEF brings out this report.

Holocrine glands

All are correct.

Comets show a glowing tail.

Equatorial Type

Maurya dynasty was founded by his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya.

Kaveri

Government share is 49%.

All are correct.

Pali and Prakrit.

Statement 2 is incorrect.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Ramananda

All three 

Ujwal Bharat

Ministry of Home Affairs

1. Border Security Force (BSF)- Pakistan and Bangladesh
2. Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)- Riots and Naxals
3. Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP)- China
4. Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).- Nepal and Bhutan

Medicines are within the purview of GST.

North Eastern states

Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam & West Bengal

Bimbisara

Numbers 2 and 3 are physical processes.

Anaerobic digestion

Jim Corbett National Park is in Uttarakhand and Manas Wildlife Sanctuary is in Assam.

Kosi is a left-bank tributary of Ganga.

Doppler Effect is the is the change in frequency or wavelength of a wave for an observer who is moving relative to the wave source.

Both are correct.

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)

Chamundaraya

The Nizam of Hyderabad in 1798.

It is a bilateral maritime exercise between India and Oman.

The World Economic Forum

Rakhigarhi in Haryana.

• ‘YUVA’ initiative by Delhi Police aims to connect with youth by upgrading their skill as per their competencies.
• It will help them to get a gainful employment under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna under the Ministry of Skill Development.
• National Skill Development Corporation shall be providing skill training to the youth under ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna’ (PMKVY) and CII will provide job linked training through its Sector Skill Councils who are connected to industry and thereby provide job guarantee.

• Article 164 (1A) provides for limiting the number of ministers in the state cabinets. The total number of ministers including the Chief Minister, has to be within 15 per cent of the total number of members of the legislative assembly of the state.

Article 164 (1A) was inserted in the Constitution on the recommendation of the National Commission for Review of the Working of the Constitution headed by former Chief Justice of India, M.N. Venkatachaliah on misuse and drainage of public money to put a ban on over-sized cabinet.

Plants in the Bromeliaceae are widely represented in their natural climates across the Americas. One species can be found in Africa. They can be found at altitudes from sea level to 4200 meters, from rainforests to deserts. 1814 species are epiphytes, some are lithophytes, and some are terrestrial. Accordingly, these plants can be found in the Andean highlands, from northern Chile to Colombia, in the Sechura Desert of coastal Peru, in the cloud forests of Central and South America, in southern United States from southern Virginia to Florida to Texas, and in far southern Arizona.

Temperate grassland

• Argentina- Pampas
• North America- Prairie
• Africa-Veld
• Asia- Steppe

Both are correct.

The Murlen National Park (MNP) is located in the Champhai district of Mizoram and covers an area of 200 square kilometres. The tropical, semi-evergreen and sub montane Forests of Murlen are home to a rich variety of flora and fauna. It is home to the tiger, leopard, sambar, barking deer, Malayan giant squirrel, Hume’s pheasant, etc. About 15 species of mammals, 150 species of birds, 35 species of Medicinal plants, 2 species of bamboos, and 4 species of orchids so far have been recorded in this Park.

Gudhapurushas were detectives.