Daily Current Affairs MCQ- January 2, 2023 - UPSC MCQ

National Anti-Doping Agency will host an Inclusion Conclave to sharpen the focus on anti-doping education and processes for athletes with disabilities.

• NADA was established by the Government of India, with the objective of acting as the independent Anti-Doping Organization for India having a vision of dope-free sports.
• It was set up as a registered society under the Societies Registration Act of 1860 on November 2005.
• The primary functions of NADA are as under:
  • To implement the Anti-Doping Code to achieve compliance by all sports organizations in the Country.
  • To coordinate dope testing program through all participating stakeholders.
  • To promote anti-doping research and education to inculcate the value of dope free sports.
  • To adopt best practice standards and quality systems to enable effective implementation and continual improvement of the program.

Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE)

• Athletes may have illnesses or conditions that require them to take medications or undergo procedures. If the medication or method is prohibited as per the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Prohibited List, a TUE may give that athlete the authorization to use that substance or method while competing without invoking an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) and applicable sanction.
• Applications for TUEs are evaluated by a panel of physicians the TUE Committee (TUEC). NADO TUEs are only valid for national-level Competition and Out-of-Competition Testing.

The World Anti-Doping Agency

• The World Anti-Doping Agency is a foundation initiated by the International Olympic Committee to promote, coordinate and monitor the fight against drugs in sports.
• The agency's key activities include monitoring of the World Anti-Doping Code, whose provisions are enforced by the UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport.
• Headquarters: Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
• Established in: 1999.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Baguette — the staple French bread — was recently inscribed into the UN’s list of intangible cultural heritage (ICH).

• The baguette is a long and thin loaf made of flour, water, salt and yeast, and is consumed as a staple in France. Some believe that it was invented by August Zang, a baker and an entrepreneur from Vienna in 1839.
• In March 2021, France nominated the baguette as its candidate for consideration within the UNESCO ICH list. It drew attention to the steady decline in the number of bakeries in the country as around 20,000 of them have closed down since 1970.

Intangible cultural heritage

• UNESCO defines “intangible” as “expressions that have been passed from one generation to another, have evolved in response to their environments and contribute to giving us a sense of identity and continuity…”
• ‘Intangible cultural heritage’ includes “oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”

Criteria for the selection

• There are three criteria for an intangible cultural heritage to be inscribed in the United Nations list. The entity must
  1. be recognized by communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals as part of their cultural heritage
  2. be transmitted from generation to generation and be constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history and
  3. provide them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity,”.

Hence both statements are correct.

Recently, CARA organised 10 State Orientation Programmes, and Interactive meets with more than 700 Prospective Adoptive Parents and Adoptive Parents.

• What is it? CARA is a statutory body of Ministry of Women & Child Development, Government of India.
• Role: 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.
• Function: CARA primarily deals with adoption of orphan, abandoned and surrendered children through its associated /recognised adoption agencies.
• In India, a child can be placed with a family under the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act 1956, Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 and Juvenile Justice Act, 2000.
  • The mandatory registration of Child Care Institutions (CCIs) and linking to CARA has been provided in Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.

European researchers have recently revived 13 “zombie viruses'' from Russia’s Siberian permafrost.

• The virus emerged due to the thawing of permafrost as the global temperature is rising. The new strain is one of 13 viruses outlined in the study, each of which possessed its own genome.
• The oldest, dubbed Pandoravirus yedoma after the mythological character Pandora, was 48,500 years old, a record age for a frozen virus returning to a state where it has the potential to infect other organisms.
• Pandoravirus was discovered below the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas in Yakutia, Russia, others have been found everywhere from mammoth fur to the intestines of a Siberian wolf.

What is a zombie virus?

• Zombie virus is the term used for those viruses which have been dormant for thousands of years. Zombie viruses have been dormant for many years due to being trapped inside the ice and have come to life after the ice melted.
• Scientists discovered that all of the "zombie viruses" have the potential to be infectious and hence pose a "health danger" after researching the live cultures.

Hence both statements are correct.

The Delhi High Court recently passed an interim order to prevent the unlawful use of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan’s name, image and voice. The court, through its order, restrained persons at large from infringing the personality rights of the actor.

• Personality rights refer to the right of a person to protect his/her personality under the right to privacy or property.
• These rights are important to celebrities as their names, photographs or even voices can easily be misused in various advertisements by different companies to boost their sales.
• Therefore, it is necessary for renowned personalities/celebrities to register their names to save their personality rights.
• A large list of unique personal attributes contribute to the making of a celebrity.
• All of these attributes need to be protected, such as name, nickname, stage name, picture, likeness, image and any identifiable personal property, such as a distinctive race car.

Personality rights and Publicity rights:

• Personality rights are different from publicity rights.
• Personality rights consist of two types of rights:
  • Firstly, the right of publicity, or the right to keep one’s image and likeness from being commercially exploited without permission or contractual compensation, which is similar (but not identical) to the use of a trademark; and
  • Secondly, the right to privacy or the right to not have one’s personality represented publicly without permission.
• However, under common law jurisdictions, publicity rights fall into the realm of the ‘tort of passing off’.
• Passing off takes place when someone intentionally or unintentionally passes off their goods or services as those belonging to another party.
• Often, this type of misrepresentation damages the goodwill of a person or business, resulting in financial or reputational damage.
• Publicity rights are governed by statutes like the Trade marks Act 1999 and the Copyright Act 1957.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia recently launched Digi Yatra from the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi for three airports in the country, namely New Delhi, Varanasi and Bengaluru.

• Digi Yatra is conceived to achieve contactless, seamless processing of passengers at airports based on Facial Recognition Technology (FRT).
• To use this facility, one-time registration on Digi Yatra app is required using Aadhar based validation and a self-image capture.
• The project has tremendous advantages of improving passenger convenience and ease of travel.
• With Digi Yatra, India will now stand in the ranks of world class airports like Heathrow in London and Atlanta in United States of America.
• Privacy features of the project:
  • There is no central storage of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
  • Passenger’s ID and travel credentials are stored in a secure wallet in the passenger’s smartphone itself.
  • The uploaded data will utilise blockchain technology and all the data will be purged from the servers within 24 hours of use.
• It saves passenger time.
  • For example, Dubai Airport where passenger time upto 40 percent was saved due to this technology.
  • A similar technology saved nine minutes per aircraft time at the Atlanta Airport.
• The service is presently being launched for domestic flights passengers only.
• It is voluntary is nature.

Hence both statements are correct.

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog has recently announced the launch of applications for Community Innovator Fellowship (CIF).

• The initiative aims at facilitating knowledge building and provides infrastructure support to aspiring community innovators essential for their entrepreneurship journey.
• Currently there are 22 Community Innovator fellows being incubated at the Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC) program of AIM.
• A Community Innovator Fellow is an individual with an entrepreneurial mind-set, with an idea to solve a community challenge through her or his enterprise.
• This is a one-year-long intensive fellowship program wherein an aspiring community innovator can apply irrespective of their socio-economic background.
• AIM has been setting up Atal Community Innovation Centres across the country.
• Currently there are 14 such centres, spread across 9 states and 36 more are coming up in the near future to take the collective number to 50 such Centres.

Hence both statements are correct.

External Affairs Ministry recently said that India will assume chairmanship of Wassenaar arrangement on 1 Jan 2023.

• The Wassenaar Arrangement has been established in order to contribute to regional and international security and stability, by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus preventing destabilising accumulations.
• The body came into being in 1996 to succeed the Cold War-era Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls.
  • The name comes from Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague, where the agreement to start such a multi-lateral cooperation was reached in 1995.
• Members: 42
• India: India joined the Wassenaar Arrangement in December 2017 as its 42nd participating state.

The Arrangement is based on five crucial principles:

• It contributes to regional and international security and stability.
• It promotes transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies.
• It complements and reinforces the export control regimes for weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.
• It is not directed against any state or group of states.
• It uses export controls as a means to combat terrorism.

Hence only statement 1 is correct.

According to the Union Ministry of Agriculture area under rabi crops increases 6% higher from the year-ago period.

• Farmers have sown rabi crops in over 70 per cent of the 633.80 lakh hectares (lh) of the normal area so far, some 6 per cent higher from the year-ago period.
• Higher acreage and potentially conducive weather throughout the season may help the country to have another year of bumper harvest.
• The total rabi acreage is 450.61 lh as of December 2 against 423.52 lh in the corresponding period a year ago.
• Wheat, the key winter-grown cereal, has been planted on 211.62 lh against 200.85 lh, up 5.4 per cent.
• The absolute increase in area under wheat from the year-ago level has narrowed down for the first time after rising almost every week since the beginning of the sowing season.
• Many parts of north-west India, the key producing region of wheat, mustard and chana (gram), may see a warmer winter season primarily due to likely subdued activity of western disturbances.
• The area under winter paddy has increased to 10.62 lh from 9.53 lh while coarse cereals acreage is up at 32.63 lh from 29.02 lh.

Hence both statements are correct.

According to the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment about 5 lakh people got benefits under PM Daksh Program.

• PM-DAKSH (Pradhan Mantri Dakshta Aur Kushalta Sampann Hitgrahi) Yojana was launched by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment (MoSJ&E) in 2020-21.
• It is a National Action Plan for skilling marginalized persons covering SCs, OBCs, EBCs, DNTs, Sanitation workers including waste pickers.

Objective:

• The main objective of the PM-DAKSH Yojana is to increase the skill levels of the target youth by providing them short term and long term skills, followed by assistance in wage/self-employment.

Target Group:

• It aims to improve all-round competency of 2.7 lakh persons, over the next 5 years, beginning with nearly 0.5 lakh youth in the first year i.e. 2021-22, from the following sections of the target group:
• Artisans - who may be able to improve their revenue generation capacities within their practicing vocations;
• Women - who may be able to enter into self-employment and financially empower themselves without neglecting their domestic activities; and
• Youth - who may acquire long-term training and specialization in employable vocations and gain a better standing in the job market.

Eligibility:

• Candidates of age group 18-45 years belonging to any of the following categories can apply for the training programme under PM-DAKSH:
  • Persons belonging to Scheduled Castes.
  • Other Backward Classes (OBCs) having annual family income below Rs. 3 lakh.
  • Economically Backward Classes (EBCs) having annual family income below Rs. 1 lakh.
  • De-Notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribe (DNT).
  • Safai Karamcharis (including waste pickers) and their dependants.

Hence only statement 2 is correct.