10 PM Current Affairs Quiz : November 20, 2018

The Environment Protection Act, 1986 does not mention the word “Eco-sensitive Zones”. The MoEF (Ministry of Environment & Forests) has a comprehensive set of guidelines laying down parameters and criteria for declaring ESAs.

A committee constituted by MoEF put this together. The guidelines lay out the criteria based on which areas can be declared as ESAs. These include Species Based (Endemism, Rarity etc), Ecosystem Based (sacred groves, frontier forests etc) and Geomorphologic feature based (uninhabited islands, origins of rivers etc).

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has launched an app and web-based platform, ‘NSE goBID’, for retail investors to buy government securities. The app would allow investors to invest in treasury bills (T-Bills) of 91 days, 182 days and 364 days and various government bonds from one year to almost 40 years.

• The retail investors would be able to make payment directly from their bank accounts using Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Internet banking.
• While investment could be done almost every week after a one-time registration, the app would be available to all investors registered with NSE’s trading members.

General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) is the highest international body of the world for accurate and precise measurements and comprises of 60 countries including India and 42 Associate Members.

Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development is accorded annually by the Trust to individuals or organisations in recognition of creative efforts toward promoting international peace, development and a new international economic order, ensuring that scientific discoveries are used for the larger good of humanity, and enlarging the scope of freedom.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the New Delhi (India)-based independent research and advocacy think tank, has been named the recipient of this prestigious for the year 2018.

It has worked on extending awareness and education about environmental issues, on air and water pollution, waste water management and industrial pollution, food safety and energy, climate change and above all in influencing official policy and public actions for sustainable development.

The new 2019 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report by UNESCO, entitled ‘Building bridges not walls’, continues its assessment of progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on education and its ten targets, as well as other related education targets in the SDG agenda. Its main focus is on the theme of migration and displacement.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India, is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India. Therefore, statement 2 is incorrect.