10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: August 26, 2020

Statement 1 is correct. Glanders is an infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia mallei.

Statement 2 is incorrect. Though not common, people have gotten glanders from sick animals. People who are in close contact with animals that have glanders are more likely to get the disease than those who are not.

# In the past, the germs that cause glanders, the bacteria called Burkholderia mallei, have been used as a biological weapon during wars.

Option 1 is correctly matched. Hyderabad is considered the main pearl trading center in India, because of which the city is also known as the “City of Pearls”.

Option 2 is incorrectly matched. Jaipur is called the Pink City. In 2019, UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed Jaipur the ‘Pink City of India’ among its World Heritage Sites.

Every building within the walled historic centre is painted a terracotta “pink” colour and there are few exceptions to this uniformly colour scheme. The historical reason for the uniform colour of central Jaipur lies with the absolute power of the Maharaja (Sawai Ram Singh) over his capital and his extreme strategy to impress Prince Albert during his 1876 tour of India.

Option 3 is correctly matched. Udaipur is known as the “City of Lakes”. The Lake Pichola, Udai Sagar Lake, Fateh Sagar Lake, Rajsamand Lake, and Jaisamand Lake are the five prominent lakes of Udaipur. One of the most famous lakes is Pushkar Lake, which is one of the major tourist attractions in Rajasthan.

Bonda tribe, classified as one of India’s Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) is one of the most primitive tribal community of Odisha. The ‘Bonda’ are known among themselves as ‘Remo’ (men).

The Bonda Hills area has been designated according to the name of the indigenous tribe the ‘Bonda’. Geographically the Bonda hills are bounded in the northwest by the Malkangiri plains and in the south-east by the Machhkund valley.

With slash and burn cultivation they also practice paddy cultivation on terraced-fields in the valleys during rainy season. Their language belongs to the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic language family.

Overall objective of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) is comprehensive mitigation actions for prevention, control and abatement of air pollution besides augmenting the air quality monitoring network across the country and strengthening the awareness and capacity building activities.

Statement 1 is correct. The Central Government had launched National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in 2019 under the Central Sector “Control of Pollution” Scheme as a long-term, time-bound, national level strategy to tackle the air pollution problem across the country in a comprehensive manner with targets to achieve 20 % to 30 % reduction in PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations by 2024 keeping 2017 as the base year for the comparison of concentration.

Statement 2 is incorrect. The NCAP will be a mid-term, five-year action plan with 2019 as the first year.

102 non-attainment cities (not Aspirational Districts) mostly in Indo-Gangetic Plains have been identified based on ambient air quality data for the period 2011 – 2015 and WHO report 2014/2018. The city specific Action Plans have been approved for all 102 non-attainment cities for implementation on ground.

Other features of NCAP include, increasing number of monitoring stations in the country including rural monitoring stations, technology support, emphasis on awareness and capacity building initiatives, setting up of certification agencies for monitoring equipment, source apportionment studies, emphasis on enforcement, specific sectoral interventions etc.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Tilak never became the INC president while in March 1931, Sardar Patel presided over the 46th session of the Indian National Congress at Karachi which was called upon to ratify the Gandhi – Irwin Pact, which had just then been concluded.

Statement 2 is incorrect. In response to the inadequacy of the Simon Report, the Labour Government, which had come to power under Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, decided to hold a series of Round Table Conferences in London.

The first Round Table Conference convened from 12 November 1930 to 19 January 1931. Prior to the Conference, M. K. Gandhi had initiated the Civil Disobedience Movement on behalf of the Indian National Congress. Consequently, since many of the Congress’ leaders were in jail, Congress did not participate in the first conference.

Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, met with Gandhi to reach a compromise. The second Round Table Conference was held in London from 7 September 1931 to 1 December 1931 with the participation of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.

The third Round Table Conference (17 November 1932 – 24 December 1932) was not attended by the Indian National Congress and Gandhi.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Manufacturing sector has consistently received more FDI inflows than the Financial Services.

Statement 2 is correct. Singapore, Mauritius, Netherlands, Cayman Islands and USA are the top sources of FDI inflows to India.

# The data source is recently released Annual Report of the Reserve Bank of India for the Year 2019-20 (Snapshot below).

Option 1 is correctly matched. Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso and the administrative, communications, cultural, and economic center of the nation.

Option 2 is correctly matched. Aleppo is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. The Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016) occurred in the city during the Syrian Civil War, and many parts of the city suffered massive destruction.

Option 3 is correctly matched. Bamako, located on the Niger River, is the capital and largest city of Mali.

The economic, political, and social frameworks that each society has, its laws, institutions, policies, etc., result in different distributions of benefits and burdens across members of the society.

The structure of these frameworks is important because the distributions of benefits and burdens resulting from them fundamentally affect people’s lives. Principles of distributive justice are therefore best thought of as providing moral guidance for the political processes and structures that affect the distribution of benefits and burdens in societies.

Distributive principles vary in numerous dimensions. They vary in what is considered relevant to distributive justice (income, wealth, opportunities, jobs, welfare, utility, etc.); in the nature of the recipients of the distribution (individual persons, groups of persons, reference classes, etc.); and on what basis the distribution should be made (equality, maximization, according to individual characteristics, according to free transactions, etc.).

Both statements are correct.

Monocropping is the technique where the farmer grows the same crop on the same land every year; this is usually practiced in wheat, rice fields, sugarcane grape vineyards and corn fields.

The long-term effects of monocropping are quite dangerous making Monoculture farming untenable:

-growing only one crop on the field throughout the farm repetitively leads to depletion of soil nutrients as soil has is not replenished with nutrients. Further the intensive farming methods pf monocropping leaves soil scarce of nutrients.

-the depletion of those soil nutrients, especially nitrogen, leads to weakness in soil and an inability to support healthy growth of plants.

-higher demand of nutrients is fulfilled by using higher amount of fertilizers. These fertilizers have their own toll on the environment.

-Monocultures are quite vulnerable to weeds and pests, which needs more pesticides to get rid of them. Weeds and insect pests can spread faster in monocultures because of the lack of biological and genetic diversity.

The Somali elephant shrew or Somali sengi is a species of elephant shrew in the family Macroscelididae. These are neither elephants nor shrews, but related to aardvarks, elephants and manatees. The last scientific record of the “lost species” of elephant shrew was in the 1970s, despite local sightings.

A team of researchers from the United States and the Republic of Djibouti has rediscovered the elusive Somali sengi (Elephantulus revoilii) over 50 years after it was last recorded. While this species, also known as the Somali elephant-shrew, is historically documented as endemic to Somalia, the new records are from the neighboring Republic of Djibouti and thus expand the species’ known range in the Horn of Africa.

In 2017, the Global Wildlife Conservation identified it as a Top 25 Most Wanted animal in their Search for Lost Species initiative. It is currently listed as Data Deficient in IUCN Red List.