Test: August 2022 Weekly Current Affair - 1 - UPSC MCQ

• The offence under this law is mainly the laundering of money made through a crime. It has a three-part schedule of offences (or ‘predicate offences’) listing the various crimes such as terrorism, drug-trafficking, corruption and cheating that give rise to tainted money. 
• The Supreme Court recently upheld the constitutional validity of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
• The Court also upheld the “twin-conditions” for bail in Section 45 of the PMLA Act.
• The Enforcement Directorate under the PMLA Act is not considered “police” and hence does not follow provisions of the CrPC for search, seizure, arrest, attachment of properties.
• The Supreme Court rejected the argument that the ED should be obligated to follow the CrPC while conducting investigations.

• Who decides on creating or scrapping districts, or changing their boundaries?
• This power lies with the state governments, who can pass a law in the Assembly or simply issue an order and notify it in the gazette. 
• The central government does play a role, however, when a change of name of a district or railway station is contemplated. The request of the state government in this regard is sent to several central government departments before a no-objection certificate is issued.
• Uttar Pradesh has the most districts (75) in the country, followed by Madhya Pradesh (52).

Overall, between 1993-94 and 2018-19, agriculture’s share in India’s workforce came down from 61.9% to 41.4%.

Even the movement of workforce from agriculture that India has witnessed over the past three decades or more does not qualify as what economists call “structural transformation”. Such transformation would involve the transfer of labour from farming to sectors – particularly manufacturing and modern services – where productivity, value-addition and average incomes are higher.

• Indexation means adjusting a price, wage, or other value based on the changes in another price or composite indicator of prices.
• Indexation can be done to adjust for the effects of inflation, cost of living, or input prices over time, or to adjust for different prices and costs in different geographic areas.
• Indexation is often used to escalate wages in inflationary environments where failure to negotiate regular wage increases would lead to ongoing real wage cuts for workers.

• Nurdles are tiny plastic pellets, the size of lentils. They are ‘pre-production plastic pellets’ that are the raw material for most of today’s plastic products. Made out of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and other plastics, these pellets are melted down and cast into the moulds to make various plastic products.
• They are the main form in which plastic is shipped all over the world after being made in processing factories and then carried to manufacturing factories.
• Depending on their density, nurdles can either float to the surface of the water or sink below the surface.
• Nurdles, if left exposed to the environment, will slowly break down into microplastics. Since nurdles are plastic, they are not biodegradable.
• Nurdles are the second-largest source of micropollutants in the oceans by weight.
• The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has not deemed nurdles hazardous enough to be regulated by the organisation’s dangerous goods code for safe handling and storage.

• There is a strong connection between the government’s tax revenue earnings and economic growth. The simple fact is that as the economy achieves faster growth, the tax revenue of the government also goes up.
• Tax buoyancy explains this relationship between the changes in government’s tax revenue growth and the changes in GDP. It refers to the responsiveness of tax revenue growth to changes in GDP. When a tax is buoyant, its revenue increases without increasing the tax rate.

• The clearest signal that a recession is under way, economists say, would be a steady rise in job losses and a surge in unemployment. 
• Many economists also monitor changes in the interest payments, or yields, on different bonds for a recession signal known as an “inverted yield curve.” This occurs when the yield on the 10-year Treasury falls below the yield on a short-term Treasury, such as the 3-month T-bill. That is unusual. Normally, longer-term bonds pay investors a richer yield in exchange for tying up their money for a longer period.
• Inverted yield curves generally mean that investors foresee a recession that will compel the Fed to slash rates. Inverted curves often predate recessions.

• By definition, corporal punishment means punishment that is physical in nature. While there is no statutory definition of ‘corporal punishment’ targeting children in the Indian law, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 prohibits ‘physical punishment’ and ‘mental harassment’ under Section 17(1) and makes it a punishable offence under Section 17(2).
• According to the Guidelines for Eliminating Corporal Punishment in Schools issued by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), physical punishment is understood as any action that causes pain, hurt/injury and discomfort to a child, however light.
• Section 17 of the Right to Education Act, 2009, imposes an absolute bar on corporal punishment.
• Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act prescribes punishment for cruelty to children.

India does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan yet.

While following the One-China policy, India has an office in Taipei for diplomatic functions — India-Taipei Association (ITA) is headed by a senior diplomat. Taiwan has the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center (TECC) in New Delhi. Both were established in 1995.

• Bhindawas Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest wetland in Haryana is a human-made freshwater wetland. Over 250 bird species use the sanctuary throughout the year as a resting and roosting site.
• Sultanpur National Park from Haryana supports more than 220 species of resident, winter migratory and local migratory waterbirds at critical stages of their life cycles.
• Thol Lake Wildlife Sanctuary from Gujarat lies on the Central Asian Flyway and more than 320 bird species can be found here.
• Wadhvana Wetland from Gujarat is internationally important for its birdlife as it provides wintering ground to migratory waterbirds, including over 80 species that migrate on the Central Asian Flyway.

DeFi (or “decentralized finance”) is “an umbrella term for financial services on public blockchains. With DeFi, one can do most of the things that banks support — earn interest, borrow, lend, buy insurance, trade derivatives, trade assets, and more — but it is faster and does not require paperwork or a third party. 

• Under the Constitution, the power to legislate in respect of personal laws rests with both Parliament and state Assemblies. Preservation of legal diversity seems to be the reason for inclusion of personal law in the Concurrent List (entry No. 5).
• Once a legislative field is occupied by parliamentary legislation, states do not have much freedom to enact laws. Such laws would require Presidential assent under Article 254.
• The Constitution itself protects local customs of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulates and supervises Public Sector and Private Sector Banks. The powers of RBI are wide-ranging and comprehensive to deal with various situations that may emerge in all banks, irrespective of ownership i.e. the Public Sector and the Private Sector owned Banks.

Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published its update of the World Economic Outlook (WEO). Each year, the IMF releases two WEO reports, one each in April and October; it also provides “updates” to these two WEOs in January and July.

Inflation is closely related to interest rates, which can influence exchange rates. Countries attempt to balance interest rates and inflation, but the interrelationship between the two is complex and often difficult to manage. Low interest rates spur consumer spending and economic growth, and generally positive influences on currency value. If consumer spending increases to the point where demand exceeds supply, inflation may ensue, which is not necessarily a bad outcome. But low interest rates do not commonly attract foreign investment. Higher interest rates tend to attract foreign investment, which is likely to increase the demand for a country’s currency.

• Disaster Management Act, 2005:
• The Act provided for the creation of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to spearhead and implement a holistic and integrated approach to disaster management in the country. Initially, the NDMA was constituted in 2005 by an Executive Order of the Government of India. Subsequently, the NDMA was notified in 2006 under the provisions of the Act.
• The NDMA is the apex body for disaster management in the country.
• The NDMA consists of a chairperson and other members. The Prime Minister is the ex-officio chairperson of the NDMA. The other members are nominated by the chairperson of the NDMA.
• NDMA, under the Ministry of Home Affairs can also be assigned with the responsibility for protection of cyber critical infrastructure. As a result NDMA has overlapping responsibilities with CERT-IN of MeitY and National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) when it comes to securing critical/non-critical infrastructure.

• Economic efficiency is when every scarce resource in an economy is used and distributed among producers and consumers in a way that produces the most economic output and benefit to consumers.
• Economic efficiency can involve efficient production decisions within firms and industries, efficient consumption decisions by individual consumers, and efficient distribution of consumer and producer goods across individual consumers and firms.
• It is not necessary that income levels will be equal when resources are efficiently allocated.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority is a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change
The National Tiger Conservation Authority has been fulfilling its mandate within the ambit of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for strengthening tiger conservation in the country by retaining an oversight through advisories/normative guidelines, based on appraisal of tiger status, ongoing conservation initiatives and recommendations of specially constituted Committees.
Set up under the Chairmanship of the Minister for Environment and Forests.
Functions of NTCA are as follows:

• Ensuring normative standards in tiger reserve management.
• Preparation of reserve specific tiger conservation plan.
• Laying down annual/ audit report before Parliament.
• Instituting State level Steering Committees under the Chairmanship of Chief Minister and establishment of Tiger Conservation Foundation.
• According approval for declaring new Tiger Reserves.

The NGT has the power to hear all civil cases relating to environmental issues and questions that are linked to the implementation of laws listed in Schedule I of the NGT Act. These include the following:

• The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974;
• The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Cess Act, 1977;
• The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980;
• The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981;
• The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986;
• The Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991;
• The Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

This means that any violations pertaining only to these laws, or any order / decision taken by the Government under these laws can be challenged before the NGT. Importantly, the NGT has not been vested with powers to hear any matter relating to the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and various laws enacted by States relating to forests, tree preservation etc. Therefore, specific and substantial issues related to these laws cannot be raised before the NGT.

Fit for 55 is a package by the European Union designed to reduce the European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030.

• The US military used its ‘secret weapon’ — the Hellfire R9X missile – to kill Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri on the balcony of a safehouse in Kabul on July 31.
• Better known in military circles as the AGM-114 R9X, the Hellfire R9X is a US-origin missile known to cause minimum collateral damage while engaging individual targets.
• Also known as the ‘Ninja Missile’, this weapon does not carry a warhead and instead deploys razor-sharp blades at the terminal stage of its attack trajectory. This helps it to break through even thick steel sheets and cut down the target using the kinetic energy of its propulsion without causing any damage to the persons in the general vicinity or to the structure of the building.
  

Geoengineering techniques:

• Injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere is the proposed solar geoengineering method that has received the most sustained attention.
• Various cloud reflectivity methods have been suggested which works by spraying seawater in the atmosphere to increase the reflectivity of clouds.
• Painting roof materials in white or pale colors to reflect solar radiation.
• Selecting or genetically modifying commercial crops with high albedo.

• The olive ridley is predominantly carnivorous, especially in immature stages of the lifecycle. Animal prey consists of protochordates or invertebrates, which can be caught in shallow marine waters or estuarine habitats.
• Common prey items of Olive Ridely Turtle include jellyfish, tunicates, sea urchins, bryozoans, bivalves, snails, shrimp, crabs, rock lobsters, and sipunculid worms.
• They are found in warm and tropical waters, primarily in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but also in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
• This turtle and the related Kemps ridley turtle are best known for their unique mass nesting called arribada, where thousands of females come together on the same beach to lay eggs.
• The coast of Odisha in India is the largest mass nesting site for the olive ridley.

• Bird migration is the regular seasonal movement, often north and south along a flyway, between breeding and wintering grounds.
• It occurs mainly in the northern hemisphere, where birds are funnelled on to specific routes by natural barriers such as the Mediterranean Sea or the Caribbean Sea.
• The Arctic tern holds the long-distance migration record for birds, travelling between Arctic breeding grounds and the Antarctic each year.
• The timing of migration seems to be controlled primarily by changes in day length. Migrating birds navigate using celestial cues from the sun and stars, the earth’s magnetic field, and mental maps.

The Nile River empties into the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt.