Test: July 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 2 - UPSC MCQ

• A follow-on public offer (FPO), also known as a secondary offering, is the additional issuance of shares after the initial public offering (IPO). 
• Companies usually announce FPOs to raise equity or reduce debt.
• The two main types of FPOs are dilutive—meaning new shares are added—and non-dilutive—meaning existing private shares are sold publicly.
• Follow-on offerings are also known as secondary offerings.

• Statement 3 is incorrect.
• Earth’s surface constantly absorbs energy from the Sun and stores it as heat. It also emits heat back into space. Whether the surface is warming or cooling depends on the balance between how much solar radiation the planet is absorbing and how much it is radiating away.
• The closer you are to one of the poles, the faster the rate of change in daylight is. That’s why Alaska can go from having hardly any daylight in the winter to hardly any darkness in the summer.
• Even for a particular location, the change is not constant through the year. The rate of change in daylight is slowest at the solstices — December in winter, June in summer — and fastest at the equinoxes, in mid-March and mid-September.
• The Southern Hemisphere has a lot less land and a lot more water than the Northern Hemisphere. Thanks to the influence of the southern oceans, land masses in the Southern Hemisphere tend to have fewer very extreme temperatures than land in the Northern Hemisphere does.

• Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria evolve to evade antibiotics. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics are the biggest drivers of resistance. That means that the more we use antibiotics, the worse the problem of antibiotic resistance becomes.
• Antibiotics work by binding to a specific target protein on a bacteria, then entering to kill it from the inside. Penicillin, for example, weakens the bacterial cell wall, causing the cell to disintegrate.
• The most common ways bacteria evade antibiotics come from mutations that allow them to stop drugs from binding to bacteria. It’s like the bacteria changed the locks so the antibiotic key no longer opens the cell door.
• Bacteria can also achieve resistance by producing proteins that inactivate or modify the antibiotic, so it no longer binds to the bacteria. Or the target protein is mutated so the antibiotic can no longer bind to it

• Statement 3 is incorrect.
• ‘Green jobs’ refer to a class of jobs that directly have a positive impact on the planet, and contribute to the overall environmental welfare. Jobs involving renewable energy, conservation of resources, ensuring energy efficient means are categorised under the same.
• The Skill Council for Green Jobs was launched by the Union government on October 1, 2015. Aligned to the National Skill Development Missions, it was set up to be a not-for-profit, independent, industry-led initiative. Promoted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the council aims to help manufacturers and other service providers in India’s ‘green business’ sector to implement industry-led, collaborative skills push the country on the path to truly realising the real potential and significance of ‘green jobs’.
• The International Labour Organisation, the International Trade Union Confederation, the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Employers Organisation collectively launched the Green Jobs Initiative in 2008, aimed at bettering placements, training and creating opportunities for individuals to work in ‘green jobs’.

• Only statement 3 is correct.
• Before the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) act of 1971, abortions were criminalised under the Indian Penal Code. The MTP changed that but still imposed heavy restrictions, especially pertaining to unmarried women. As per the 2021 amendment, the act allows abortion in a number of circumstances, most based on the health and safety of the woman.
• The law allows abortion during the first 20 weeks, with approval from a medical practitioner and from the 20 to 24 weeks with authorisation by two medical practitioners. In cases involving a severe foetal anomaly after the 24-week mark, a three-person medical board must confirm the diagnosis with the final decision resting with a judge.

Internationalisation of Rupee means the following:

• When Indians import, they should be able to pay in rupees
• When they export, they should accept payments in rupees
• when they issue bonds globally, they should be able to repay in rupee regardless of the fact that they borrowed in foreign currency
• All over the world individuals, companies and central banks should accumulate Indian rupee as a reserve currency because of its global demand.

• Statement 3 is incorrect.
• The term antibiotic resistance is a subset of antimicrobial resistance or AMR which is the ability of a microbe to resist the effects of medication.
• Antimicrobial resistant-microbes occur naturally and are found in people, animals, food, and the environment (in water, soil and air).
• They can spread between people and animals, including from food of animal origin, and from person to person.

• December 8 is commemorated as SAARC Charter Day. It was on this day, 37 years ago, that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), an intergovernmental organisation, was established by Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to promote economic growth in South Asia. Afghanistan acceded to SAARC later.
• Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral, Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), an intergovernmental organisation established in 1997. BIMSTEC comprises five South Asian nations (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka) and two ASEAN countries (Myanmar and Thailand). Importantly, Pakistan is not a BIMSTEC member.

• Currently, the US dollar is said to enjoy an ‘Exorbitant Privilege’, which refers to the innumerable benefits that accrue to the US on account of all other countries of the world using the US dollar as their currency in most of their international transactions, among global currencies.
• The dollar’s position is supported by a range of factors, including the size of the US economy, the reach of its trade and financial networks, the depth and liquidity of US financial markets, and a history of macroeconomic stability and currency convertibility. Dollar dominance has also benefited from the lack of viable alternatives.

• Only statement 2 is correct.
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a way to catch carbon and trap it beneath the earth. It is different to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) — where carbon is sucked out of the atmosphere — although some of the technologies overlap. The key difference is that CDR brings down the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, cooling the planet, while CCS in fossil fuel plants and factories prevents the gas from getting out in the first place.
• In its latest review of scientific research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found both options will be needed for emissions that are hard to wipe out. 
• Some bioethanol plants, where the gas stream is pure, already report capturing more than 95% of the carbon emissions.

Unlike the Earth, whose spin axis is tilted with respect to the plane of the Earth’s solar orbit by 23.5 degrees, the Moon’s axis tilts only 1.5 degrees. Because of this unique geometry, sunlight never shines on the floors of a number of craters near the lunar north and south poles. These areas are known as Permanently Shadowed Regions, or PSRs.

Declaration of Alma-Ata was adopted at the International Conference on Primary Health Care (PHC), Almaty (formerly Alma-Ata), Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (present day Kazakhstan), Soviet Union 6–12 September 1978. It expressed the need for urgent action by all governments, all health and development workers, and the world community to protect and promote the health of all people. It was the first international declaration underlining the importance of primary health care.

• Under NBS, the government fixed a per-kg subsidy for each fertiliser nutrient: Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potash (K) and sulphur (S). This was as against the earlier product-specific subsidy regime.
• Linking subsidy to nutrient content was intended to promote balanced fertilisation by discouraging farmers from applying too much urea, di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and muriate of potash (MOP). These are fertilisers with high content of a single nutrient: Urea (46% N), DAP (46% P plus 18% N) and MOP (60% K).
• NBS was expected to induce product innovation, besides more use of complex fertilisers (having lower concentrations of N, P, K and S in different proportions) and SSP (containing only 16% P but also 11% S).

India’s ‘One Health’ vision derives its blueprint from the agreement between the tripartite-plus alliance comprising the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) — a global initiative supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank under the overarching goal of contributing to ‘One World, One Health’.

• Only statement 1 is correct.
• Generally tightening of monetary policy by the US Federal Reserve leads to Foreign portfolio investments (FPI) sell-off in the Indian Stock market.
• Analysts said a lower rupee against the dollar keeps import bills higher. Higher inflation is detrimental to the overall market. If the rupee does not strengthen, FPI outflows will continue, which is another negative. A strong dollar is good for export-oriented companies, but bad for import-oriented industries such as oil, gas and chemicals. With the dip in the rupee, oil imports and other imported components will get costlier, which will further lead to higher inflation. Travellers and students studying abroad will have to shell out more rupees to buy dollars from banks.

• It may be noted that urea forms around 80 per cent of the total nitrogenous fertilisers consumed in India and it has recorded exponential increase in consumption over the years.
• Around 30-50 per cent of nitrogen from urea is utilised by plants and the rest gets wasted due to quick chemical transformation as a result of leaching, volatilization and run off, thereby low use efficiency.

• Statement 2 is incorrect.
• The Pacific Island Countries are located largely in the tropical zone of the Pacific Ocean between Asia, Australia and the Americas.
• They include Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
• The islands are very small in land area, and are spread wide across the vast equatorial swathe of the Pacific ocean. As a result, though they are some of the smallest and least populated states, they have some of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) in the world. 

• As the Government of India presses ahead with its plan to internationalise the Indian Rupee (INR), an Inter-Departmental Group (IDG) of officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have in a report cautioned that internationalisation may result in increased volatility in the rupee’s exchange rate in the initial stages.
• However, the IDG held that the overall benefits of internationalisation in terms of limited exchange rate risk, lower cost of capital due to better access to international financial markets, high seigniorage benefits and reduced requirement of foreign exchange reserves far outweighed the concerns.

• Here are the different kinds of moon missions that have been launched so far:
• Flybys: These are the missions in which the spacecraft passed near the Moon but did not get into an orbit around it. These were either designed to study the Moon from a distance or were on their way to some other planetary body or deep space exploration and happened to pass by the celestial body.
• Orbiters: These were spacecraft that were designed to get into a lunar orbit and carry out prolonged studies of the Moon’s surface and atmosphere.
• Impact Mission: These are an extension of Orbiter missions. While the main spacecraft keeps going around the Moon, one or more instruments on board make an uncontrolled landing on the lunar surface. They get destroyed after the impact, but still send some useful information about the Moon while on their way.
• Landers: These missions involve the soft landing of the spacecraft on the Moon. These are more complicated than the Orbiter missions.
• Rovers:  Rovers are special wheeled payloads on the lander that can detach themselves from the spacecraft and move around on the moon’s surface, collecting very useful information that instruments within the lander would not be able to obtain.

• The Supreme Court of India has ruled that, The recommendations of the GST Council are not binding on either the Union or the States.
• Article 279A stipulates the creation of the GST Council and its functions. The Council has to function as a platform to bring the Union and State governments together, and as a mark of cooperative federalism, the Council shall, unanimously or through a majority of 75% of weighted votes, decide on all matters pertaining to GST and recommend such decisions to the Union and State governments. 

The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED), is the nodal procurement agency for pulses (like Food Corporation of India, or FCI, is for rice and wheat).

The roots of pulses and legumes contain soil enriching bacteria collectively known as Rhizobium. Therefore pulses perform biological fixation of environmental nitrogen. They also increase organic matter in the soil, improve quality and maintain its biodiversity. Pulses enhance fertility and reduce the consumption of major fertilisers required for the cultivation of food crops by millions of tonnes globally.

• Statement 2 is incorrect.
• Foreign exchange reserves are maintained as a multi-currency portfolio comprising major currencies such as the US dollar, Euro, Pound sterling, and Japanese yen, among others, but are valued in terms of US dollars. When the dollar strengthens, the valuation of other currencies vis-à-vis the US currency declines, leading to notional fall in the overall reserves position.
• The RBI also keeps the forex reserves in the dollar-denominated assets like the 10-year benchmark securities of the US and UK. Since the yields of these assets rose in 2022, it impacted India’s foreign exchange reserves.
• Besides valuation loss, the forex reserves also declined as the Reserve Bank sold dollars in the spot market to smoothen the sudden fluctuations in the rupee’s movement caused by outflows from foreign investors.
• India’s foreign exchange reserves are mainly composed of US dollar in the forms of US government bonds and institutional bonds.

• Only statement 2 is correct.
• While the Earth is a good conductor of electricity, it is electrically neutral.
• In 2019-20, about 1.4 crore lightning strikes were recorded, which increased to 1.85 crore in 2020-21.
• In 2021-22, about 1.49 crore strikes were recorded across the country. The reduction, in line with the trend observed globally, has been attributed to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• “The reason attributed to reduction in lightning is due to Covid-2019 pandemic induced reduction in aerosol level, pollution, environmental upgradation and relatively stable weather system in Indian subcontinent,” the annual lightning report said.
• But most of this reduction was seen in the cloud-to-cloud lightning. Of the strikes that reach the Earth, only a 2.5% reduction was observed.
• Lightning is not classified as a natural disaster in India.

A short circuit is an abnormal condition in an electrical circuit where the electrical current flows through an unintended, shorter pathway instead of following the circuit. This results in an excessive current flowing through the circuit. The opposite of a short circuit is an “open circuit”, which is an infinite resistance between two nodes.