Test: November 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 3 - UPSC MCQ

Real power vests with the elected representatives of the people in a parliamentary form of democracy. The Governor, as an appointee of the President, is a titular head of the State. The Governor acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers save in areas where the Constitution gives him discretion. The power to take decisions affecting the governance of the State or the nation is essentially entrusted to the elected arm of the state. 

Bihar is getting its second tiger reserve in Kaimur (Kaimur Wildlife Sanctuary), expected to be established by the end of 2023 or early 2024. The need for a second reserve arose as the Valmiki Tiger Reserve (Bihar’s 1st tiger reserve) reached its capacity to manage tigers.

Statement 2 is incorrect.

FCRA was enacted during the Emergency in 1976 amid apprehensions that foreign powers were interfering in India’s affairs by pumping money into the country through independent organisations.

The law sought to regulate foreign donations to individuals and associations so that they functioned “in a manner consistent with the values of a sovereign democratic republic”.

Broadly, the FCRA requires every person or NGO seeking to receive foreign donations to be (i) registered under the Act, (ii) to open a bank account for the receipt of the foreign funds in State Bank of India, Delhi, and (iii) to utilise those funds only for the purpose for which they have been received and as stipulated in the Act.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• Esports officially debuted as an official event at the Asian Games 2023 (in Hangzhou, China), featuring seven top titles, including League of Legends, and involving teams from over 30 countries.
• The competition included both PC and mobile games, covering multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and single-player genres. Gold medals were awarded for each game.
• Esports, short for electronic sports, refers to organized competitive video gaming. It involves individuals or teams competing in various video games at a professional level, often in tournaments with significant prizes.

India’s foreign exchange (Forex) reserves stand at around $578 billion. It is acquired by the RBI for the following reasons:

• To defend the rupee when needed
• To gain external account security
• To enable country to globalise further
• To import essentials for economic and social security
• To deter speculations
• To enjoy favourable rating by sovereign credit rating agencies.

Only Statement 3 is correct.

• Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) recently released the Landslide Atlas of India, a detailed guide identifying landslide hotspots in the country.
• Landslides are natural disasters occurring mainly in mountainous terrains where there are conducive conditions of soil, rock, geology and slope. A sudden movement of rock, boulders, earth or debris down a slope is termed as a landslide. Natural causes that trigger it include heavy rainfall, earthquakes, snowmelting and undercutting of slopes due to flooding.
• Landslides can also be caused by anthropogenic activities such as excavation, cutting of hills and trees, excessive infrastructure development, and overgrazing by cattle.
• Landslides are broadly classified based on the type of materials involved (rock, debris, soil, loose mud), type of movement of the material (fall, topple, slide, rotational slide or translational slide), and type of flow of the material. Another category is of landslides that spread laterally.
• ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad, has created a database of landslide-prone regions of India based on events during 1998 – 2022, primarily along the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. In addition to aerial images, high resolution satellite images captured using cameras Indian Remote Sensing (IRS-1D) PAN + LISS-III, satellites ResourceSat-1 and 2, etc., were used to study the landslides over the past 25 years. 
  

• CRISPR is short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which is a reference to the clustered and repetitive sequences of DNA found in bacteria, whose natural mechanism to fight some viral diseases is replicated in this gene-editing tool.
• It is simple, and still far more accurate — and it does not involve the introduction of any new gene from the outside. A bad stretch in the DNA sequence, which is the cause of disease or disorder, is located, cut, and removed — and then replaced with a ‘correct’ sequence. And the tools used to achieve this are not mechanical, but biochemical — specific protein and RNA molecules.
• The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that uses a similar method to protect itself from virus attacks.
• The first task is to identify the particular sequence of genes that is the cause of the trouble. Once that is done, an RNA molecule is programmed to locate this sequence on the DNA strand, just like the ‘find’ or ‘search’ function on a computer. After this, a special protein called Cas9, which is often described as ‘genetic scissors’, is used to break the DNA strand at specific points, and remove the bad sequence.
• A DNA strand, when broken, has a natural tendency to re-attach and heal itself. But if the auto-repair mechanism is allowed to continue, the bad sequence can regrow. So, scientists intervene during the auto-repair process by supplying the correct sequence of genetic codes, which attaches to the broken DNA strand.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Panthera:

• This is the genus of large wild cats that can roar. Among them, the lion, the leopard, and the jaguar are more closely related, while the other strand has the tiger and the snow leopard. The snow leopard is an exception to the rest of the group in that it can’t roar.
• Tiger is the largest of all wild cats and also the earliest Panthera member to exist. Primarily a forest animal, they range from the Siberian taiga to the Sunderban delta. The national animal of India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and South Korea, the tiger was voted the world’s favourite animal ahead of the dog in a 2004 Animal Planet global online poll.

• The Health Ministry’s unique “adopt a TB-patient” (Ni-kshay Mitras) initiative — probably the only one-of-its-kind in the world.
• The programme was brought in to fill the critical “community’’ elements into India’s fight towards the Pradhan Mantri TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan aimed at eliminating TB by 2025.
• Ni-kshay Mitra (Donor) for this programme includes co-operative societies, corporates, elected representatives, individuals, institutions, non-governmental organisations, political parties and partners who can support by adopting the health facilities (for individual donor), blocks/urban wards/districts/States for accelerating the response against TB to complement the government efforts, as per the district-specific requirements in coordination with the district administration.
• Free diagnostics, free drugs and Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana provided by the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP) to all the TB patients notified from both the public and the private sector.

• The Jharkhand Chief Minister has written to the Prime Minister, urging the recognition of the ‘Sarna’ religious code for tribal communities in the state.
• The request for the Sarna code as a separate religious code in the next Census has been a long-standing demand of tribal groups, and the Jharkhand Assembly passed a resolution for the ‘Sarna’ code on November 11, 2021.
• The Sarna religion is a nature-worshipping faith that is also known as “Sarna Dharma” or “Religion of the Holy Woods”. Followers of the Sarna religion pray to trees and hills and believe in protecting forest areas. Their holy grail is “Jal (water), Jungle (forest), Zameen (land)”.
• The Sarna religion is practised by a majority of the tribal community in Jharkhand. The tribal community celebrates the Sarhul festival, which is the New Year festival, as part of the Sarna religion. 

Only Statement 2 is correct.

• Human immunodeficiency virus or HIV is an infection that attacks the immune system by destroying the body’s immune cells called CD4, which help it respond to infection.
• Once HIV attacks the CD4 cells, it starts replicating and destroying the cells, weakening the body’s immune system and making it more prone to certain “opportunistic infections” that take advantage of the weak immune system.
• Bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluids, rectal fluids and breastmilk can be carriers for HIV.
• It can be transmitted through unprotected sex, transfusion of contaminated blood, sharing needles and syringes, and from a mother with HIV to her infant during pregnancy.
• Typically, the time between HIV transmission and AIDS diagnosis is 10-15 years, although it may occur sooner.

• Sundarbans is a mangrove area in the delta formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers in the Bay of Bengal.
• Sundarban Reserve Forest of Bangladesh is the largest mangrove forest in the world.
• It contains Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, Sundarban Wetland, Sundarbans National Park and Biosphere Reserve.
• It is the only mangrove forest in the world inhabited by tigers

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• Researchers at MIT have made significant progress in developing a novel superconducting qubit architecture that can perform operations between qubits with much greater accuracy than previously achieved.
• They used a relatively new type of superconducting qubit called fluxonium, which has a longer lifespan than traditional superconducting qubits.
• Fluxonium is a type of qubit (quantum bit) that is based on operations at important junctions in a superconducting circuit.
• Quantum computing is a multidisciplinary field that utilizes quantum mechanics to solve complex problems faster than classical computers. A qubit is the basic unit of information in quantum computing

Only Statement 1 is correct.

Statement 2 and 3 is correct.

About Cauvery River

• It is the third largest river – after Godavari and Krishna – in southern India, and the largest in the state of Tamil Nadu, known as ‘Ponni’ in Tamil. Originates in Karnataka (Talakaveri in the Brahmagiri range in the Western Ghats, Kodagu district) and eventually drains into the Bay of Bengal. Its left bank tributaries include Arkavathi, Hemavathi, Shimsa, and Harangi, while right bank tributaries consist of Lakshmantirtha, Suvarnavati, Noyil, Bhavani, Kabini, and Amaravathi.
  

Investment facilitation and Investment promotion: 

The difference between investment facilitation and investment promotion is that promotion focuses on presenting a location as an attractive investment destination, while facilitation aims to simplify the process for foreign investors to establish or expand their businesses by addressing practical challenges they may face.

The Kimberley Process is an international certification scheme that regulates trade in rough diamonds. It aims to prevent the flow of conflict diamonds while helping to protect legitimate trade in rough diamonds.

Rough diamonds are uncut, unpolished, and unprocessed diamonds in their natural form as they are mined from the earth or extracted from other sources like alluvial deposits.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• World Trade Organization (WTO) is a member-driven, consensus-based intergovernmental organisation that regulates and facilitates international trade between nations. It officially began operations on January 1, 1995, in accordance with the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement.
• WTO’s Agreement on TRIPS promotes IP rights enforcement.

India has retained its 40th position in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2023. The GII, published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), evaluates 132 economies on their innovation capabilities.

Statement 1 is incorrect.

• Pangolins are among the most trafficked wild mammals globally.
• India is home to two species:
  • Indian Pangolin (EN), found across the subcontinent
  • Chinese Pangolin (CR), is found across a larger area in south Asia.
• Both species are included under India’s Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act 
• Appendix I of CITES (meaning they are most endangered)
• Ecological Importance: They play a vital role in ecosystem management, mostly in aerating and adding moisture to the soil as well as the succession of plant communities through burrowing.
  

Statement 1 is incorrect.

Bojjannakonda, a centuries-old Buddhist heritage site in (at Sankaram, near Visakhapatnam) Andhra Pradesh.

The main stupa at Bojjannakonda is a rock-carved structure covered with bricks and adorned with Buddha sculptures. Lingalametta boasts rows of rock-cut monolithic stupas.

These sites show elements of all the three Buddhist phases:

• Theravada(Lord Buddha was considered a teacher)
• Mahayana(Buddhism was more devotional)
• Vajrayana(Buddhist tradition was more practised as Tantra and in esoteric form)

The site is famous for many votive stupas, rock-cut caves, brick-built edifices, early historic pottery, and Satavahana coins that date back to the 1st century AD.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• Cookies are a vital component of the digital world, enhancing online experiences by remembering login information, preferences, and interactions on websites.
• Cookies come in various types, including session cookies (temporary), persistent cookies (long-lasting), secure cookies (encrypted), and third-party cookies (from domains other than the visited site).

Benefits:

• They are like keys to a secure club, granting seamless access to websites. Cookies enable personalization, as seen on platforms like Amazon, which use them to provide tailored product recommendations and shopping cart persistence.
• India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 mandates explicit user consent for data collection via cookies.

• Fish mint is a unique herb known for its fish-like taste and smell.
• Its medicinal properties are well-documented in traditional Chinese, Japanese, Ayurvedic, and Siddha medicine. It grows in Southeast Asia, thriving in moist soils and resisting flooding.
• In India, it goes by various names and is used in salads and vegetables. Fish mint has numerous health benefits, including treating asthma, mitigating fever’s impact, preventing infectious oral diseases, and potentially aiding in managing COVID-19 symptoms.
• It is also linked to weight reduction, improved insulin resistance, and cosmetic applications for irritated skin.
  

• Gandhi established Tolstoy Farm in 1910 while supervising the satyagraha by South African Indians. The farm aimed to be a self-supporting agricultural commune that provided for basic needs and emphasized personal growth and spiritual understanding through hard labour.
• Tolstoy Farm as Gandhi’s Laboratory: Tolstoy Farm served as a laboratory for Gandhi to experiment with various principles and ideals, including diet, nature cure, harmonious living with nature, brahmacharya, and more.
• This reflected a shared philosophy with Count Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau
• Revival Efforts: Tolstoy Farm fell into disrepair during the Apartheid era. Post-1994, part of the farm has been developed into a ‘Peace Garden,’ and there are plans to involve the local community and teach Gandhian ideals.

Founded in 1974 by the initiative of nineteen Nations, the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) mission is to lead, advocate and facilitate the development of sustainable and innovative solutions for increased, optimised, safe and equitable use of Underground Space, enabling the tunnelling industry and its stakeholders to excel in delivering:

• Technical knowledge in the field of tunnelling and underground space through publication of guidelines, training, and creating platforms for exchanging information and ideas;
• Best practices in health-and-safety, planning, engineering, contracting, construction, operation, and maintenance;
• The tools to empower decision makers and allied professionals to make informed choices about the underground;
• Reliable and economical underground solutions to urbanisation and environmental challenges;
• Efficient and resilient underground infrastructure for current and future generations.
• Since then, ITA has considerably developed. Presently, ITA gathers 79 Member Nations and 219 Corporate or individual Affiliate Members.

India is a member nation of ITA.