Test: January 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 4 - UPSC MCQ

The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association starting in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television.

The song ‘Naatu Naatu’, from the wildly popular Telugu film RRR, made history at the 80th Golden Globes as it became the first Indian song to win the Best Original Song award.

Carbon sequestration is a crucial part of the global carbon cycle, as it is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. One of the ways this happens is when forests and other land vegetation absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.
According to a 2014 NASA-led study, tropical forests remove up to 30 per cent of human carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere and make for an important carbon sink — an area which absorbs more carbon than releases it. Therefore, they have a significant role in keeping global temperatures low.

Brent blend is the name of one of two internationally-recognized types of crude oil that are used as benchmarks for prices of crude oil. Brent Blend comes from the North Sea and is considered a light, sweet crude oil. Brent blend is more than half of the crude oil traded internationally.

Brent blend is a blend of crude oil extracted from oilfields in the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Norway.

• Dolphins are social mammals that communicate through squeaks, whistles and clicks. They also use echolocation in order to locate food and other objects. Therefore, anthropogenic noise coming from large commercial ships, military sonars or offshore drilling can severely impact their well-being.
• Marine animals are known to use sound to navigate, find food and protect themselves. As sound travels faster in water than air, it makes for an important mode of communication because it can convey a lot of information quickly and over long distances. Scientists believe that fish species rely on sounds during reproductive activities, including mate attraction, courtship and mate choice.
• However, several studies and incidents have shown that sounds made by drilling, commercial ships and military operations lead to disruption of marine life.

• The BCG vaccine for TB is 100 years old.
• National TB prevalence survey – conducted by Indian Council of Medical Research and WHO 
• Considering the country’s goal of achieving TB elimination by 2025, the prevalence was 300 per 100,000, bacteriologically confirmed TB cases.
• In India, the main risk factor for TB is undernutrition. This is why we find TB incidence is higher in lower economic groups, especially in tribal and remote rural areas and in the urban poor.

• The high concentration of iridium in the geological section at Anjar, Kutch district, provides evidence for a massive meteoritic impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
• A national geological monument exhibiting a unique rock called Nepheline Syenite in Ajmer district of Rajasthan.
• Baula-Nausahi, a 3-km-long belt, 170 km north east of Bhubaneswar, is the proven platinum group of elements (PGE) deposit in India. PGE comprises six greyish to silver white metals including platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, osmium and ruthenium.

• Under the Indian Penal Code, outraging the modesty of a woman is a punishable offence. Offences that are less severe in nature, fall under the purview of Section 509 of the IPC, which deals with “word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman”. The main difference between Sections 509 and 354 IPC is that the latter goes beyond the act of outraging the modesty of a woman and involves clear threat of physical harm or assault to the woman.
• The Supreme Court in 2007, in the case of ‘Ramkripal vs State of Madhya Pradesh’, noted that although the IPC does not define what constitutes an outrage to female modesty, the “essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex”.

• Drought is generally considered as a deficiency in rainfall /precipitation over an extended period, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage causing adverse impacts on vegetation, animals, and/or people.
• There is no single, legally accepted definition of drought in India. Some states resort to their own definitions of drought. State Government is the final authority when it comes to declaring a region as drought affected. 
• The Supreme Court of India in its verdict in the matter of Swaraj Abhiyan Vs Union of India stated that drought would certainly fall within the definition of “disaster” as defined under Section 2(d) of the Disaster Management (DM) Act, 2005.

Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) is a statutory body of Ministry of Women & Child Development, Government of India. It functions as the nodal body for adoption of Indian children and is mandated to monitor and regulate in-country and inter-country adoptions. CARA is designated as the Central Authority to deal with inter-country adoptions in accordance with the provisions of the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption, 1993, ratified by Government of India in 2003.
CARA primarily deals with adoption of orphan, abandoned and surrendered children through its associated /recognised adoption agencies.

• Reservation in Indian law is a form of affirmative action whereby a percentage of seats are reserved in the public sector units, union and state civil services, union and state government departments and in all public and private educational institutions, except in the religious/ linguistic minority edu­cational institutions, for the socially and educationally backward communities who are inadequately represented in these services and institutions.
• Justice G. Rohini Committee was set up to examine the possibility of creating categories within OBCs for the reservation to ensure “equitable distribution” of representation among all OBC communities. Its objectives include working out a mechanism, criteria, norm and parameters through a scientific approach for sub-categorisation within the OBCs and identifying the respective castes or communities or sub-castes or synonyms in the Central List of OBCs and classifying them into their respective sub-categories.
• Part XVI deals with reservation of SC and ST in Central and State legislatures.
• Article 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution enabled the State and Central Governments to reserve seats in government services for the members of the SC and ST.

• Landraces refer to naturally occurring variants of commonly cultivated crops. These are as opposed to commercially grown crops, which are developed by selective breeding (hybrids) or through genetic engineering to express a certain trait over others. 
• Biodiversity allows a natural mechanism for crops to develop traits to face challenging situations. However, given the large-scale human interference in crop selection, that ability is now lost in most commercially crops
• Naturally occurring landraces have a large pool of still untapped genetic material, which can provide solutions. Genetic diversity is nature’s survival mechanism. The wider the gene pool, the more the chance of developing a trait that can help in surviving extreme climate events.
• kalbhat, a unique landrace of scented rice. Over the years, this variant had almost vanished from cultivators’ fields as hybrid variants became popular. It has better climate resilience than popularly grown rice and can withstand flood or drought better.

• Major maritime initiative launched by QUAD leaders to check illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific region and enhance the security apparatus of the region. ‘Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness’ (IPMDA) will offer an integrated and cost-effective maritime domain and transform the ability of partners in the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region to fully monitor the waters on their shores.
• The IPMDA is said to be a satellite-based maritime security system aiming for a “fundamental requirement for peace, stability, and prosperity” in the Indo-Pacific region.
• The initiative will integrate three critical regions of the Pacific Islands – Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region – and allow tracking of “dark shipping” and other “tactical activities”.
• “Dark ships” are vessels with their Automatic Identification System (AIS) – a transponder system – switched off so as not to be detectable.
• The maritime system will also improve the partners’ ability to respond to climate and humanitarian events and protect their fisheries – a vital need for many Indo-Pacific economies.

In the forex market, the supply of rupees is determined by the demand for imports and various foreign assets. So, if there is high demand to import oil, it can lead to an increase in the supply of rupees in the forex market and cause the rupee’s value to drop. The demand for rupees in the forex market, on the other hand, depends on foreign demand for Indian exports and other domestic assets. So, for instance, when there is great enthusiasm among foreign investors to invest in India, it can lead to an increase in the supply of dollars in the forex market which in turn causes the rupee’s value to rise against the dollar.

Appreciation Vs Depreciation:

• In a floating exchange rate system, market forces (based on demand and supply of a currency) determine the value of a currency.
• Currency Appreciation: It is an increase in the value of one currency in relation to another currency.
• Currencies appreciate against each other for a variety of reasons, including government policy, interest rates, trade balances and business cycles.
• Currency appreciation discourages a country’s export activity as its products and services become costlier to buy.

Exposure to POPs can lead to cancer, damage to central & peripheral nervous systems, diseases of immune system, reproductive disorders and interference with normal infant and child development.
Uniqueness of POPs:

• POPs are lipophilic, which means that they accumulate in the fatty tissue of living animals and human beings.
• In fatty tissue, the concentrations can become magnified by up to 70 000 times higher than the background levels.

As you move up the food chain, concentrations of POPs tend to increase so that animals at the top of the food chain such as fish, predatory birds, mammals, and humans tend to have the greatest concentrations of these chemicals.

A bacteriophage is a type of virus that infects bacteria. In fact, the word “bacteriophage” literally means “bacteria eater,” because bacteriophages destroy their host cells. All bacteriophages are composed of a nucleic acid molecule that is surrounded by a protein structure. In other words, they are comprised of a protein capsule around an RNA or DNA genome.

• There can be three occasions when a person can be (legally) handcuffed, i.e., an accused on his arrest and before he is produced before the magistrate; an under-trial prisoner during transit from jail to the court and back; and a convict being transported from jail to the court and back.
• The law with regard to handcuffing was settled in 1980 when the Supreme Court of India, in Prem Shankar Shukla vs Delhi Administration, held that ‘the only circumstance which validates incapacitation by irons — an extreme measure — is that otherwise there is no other reasonable way of preventing his escape’.
• The Court mandated that in case of handcuffing, the reasons for this have to be recorded in writing and it is the duty of the court to make inquiries with the person arrested as to whether he had been handcuffed or not and then approve or reject the reasons.

• In both Houses, elected members enjoy the right to seek information from various ministries and departments in the form of starred questions, unstarred questions, short notice questions and questions to private members.
• The admissibility of questions in Rajya Sabha is governed by Rules 47-50 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Council of States.
• In Lok Sabha, the questions are examined for admissibility under Rules 41-44 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha.
• In both Houses, the first hour of every sitting is usually devoted to asking and answering of questions, and this is referred to as the ‘Question Hour’.
• The Rajya Sabha Chairman or the Lok Sabha Speaker has the authority to decide whether a question or a part is or is not admissible under the norms of the House, and disallow any question or a part. Once disallowed, it is often difficult for members to challenge the decision.

• Swami Vivekananda believed that there is only one Self in the universe. There is only one Existence. He saw the entire universe as a manifestation of the absolute One.
• Spiritual primacy is the central theme of Vivekananda’s teachings, through which human beings can succeed in every sphere of their lives. Nevertheless, he urges people, especially the youth, to never let go of reason. Instead, he premises his philosophy, ideas and life work on the premise of reason. The three instruments of knowledge that he propounded are instincts, reason, and inspiration.
• He was an exponent of vedantic humanism. He did not propagate a world-negating concept of spirituality, rather he said that each and every chore of your life should be done with divinity. He articulated that external rituals of religion are of secondary importance but the spiritual essence of a religion should be preserved and accepted.
• Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga and Jnana Yoga: Swami Vivekananda talked about the four pathways of attaining moksha from worldly pleasure and attachment in his books.

• A hypersonic missile is a weapon system which flies at least at the speed of Mach 5 i.e. five times the speed of sound and is manoeuvrable. The manoeuvrability of the hypersonic missile is what sets it apart from a ballistic missile as the latter follows a set course or a ballistic trajectory. Thus, unlike ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles do not follow a ballistic trajectory and can be manoeuvred to the intended target.
• The two types of hypersonic weapons systems are Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGV) and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles. The HGV are launched from a rocket before gliding to the intended target while the hypersonic cruise missile is powered by air breathing high speed engines or ‘scramjets’ after acquiring their target.
• Apart from Russia, which announced its hypersonic missile ‘Kinzhal’ or Dagger in 2018 and has now used it for the first time in battle conditions in Ukraine, China too is reportedly in possession of this weapon system and has twice used it to circumnavigate the globe before landing near a target in August 2021.
• In the US, the hypersonic weapons are being developed under its Navy’s conventional Prompt Strike Programme as well as through Army, Air Force and Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). While the US, Russia and China are in advanced stages of hypersonic missile programmes, India, France, Germany, Japan and Australia too are developing hypersonic weapons.
• India is also developing an indigenous, dual capable (conventional as well as nuclear) hypersonic cruise missile as part of its Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle programme and has successfully tested a Mach 6 scramjet in June 2019 and September 2020. “India operates approximately 12 hypersonic wind tunnels and is capable of testing speeds upto Mach 13,”

• A Collective Investment Scheme is an investment scheme where various individuals come together and pool their money in order to invest their whole fund collection in a particular asset. The returns and profits arising from this investment would be shared as per the agreement finalised amongst the investors prior to the act.
• Collective Investment Schemes, on a global scale, has broader connotations which include mutual funds as well.
• However, the Schemes, as prescribed in Section 11AA of the SEBI Act of 1992, excludes mutual funds and other schemes in India.
• The Securities Exchange Board of Indiaregulates them under the SEBI (Collective Investment Scheme) Regulations of 1999.

• THE SURPLUS available with the Reserve Bank of India for transfer or the RBI dividend to the Union government is likely to remain low in the current financial year ending March 2023 because of higher expenditure incurred by the central bank due to rising interest rates and higher costs in managing surplus liquidity in the system.
• The lower dividend could be due to higher interest paymeznts to banks which parked their surplus liquidity in the reverse repo window.
• Under reverse repo, the RBI borrows from banks, while under the repo window, RBI lends to banks.
• The RBI can bank on the Contingency Fund which was at Rs 3,10,986.94 crore as of March 2022 in the case of any emergency requirement. 
• The RBI normally pays the dividend from the surplus income it earns on investments and valuation changes on its dollar holdings and the fees it gets from printing currency, among others. The rupee depreciation against the dollar in recent months is also likely to weigh on the surplus transfer.
• In the Investment Revaluation Account-Foreign Securities (IRA-FS), the foreign dated securities are marked-to market on the last business day of each week ending Friday and the last business day of each month and the unrealised gains or losses are transferred to the IRAFS.
• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has developed an Economic Capital Framework (ECF) for determining the allocation of funds to its capital reserves so that any risk contingency can be met and as well as to transfer the profit of the RBI to the government.

• The Constitution confers fundamental and other rights on the people of India. But, as B R Ambedkar said, “All of us are aware of the fact that rights are nothing unless remedies are provided whereby people can seek to obtain redress when rights are invaded”. Thus, was born Article 32 of the Constitution, which confers the right to move the Supreme Court for their enforcement. Article 13(2) is a unique provision and provides that “the state shall not make any law that takes away or abridges the rights, conferred by this part and any law made in contravention of this clause shall, to the extent of the contravention, be void”.
• The framers of the Constitution were clear in Articles 141 and 144. Article 141 states that the law declared by the Supreme Court is binding on all courts within the territory of India. Article 144 states that all authorities, civil and judicial, in the territory of India shall act in aid of the Supreme Court.

“Angel investor” means any person who proposes to invest in an angel fund and satisfies one of the following conditions, namely,
(a) an individual investor who has net tangible assets of at least two crore rupees excluding value of his principal residence, and who:
(i) has early stage investment experience, or
(ii) has experience as a serial entrepreneur, or
(iii) is a senior management professional with at least ten years of experience;
(‘Early stage investment experience’ shall mean prior experience in investing in start-up or emerging or early-stage ventures and ‘serial entrepreneur’ shall mean a person who has promoted or co-promoted more than one start-up venture.)

• The Court, pointing to its own judgment in K S Puttaswamy, has said that “right to privacy is as sacrosanct as human existence and is inalienable to human dignity and autonomy”. While agreeing that it is not an absolute right, the Court has said any restrictions “must necessarily pass constitutional scrutiny”.
• Any surveillance or snooping done on an individual by the state or any outside agency is an infringement of that person’s right to privacy. Hence, any violation of that right by the state, even in national interest, has to follow procedures established by the law.

A currency swap is a transaction in which two parties exchange an equivalent amount of money with each other but in different currencies. The parties are essentially loaning each other money and will repay the amounts at a specified date and exchange rate. The purpose could be to hedge exposure to exchange-rate risk, to speculate on the direction of a currency, or to reduce the cost of borrowing in a foreign currency.
Currency swap agreements between countries help in reducing its reliance on the International Monetary Fund.