Daily Current Affairs MCQs : 28 December 2023 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

The potato disease that has ravaged crops across Punjab districts is called late blight (100 words). It displays symptoms like green circular spots on potatoes that expand into dark brown lesions. Over 50% of the state’s potato cultivation has been impacted by late blight fungal infestation. Excess moisture and humidity encouraged its proliferation, resulting in rotting of tubers.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy under National Sports Awards 2023 will be awarded to Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar this year. The Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy is awarded every year for outstanding performance in inter-university tournaments. The first runner up award will be given to Lovely Professional University, Punjab and the second runner up award will be given to Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra.  

The International Gender Equality Prize in 2023 was awarded to the Afghan Women Skills Development Center. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of Finland presented the €300,000 award to Mahbouba Seraj, the Center’s Executive Director, in Tampere on December 11, 2023. The Center is recognized for its crucial work in defending women’s rights and promoting gender equality in Afghanistan, particularly under challenging conditions following the Taliban’s rise to power.
International Gender Equality Prize is a government prize administered by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Finland. Tampere has been a partner of the Prize and the host city for the award ceremony since 2017.

International Geeta Seminar and Geeta Mahotsav is being organized in Kurukshetra, Haryana. It was inaugurated by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on 17 December 2023. The main event will be organized from 17th December to 24th December. Assam is the main state partner in this programme. International Gita Mahotsav was organized in Australia in April 2023.

In December 2023, the Vijay Hazare Trophy, a domestic cricket tournament in India, concluded with Haryana defeating Rajasthan in the final at Rajkot’s Saurashtra Cricket Stadium. This victory marked Haryana’s first title and their debut final appearance in the competition, which began in the 1993-94 season. Tamil Nadu holds the record for the most titles, having won the trophy five times.

Indian airline IndiGo has become the first Indian airline to carry 100 million passengers in a year. IndiGo has become India's largest airline after carrying 100 million passengers in the year 2023. Indigo has started its flights on 20 new international routes in the last six months. InterGlobe Aviation Limited, doing business as IndiGo, is headquartered in Gurgaon.

The carbon tax that the UK plans to levy from 2027 on imports of carbon-intensive materials is the Carbon Border Tax. It will apply to items like iron, steel, aluminum, ceramics and cement. The tax rate will depend on the carbon emissions associated with making the imported goods overseas and the gap with UK carbon prices. India opposes such green border levies as non-tariff barriers. The UK is following the EU which has already rolled out its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways recently said that 1467 projects of the National Highway Authority of India have been brought under the Bhoomi Rashi portal. It is an e-governance initiative of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Its objective is to speed up the process of land acquisition for national highways.

Scientists using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have discovered hydrogen cyanide, a crucial molecule for life formation, in the oceans of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. Published in Nature Astronomy, the study suggests that Enceladus subsurface oceans may possess more chemical energy than previously thought, potentially supporting the creation and persistence of complex organic compounds.
The research, based on Cassini’s data collected between 2004 and 2017, identified hydrogen cyanide, along with methanol, ethane, and oxygen, in the plumes of water vapor erupting from Enceladus’s surface. Saturn has 62 confirmed moons, and its largest moon is Titan, which is larger than Earth’s own moon and has a thick, opaque atmosphere.

The government has allocated Rs 13,000 crore for the PM Vishwakarma Yojana for the financial year 2023-2024 to 2027-28. PM Vishwakarma Yojana was launched on 17 September 2023, on the occasion of the 73rd birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Vishwakarma Yojana is a central sector scheme.