Test: July 2022 Weekly Current Affair - 2 - UPSC MCQ

• Tuberculosis (TB) is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that most often affect the lungs. Tuberculosis is curable and preventable.
• TB is spread from person to person through the air. When people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit, they propel the TB germs into the air. A person needs to inhale only a few of these germs to become infected.

• The India Plastics Pact is an ambitious, collaborative initiative that aims to bring together businesses, governments and NGOs to reduce, reuse, and recycle plastics in their value chain.
• The Pact aims to transform the current linear plastics system into a circular plastics economy.
• The India Plastics Pact aims to promote public-private collaborations that enable solutions to eliminate the plastic waste problem in India and bring innovation to the way plastic is designed, used and reused.
• The vision, targets and ambition of the India Plastics Pact are aligned with the circular economy principles of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy.

• Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) had recently recovered 14.63 MT of Red Sanders. Intelligence was developed by DRI that red sanders logs were concealed in an export consignment declared to contain “assorted toiletries”, for being smuggled out of the country. Accordingly, Operation Rakth Chandan was launched and close surveillance was kept on the suspect export consignment.
• Red Sanders is a flora-species that is endemic to a distinct tract of forests in Eastern Ghats region of Andhra Pradesh and fall under ‘endangered list’ in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Red Sanders is also listed in Appendix-II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora (CITES). Its rich hue and therapeutic properties are responsible for its high demand across Asia, particularly China, for use in cosmetics, medicinal products and high-end furniture/woodcraft. The export of Red Sanders from India is prohibited as per the Foreign Trade Policy.

• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is a legally-binding international agreement setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of every child, regardless of their race, religion or abilities.
• Under the terms of the convention, governments are required to meet children’s basic needs and help them reach their full potential.
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child urges all public and private actors to act in the best interests of the child, across all their developmental activities and provision of services.

• The Special Drawing Right (SDR) is an interest-bearing international reserve asset created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement other reserve assets of member countries.
• The SDR is based on a basket of international currencies comprising the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen, euro, pound sterling and Chinese Renminbi. It is not a currency, nor a claim on the IMF, but is potentially a claim on freely usable currencies of IMF members. The value of the SDR is not directly determined by supply and demand in the market, but is set daily by the IMF on the basis of market exchange rates between the currencies included in the SDR basket.
• It can be held and used by member countries, the IMF, and certain designated official entities called “prescribed holders”—but it cannot be held, for example, by private entities or individuals. Its status as a reserve asset derives from the commitments of members to hold, accept, and honor obligations denominated in SDR.

• In the absence of vitamin D, the skeletal muscle is starved of energy, decreasing muscle mass.
• Vitamin D deficiency is often associated with rickets. In rickets, the bone tissue does not correctly mineralise calcium and phosphorus, leading to softening of bones resulting in skeletal deformities.

• Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, much smaller than planets. They are also called minor planets. According to NASA, 994,383 is the count for known asteroids, the remnants from the formation of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.
• Scientists study asteroids to look for information about the formation and history of planets and the sun since asteroids were formed at the same time as other objects in the solar system. Another reason for tracking them is to look for potentially hazardous asteroids.
• OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA’s first mission meant to return a sample from the ancient asteroid.

• Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is the third generation launch vehicle of India. It is the first Indian launch vehicle to be equipped with liquid stages. After its first successful launch in October 1994, PSLV emerged as the reliable and versatile workhorse launch vehicle of India.
• The vehicle successfully launched two spacecraft – Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in 2013 – that later traveled to Moon and Mars respectively.
• The PSLV is a four-stage rocket where the first three spent stages fall back into the ocean, and the final stage (PS4) — after launching the satellite into orbit — ends up as space junk.
• However, in PSLV-C53 mission, the spent final stage will be utilised as a “stabilised platform” to perform experiments.

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are the largest shark, and indeed largest of any fishes alive today. They feed on plankton and travel large distances to find enough food to sustain their huge size, and to reproduce. Whale sharks are found in all the tropical oceans of the world. Their white spotted colouration makes these gentle giants easy to distinguish, and popular with snorkelers and divers at sites where they aggregate off the coast.

Merchant Banker/Venture Capital Fund Company/stock-exchanges/stock brokers/sub-brokers are regulated by Securities and Exchange Board of India, and Insurance companies are regulated by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. Similarly, Chit Fund Companies are regulated by the respective State Governments.

Stagflation is the extreme economic situation, a peculiar combination of stagnant growth and rising inflation leading to high unemployment. Generally, rising inflation is a sign of a fast-growing economy as people have more money to spend higher amounts on the same quality of goods. Similarly, when the economic growth stalls, inflation is supposed to go down. And as a result of this stalled economic growth unemployment tends to go up.

• Formalisation of the economy means bringing companies under the regulatory regime of government and subject to laws related to manufacturing and income tax.
• Formalisation leads to more tax revenues with an increase in tax-to-GDP ratio.
• Formalisation provides a level-playing field for tax-compliant entities, expanding the tax base so that the burden falls more equitably on all the players rather than a select few.
• Transitioning economy towards formality brings benefits by establishing the rule of law and provide benefits of labour laws to entrepreneurs and workers.
• It enforces minimum wages and proper documentation of benefits by the employer. Formal jobs also end up ensuring the dignity of labour; enable productivity improvements, as well as access to formal training.

• The Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting is an outcome of the OECD / G20 Project to tackle Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (the “BEPS Project”) i.e., tax planning strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity, resulting in little or no tax being paid. The companies need not invest via shell companies to be accused of BEPS.
• India has ratified the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting.

• The 2021 BRICS summit was the third time that India hosted the BRICS Summit after 2012 and 2016.
• India will host both the SCO and G-20 summits in 2023.

• While El Niño the expression heard more commonly in India, is the abnormal surface warming observed along the eastern and central regions of the Pacific Ocean (region between Peru and Papua New Guinea), La Niña (Spanish for ‘little girl’) is an abnormal cooling of these surface waters.
• Together, the El Niño and La Niña phenomena are termed as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). These are large-scale ocean phenomena which inflence the global weather — winds, temperature and rainfall. They have the ability to trigger extreme weather events like droughts, floods, hot and cold conditions, globally.
• While La Niña conditions enhance the rainfall associated with the Southwest monsoon, it has a negative impact on rainfall associated with the Northeast monsoon.

• The International Development Association (IDA) is the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries.  
• IDA lends money on concessional terms. This means that IDA credits have a zero or very low interest charge and repayments are stretched over 30 to 40 years, including a 5- to 10-year grace period. IDA also provides grants to countries at risk of debt distress.

Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR):

• Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) was established in April 1987 by G-7 countries – USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, and Japan.
• In 1992, the focus of the regime extended to on the proliferation of missiles for the delivery of all types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), i.e., nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
• It is not a legally-binding treaty. It is an informal and voluntary partnership among countriesto prevent the proliferation of missile and unmanned aerial vehicle technology capable of carrying greater than 500 kg payload for more than 300 km.
• The members are thus prohibited from supplying such missiles and UAV systems that are controlled by the MTCR to non-members.
• The decisions are taken by consensus of all the members. This is a non–treaty association of member countries with certain guidelines about the information sharing, national control laws and export policies for missile systems and a rule-based regulation mechanism to limit the transfer of such critical technologies of these missile systems.

India was inducted into the Missile Technology Control Regime in 2016 as the 35th member.

Supercomputers are used for a wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields, including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, flood prediction, climate research, oil and gas exploration, genomics and drug discovery.

Right to Equality includes the following laws:

• Equality before law
• Equal protection of laws
• Prohibition on discrimination on ground of religion
• Equal access to shops, bathing ghats, hotels etc.
• Equality of opportunity in employment
• Abolition of titles
• Abolition of untouchability

Benefits of blockchain technology:

• As a public ledger system, blockchain records and validate each and every transaction made, which makes it secure and reliable.
• All the transactions made are authorized by miners, which makes the transactions immutable and prevent it from the threat of hacking.
• Blockchain technology discards the need of any third-party or central authority for peer-to-peer transactions.
• It allows decentralization of the technology.

• Prices of milk in the country are decided by the Cooperative and Private dairies based on cost of production.
• Under the distribution of legislatives powers between the Union of India and States under Article 246(3) of the Constitution, the preservation of cattle is a matter on which the legislature of the States has exclusive powers to legislate.
• As per article 48 of Indian Constitution the state shall endeavour to organize agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall in particular take steps for preserving improving the breed, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.

A metamaterial is defined as an artificial composite that gains its electrical properties from its structure rather than inheriting them directly from the materials it is composed of.

This term is particularly used when the resulting material has properties not found in naturally formed substances.

Potential applications of metamaterials are diverse and include optical filters, medical devices, remote aerospace applications among others.

The Election Commission registers political parties for the purpose of elections and grants them recognition as national or state parties on the basis of their Poll performance.