Daily Current Affairs MCQ- March 13, 2022 - UPSC MCQ

In a first big effort to address the political crisis in Myanmar, leaders and foreign ministers of ASEAN countries met in Indonesia capital Jakarta. They urged the head of the Myanmar army, General Min Aung Hlaing to end the violent crackdown in the country and release political prisoners immediately.

• ASEAN stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
• It is a political and economic union of 10 Asian countries aimed at promoting the economic growth, political stability of individual countries, and regional stability among its members.
• Apart from economic and political growth it also focuses on social progress, social-cultural evolution among member countries, and provision of mechanisms and strategies to resolve differences peacefully.
• It was formed in 1967, by Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Membership has been extended to include Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Brunei.
• Secretariat is in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

India has recorded 30 percent increase in agricultural export in 2020-21 in comparison to 2019-20 financial year despite Covid situation.

• Around 1.3 lakh crore rupees of export business was recorded last year in comparison to 1.1 lakh crore rupees in previous financial year.
• The pandemic gave an opportunity to India to provide reliable food and nutritional support to the world.
• APEDA Chairman said that there was also 40 percent increase in export of organic products this year in comparison to last financial year. He said that there was huge demand for herbal and medicinal products in Europe, US and Middle East and APEDA is all set to explore all the options.

Hence both statements are correct.

In the middle of the second wave of Covid-19, hospitals in India are facing a massive shortage of medical oxygen.

• In a bid to meet the high demand of the critical gas meant for the treatment of coronavirus patients, the Indian Railways has started “Oxygen Express” trains to ferry oxygen tankers from one region to another.
• The Railways are running the “Oxygen Express” train from steel plants that produce oxygen to different parts of the country.
• The first Oxygen Express carrying seven tankers filled with liquid medical oxygen from Visakhapatnam reached Maharashtra on April 23.

Hence both statements are correct.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered setting up of 551 oxygen plants inside government hospitals across the country. PM CARES Fund will provide financial aid in setting up these plants.

• The Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund).
• It was created on 27 March 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic in India.
• The fund will be used for combating, and containment and relief efforts against the coronavirus outbreak and similar pandemic like situations in the future.
• Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is the chairman of the fund, and trustees include the Minister of Defence, Rajnath Singh; Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah, and Minister of Finance, Nirmala Sitharaman, in the Government of India.
• Donations to this fund will be exempted from income tax under section 80(G).

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

Invoking the Disaster Management Act, the Centre ordered States that all liquid oxygen, including the existing stock with private plants, should be made available to the government and will be used for medical purposes only.

• Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen.
• Liquid oxygen has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetic: it can be suspended between the poles of a powerful horseshoe magnet.
• Because of its cryogenic nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle.
• Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidizing agent: organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen.

Uses

• It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which has continued to the present.
• In commerce, liquid oxygen is classified as an industrial gas and is widely used for industrial and medical purposes. Liquid oxygen is obtained from the oxygen found naturally in air by fractional distillation in a cryogenic air separation plant.
• Liquid oxygen is the most common cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with liquid hydrogen, kerosene or methane.

Hence both statements are correct.

The Union Home Ministry has said it does not maintain a centralised list of volunteers enrolled under the cybercrime volunteer programme since the police is a “State subject” under the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.

• The Ministry, through its cybercrime grievance portal, cybercrime.gov.in, aims to raise a group of “cybercrime volunteers” to flag “unlawful content” on the Internet.
• A digital rights group, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), has said the programme enables a culture of surveillance and could create potential social distrust by encouraging civilians to report the online activities of other citizens.
• In response to a RTI application on the total number of volunteers who have applied under the Cybercrime Volunteers Programme of the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, the Ministry said the information could be sought directly from the respective States and Union Territories.
• The programme was expected to include 500 volunteers, 200 “cyber awareness promoters” and 50 “cyber experts”.
• The National Cybercrime Ecosystem Management Unit, of which the Cybercrime Volunteers Programme is a constituent, is part of the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) scheme launched by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in January 2020.
• The project was approved in October 2018 at an estimated cost of ₹415.86 crore. The I4C scheme that includes other components also has been allocated ₹69.80 crore in the 2021-22 Budget.

Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.

Scientists have discovered what may be the smallest-known black hole in the Milky Way galaxy and the closest to our solar system.

• Nicknamed ‘Unicorn’ the researchers said the black hole is roughly three times the mass of our Sun, testing the lower limits of size for these extraordinarily dense objects.
• A luminous red giant star orbits with the black hole in a so-called binary star system named V723 Mon.
• The black hole is located about 1,500 light years - the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) - from Earth. While it may be the closest one to us, it is still far away. By way of comparison, the closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 4 light years away.
• Black holes like this one form when massive stars die and their cores collapse.
• The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

Groundwater depletion may reduce winter cropping intensity by 20% in India.

• India is the second-largest producer of wheat in the world, with over 30 million hectares in the country dedicated to producing this crop.
• Some of the important winter crops are wheat, barley, mustard and peas.

Recent study:

• But with severe groundwater depletion, the cropping intensity or the amount of land planted in the winter season may decrease by up to 20% by 2025, notes a new paper.
• The international team studied India’s three main irrigation types on winter cropped areas: dug wells, tube wells, canals, and also analysed the groundwater data from the Central Ground Water Board. They found that 13% of the villages in which farmers plant a winter crop are located in critically water-depleted regions.
• The team writes that these villages may lose 68% of their cropped area in future if access to all groundwater irrigation is lost. The results suggest that these losses will largely occur in northwest and central India.

Hence, option (d) is the correct answer.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will soon issue cybersecurity norms for payment service providers (PSPs), following a series of data breaches faced by operators including Mobikwik and payment aggregator JusPay.

• While the standards for fintech-driven payment services providers will be similar to cyber hygiene norms issued recently for banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), the RBI is quite clear that firms will have to do more than observe the minimum standards to ensure safety as digital transactions gain further traction.
• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had laid down a framework for a more even distribution of share of third-party app providers in the UPI system.
• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems under the ownership of Reserve Bank of India in India.
• Founded in: 2008.
• Headquarters: Mumbai.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has reported that around two to four of 10,000 people given two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have tested positive for the disease. Contracting COVID-19 after vaccination is known as breakthrough infection.

• Breakthrough infection are infections that occur in people who have been vaccinated.
• Such cases are not out of the ordinary as the vaccines that have been approved so far the world over are made to protect against disease and not the transmission of the virus.
• Phase 3 clinical trials conducted before vaccines were approved showed a fairly constant proportion of infections among those vaccinated.
• In the AstraZeneca trial, for instance, 30 out of 5,807 vaccinated — about 0.5% — were symptomatic and tested positive 14 days after the second shot.

Hence both statements are correct.