10 PM Current Affairs Quiz #90 February 17, 2020

Explanation: Kerala government has brought packaged drinking water under the ambit of Essential Commodities Act with a view to regulate its price. The price has been capped at Rs.13/litre. Act is used by the Government to regulate the production, supply and distribution of certain commodities it declares ‘essential’ in order to make them available to consumers at fair prices. The list of items under the Act includes drugs, fertilisers, pulses and edible oils, and petroleum and petroleum products.

Explanation: Recently NASA announced it has selected four Discovery Program investigations to develop concept studies for possible new missions. Two proposals are for trips to Venus, and one each is for Jupiter’s moon Io and Neptune’s moon Triton.

Explanation: The MSC wants to promote trust and contribute to the peaceful settlement of conflicts by enabling a lasting, curated and at the same time informal dialogue within the international security community. Today, the MSC is the world’s leading forum for debates on international security policy. The MSC sees its conferences as an independent “marketplace of ideas”, where suggestions and solutions are developed and opinions are exchanged. It provides a platform for official and unofficial diplomatic initiatives and approaches to address the world’s most pressing security risks. The MSC gives a special place to informal meetings between public officials in order to promote peace through dialogue, according to its original motto. In addition to the annual Main conference, the MSC regularly organizes top-class events on specific Themes and regions and publishes the Munich Security Report, an annual compendium of the most relevant figures, maps and analyzes on key challenges of international security.

Explanation: The International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) were established in 1991. This establishment followed the initiatives of the specialized international Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams who operated together in the Mexican earthquake of 1985 and the Armenian earthquake of 1988. So as not to duplicate existing structures, the group was created within the framework of existing humanitarian coordination within the United Nations (UN). To this end, the group’s secretariat falls within the Response Partnerships Section (RPS) of the Emergency Response Support Branch (ERSB) of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva. The INSARAG’s primary purpose is to facilitate coordination between the various international USAR teams who make themselves available for deployment to countries experiencing devastating events of structural collapse due primarily to earthquakes. The group achieves such coordination through facilitating opportunities for communication between these groups ahead of such events. These meetings of teams have resulted in many practical agreements between them that have streamlined working together during actual disasters.

Explanation: Maharashtra lost its top slot to Andhra Pradesh in 2018-19 in attracting project investments, according to study by the Reserve Bank of India. But over a five-year period between 2014-15 and 2018-19, the state topped the list followed by Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. In 2018-19, Andhra Pradesh accounted for the highest share – 11.8 per cent- in total cost of projects sanctioned by banks and financial institutions in 2018-19 followed by Tamil Nadu (11.5 per cent), Maharashtra (10.9 per cent), Gujarat (9.9 per cent), Telangana (8.2 per cent), Rajasthan (6.8 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (6.2 per cent). But the data for the five year period between 2014-15 to 2018-19, revealed that Maharashtra topped the list attracting 13.6 per cent of the investments during the period followed by Gujarat which managed to get 13.4 per cent of the investments. The study noted that 56 per cent of the projects were taken up in six states- Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu indicating their locational advantages over other states.