Daily Current Affairs MCQ - July 19, 2021 - UPSC MCQ

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, called this week on the administration of President Joe Biden to greenlight a plan to transmit the Internet to people in Cuba via high-altitude balloons when their government has blocked access.

• For years, Alphabet — the parent company of Google — worked to perfect an Internet-balloon division service called Loon. It shut down that project in January, saying it wasn’t commercially viable.
• Prior to the shutdown, Loon balloons had been providing service in mountainous areas in Kenya through a partnership with a local telecom, Telkom Kenya.
• The service also helped provide wireless communications in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which destroyed the island’s mobile network.
• Loon partnered with AT&T to make service available.
• The Loon balloons were effectively cell towers the size of a tennis court.
• They floated 60,000 to 75,000 feet (18,000- 23,000 meters), above the Earth, well above commercial jetliner routes.
• Made of the commonplace plastic polyethylene, the balloons used solar panels for electricity and could deliver service to smartphones in partnership with a local telecom.
• Each balloon could serve thousands of people.
• But they had to be replaced every five months or so because of the harsh conditions in the stratosphere.
• And the balloons could be difficult to control.
• Hence both statements are correct.

Sometimes, the moon seems to move in mysterious ways. It is mostly circles and ovals. But there is also something else — a so-called wobble — animating those rotations and revolutions. According to a recent study, the phenomenon is expected to lead to more flooding here on Earth in the middle of the next decade.

• The moon wobble is nothing but a regular swaying in the moon’s orbit.
• It was first documented way back in 1728.
• This wobble takes over an 18.6-year period to complete, and continues in a cyclic fashion.
• The moon wobble impacts the gravitational pull of the moon, and therefore, indirectly influences the ebb and flow of tides here on the Earth. In fact, as per the NASA study, each wobble cycle has the power to amplify and suppress the tides on Earth.
• One half of the 18.6-year cycle suppresses the tides, which means that the high tides get lower, while the low tides get higher than normal. Once this cycle completes, the situation flips—in the subsequent cycle, the tides are amplified, with high tides getting higher and low tides, lower!
• The lunar cycle is expected to shift again by mid-2030, and in the coming phase, the tides will amplify once again.

Moon wobble and climate change: A double whammy situation

• The upcoming changes in the lunar cycle will pose a serious threat, as the amplified high tides coupled with the rising sea levels will make the risk of flooding far greater across all coastal regions of the globe.
• The study predicts that the high tide-associated floods—also known as nuisance floods or sunny day floods—may occur in clusters that could last for months or even for longer periods!

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

One of the worrying aspects of the Pegasus spyware is how it has evolved from its earlier spear-phishing methods using text links or messages to ‘zero-click’ attacks which do not require any action from the phone’s user.

• A zero-click attack helps spyware like Pegasus gain control over a device without human interaction or human error.
• So all awareness about how to avoid a phishing attack or which links not to click are pointless if the target is the system itself. Most of these attacks exploit software which receive data even before it can determine whether what is coming in is trustworthy or not, like an email client.
• Zero-click attacks are hard to detect given their nature and hence even harder to prevent. Detection becomes even harder in encrypted environments where there is no visibility on the data packets being sent or received.
• One of the things users can do is to ensure all operating systems and software are up to date so that they would have the patches for at least vulnerabilities that have been spotted.

Hence both statements are correct.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has amended CMVR 1989, formalising the registration process of vintage motor vehicles. This is aimed at preserving and promoting the heritage of old vehicles in India.

• All 2/4 wheelers, 50+ years old, maintained in their original form and which have not undergone any substantial overhaul, shall be defined as Vintage Motor Vehicles.
• Application for registration/re-registration shall be made as per Form 20 and shall be accompanied by an insurance policy, fee, bill of Entry in case of imported vehicles, and old RC in case of an already registered vehicle in India.
• The State Registering Authority shall issue a certificate of registration as per Form 23A, within 60 days.
• Vehicles already registered can retain their original Registration Mark. However, for fresh registration, registration mark will be assigned as “XX VA YY*”, where VA stands for vintage, XX stands for State Code, YY will be a two-letter series and “8” is a number from 0001 to 9999 allotted by the State Registering Authority.
• Fees for a new registration – Rs. 20,000 and subsequent re-registration – Rs. 5,000.
• Vintage motor vehicles shall not be driven on roads for regular/commercial purposes.
• Hence both statements are correct.

Indian Navy accepted the first two of its MH-60R Multi Role Helicopters (MRH) from US Navy in a ceremony held at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego on 16 Jul 21. The ceremony marked the formal transfer of these helicopters from US Navy to Indian Navy.

• MH-60R helicopters manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation, USA is an all-weather helicopter designed to support multiple missions with state of the art avionics/ sensors.
• 24 of these helicopters are being procured under Foreign Military Sales from the US Government. The helicopters would also be modified with several India Unique Equipment and weapons.
• The induction of these MRH would further enhance Indian Navy’s three dimensional capabilities.
• In order to exploit these potent helicopters, the first batch of Indian crew is presently undergoing training in USA.
• Hence both statements are correct.

The Indian Ocean Rim Association was set up with the objective of strengthening regional cooperation and sustainable development within the Indian Ocean Region.

The IORA is a regional forum, tripartite in nature, bringing together representatives of Government, Business and Academia, for promoting co-operation and closer interaction among them.

It is based on the principles of Open Regionalism for strengthening Economic Cooperation particularly on Trade Facilitation and Investment, Promotion as well as Social Development of the region.

The Coordinating Secretariat of IORA is located at Ebene, Mauritius

Doppler radars are crucial for gauging the intensity of rainfall and impact area in real-time. It can carry out weather surveillance up to a radius of 450-500 km.

India’s east coast, which is frequently affected by cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal, has radars operational at eight locations — Kolkata, Paradip, Gopalpur, Visakhapatnam, Machilipatanam, Sriharikota, Karaikal and Chennai.

Along the west coast, there are radars at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Goa and Mumbai. Other radars are operating from Srinagar, Patiala, Kufri, Delhi, Mukteshwar, Jaipur, Bhuj, Lucknow, Patna, Mohanbar, Agartala, Sohra, Bhopal, Hyderabad and Nagpur.

As per the Global Malaria Report 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2019 an estimated 229 million malaria cases and 409,000 deaths in 87 malaria-endemic countries are recorded, with a large concentration of the total malaria burden (94%) in Africa. India shared 2% of the total global malaria cases in 2019.

Since 1900, 127 countries have registered malaria elimination. In 2021, two countries El Salvador on February 25 and China on June 29 were declared malaria-free by the WHO.

Maldives, India, Sri Lanka took part in a virtual trilateral tabletop exercise ‘TTX-2021’ on maritime security. It was a virtual trilateral tabletop exercise, TTX-2021, held from July 14 to July 15, 2021. It was coordinated by the Maritime Warfare Centre, Mumbai.

On July 16, 2021, United States Navy handed over 1st two MH-60R multi-role helicopters to the Indian Navy from the United States Navy, at Naval Air Station in North Island, San Diego. The delivery of the 1st 2 MH-60R ‘Romeo’ helicopters to the Indian Navy marks the beginning of a new era of defence collaboration and partnership between the US and India.