Daily Current Affairs MCQ- May 21, 2022 - UPSC MCQ

Researchers at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg are now saying that fears related to the melting of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier are worse than previously thought, owing to the supply of warm water flowing underneath at a rate underestimated in the past.

• The Thwaites Glacier is 120 km wide at its broadest, fast-moving, and melting fast over the years.
• Because of its size (1.9 lakh square km), it contains enough water to raise the world sea level by more than half a metre. Studies have found the amount of ice flowing out of it has nearly doubled over the past 30 years.
• Today, Thwaites’s melting already contributes 4% to global sea level rise each year. It is estimated that it would collapse into the sea in 200-900 years.
• Thwaites is important for Antarctica as it slows the ice behind it from freely flowing into the ocean. Because of the risk it faces — and poses — Thwaites is often called the Doomsday Glacier.
• The grounding line is the place below a glacier at which the ice transitions between resting fully on bedrock and floating on the ocean as an ice shelf. The location of the line is a pointer to the rate of retreat of a glacier.

Hence both statements are correct.

Union Minister of Education Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' presented the AICTE Lilavati Awards 2020 on women empowerment to the winners.

• With women empowerment as the theme, the objective of the award is to create awareness about issues like sanitation, hygiene, health, nutrition, literacy, employment, technology, credit, marketing, innovation, skill development, natural resources and rights among women.
• All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has established the Lilavati Award.
• The award covers multidisciplinary areas such as women's health, self-defence, sanitation, literacy, entrepreneurship and legal awareness.
• The program will ensure the participation of women and enable them to hold higher positions in educational institutions.
• It is named after the 12th-century mathematical treatise "Lilavati" devoted to arithmetic and algebra written by the Indian mathematician Bhāskara II.
• In the book the author posed, in verse form, a series of problems in (elementary) arithmetic to Lilavati (perhaps his daughter) and followed them up with hints to solutions.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has divested Rakesh Kumar, Director, National Environment Engineering and Research Institute (NEERI) in Nagpur of his post and transferred him to its headquarters in Delhi after allegations of corruption surfaced against him.

• Established in: 1958.
• Headquarters: Nagpur.
• Parent body: NEERI is a part of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and falls under the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.

Functions:

• NEERI is a pioneer laboratory in the field of environmental science and engineering with special focus on water supply, sewage disposal, communicable diseases and to some extent on industrial pollution.
• The NEERI is an important partner organisation in India's POPs national implementation plan (NIP).
• The Institute is operating a nation-wide air quality monitoring network since 1978. The programme sponsored by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
• It also works in technology developments such as making “green firecrackers”, under the directives of the Supreme Court to improve Delhi’s air quality, and specialised air purifiers.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Extortion money paid to a terrorist organisation to protect one’s business is not terror funding, the Supreme Court has said in a judgment.

• With this, Supreme Court granted bail to a Jharkhand coal transporter who had paid huge amounts to the Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC), a breakaway faction of the CPI (Maoist).
• The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) has made recommendations to members relating to counter terrorism financing (CTF). It has created a Blacklist and Greylist of countries that have not taken adequate CTF action.
• FATF is an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering. In 2001, its mandate was expanded to include terrorism financing.

Hence both statements are correct.

The Supreme Court has asked the Centre and four States to file their response within three weeks on a plea seeking a direction to repeal the provisions criminalising begging.

• The plea has referred to the August 2018 verdict of the Delhi High Court which had decriminalised begging in the national capital and said provisions of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, which treats begging as an offence cannot sustain constitutional scrutiny.
• The provisions of the statutes criminalising the act of begging put people in a situation to make an unreasonable choice between committing a crime or not committing one and starving, which goes against the very spirit of the Constitution and violates Article 21 i.e. Right to Life.
• Referring to the Census 2011, the plea has said the total number of beggars in India is 4,13,670 and the number has increased from the last census.
• It said the government had the mandate to provide social security to everyone and ensure that all had basic facilities, as embedded in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution.
• However, the presence of beggars is evidence that the state has failed to provide these basic facilities to all its citizens.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Detailed analysis of South Asian river dolphins has revealed in a recent research that the Indus and Ganges River dolphins are not one, but two separate species.

• Currently, Indus and Ganges River dolphins are classified as two subspecies under Platanista gangetica.
• But according to a new study, this classification needs a revision. The study estimates that Indus and Ganges river dolphins may have diverged around 550,000 years ago.

Conservation status

• The Indus and Ganges River dolphins are both classified as ‘Endangered’ species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
• The Ganges dolphin is a Schedule I animal under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, and has been included in Annexure – I of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Raisina Dialogue on April 13, 2021.

• The 4 day Dialogue will be held virtually.
• It is India’s flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics, held annually since 2016.
• It is jointly organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation.
• The theme for the 2021 Edition is "#ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control".
• In the past six years, the Raisina Dialogue has grown in stature and profile to emerge as a leading global conference on international affairs. It attracts leading minds from the global strategic and policy-making community to discuss broader foreign policy and strategic issues facing the world.

Hence both statements are correct.

Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine — Sputnik V — has been recommended for emergency use authorisation in India following a meeting of the Subject Expert Committee (SEC).

• If approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), Sputnik V would be the third vaccine to be made available in India after the Serum Institute of India’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.
• Sputnik V, developed by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, claims to be one of the three vaccines in the world with efficacy of over 90%.
• the vaccine supplies for the global market will be produced by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) international partners in India, Brazil, China, South Korea and other countries.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Last week, the Supreme Court appeared to accept the Centre’s contention that the Rohingya people in India are illegal immigrants, most of whom are in a detention camp in Jammu, and others in Delhi. It said they should be deported according to procedures under the Foreigners Act, 1946.

• Under the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol, the word refugee pertains to any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return owing to well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
• Stateless persons may also be refugees in this sense, where country of origin (citizenship) is understood as ‘country of former habitual residence’.

India & UN convention

• India has welcomed refugees in the past, and on date, nearly 300,000 people here are categorised as refugees.
• But India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol.
• Nor does India have a refugee policy or a refugee law of its own.
• The closest India has come to a refugee policy in recent years is the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which discriminates between refugees on the basis of religion in offering them Indian citizenship.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

Union Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan will launch a new mission called `Aahaar Kranti’.

• The mission is aimed to spread the message of the need for a nutritionally balanced diet and to understand the importance of accessible to all local fruits and vegetables.
• Vijnana Bharati (Vibha) and Global Indian Scientists’ and Technocrats’ Forum (GIST) have come together to launch the mission with the motto of ‘Good Diet-Good Cognition’.
• The `Aahaar Kranti’ movement is designed to address the problem of `hunger and diseases in abundance’.
• Union Ministry of Science and Technology’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)’s Pravasi Bharatiya Academic and Scientific Sampark (Prabhaas) is collaborating, and various central and state government ministries and agencies are involved.
• The programme will focus on training teachers, who, in turn, will pass on the message to the multitudes of students, and through them to their families and finally the society at large. Such a strategy was adopted for the eradication of Polio and it turned out to be a grand success.
• Studies estimate that India produces as much as two times the amount of calories that it consumes. However, many in the country are still malnourished. The root cause of this strange phenomenon is a lack of nutritional awareness in all sections of our society.
• The United Nations has also declared 2021 as the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, which vibes very well with Aahaar Kranti. Fruits and vegetables make a large part of a balanced diet.
• Further, UN sustainable goal # 3 that emphasizes on human well-being reads, “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” This goal too makes Aahaar Kranti more meaningful. Diet and well-being are inseparable partners.

Hence both statements are correct.