10 PM Current Affairs Quiz : May 19, 2018

A pro-tem speaker is chosen with the agreement of the members of the Lok Sabha and legislative assembly, so that he can carry on the activities till the permanent speaker is not chosen. Usually, the senior most member of the house is selected for the post. The main duty of the pro-tem speaker is to administer the oath of office to new members of the house. He also enables the House to elect the new Speaker. Once the new Speaker is elected, the office of the pro tem speaker ceases to exist. The powers of the pro tem speaker are not defined.

Treaty of Rome: It established the European Economic Community (EEC) which is seen as a major stepping stone in the creation of the EU.

Treaty of Paris:It was signed in 1951 between France, West Germany, Italy and the three Benelux countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which subsequently became part of the European Union

Maastricht Treaty:It was signed in 1992, by the leaders of 12 member nations (Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, France, Netherlands, West Germany, Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece, Portugal and Spain). This is the treaty that is responsible for the creation of the European Union.

The RBI, recently amended the norms for IFSC Banking Units in order to encourage more investments.Now, the minimum capital of $20 million or equivalent in any foreign currency will  apply to parent bank of IBU in the home country instead of IBU itself. The parent bank will also be required to provide a Letter of Comfort for extending financial assistance, as and when required, in the form of capital or liquidity support to IBU.

Kyaukpyu port, is present in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. The Chinese have a 70 percent equity in the port. Pipelines have been built which connect the Port to China. It is an integral part of China’s BRI and is vital for bypassing the Malacca choke point for oil and gas delivery to its Yunnan province.

The government has formulated National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) as a medium term national level strategy to tackle the increasing air pollution problem across the country in a comprehensive manner.In order to ensure use of new technologies to combat the rising challenge of air pollution in India, a separate component on ‘Technology Assessment Cell’ has been envisaged under NCAP to evaluate the technologies for  prevention, control and abatement of air pollution.The key components of NCAP include – city-specific air pollution abatement action plan for 100 polluting cities of the country similar to one for Delhi, increasing the number of monitoring stations, data dissemination, public participation on planning and implementation, setting up of Air Information Centre for data analysis, resouce apportionment studies, setting up of national inventory, guidelines for indoor air pollution and setting up of rural monitoring stations.