10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: December 21, 2020

Statement 1 is correct. Article 365 of the Constitution states that if any State has failed to comply with, or to give effect to, any directions given in the exercise of the executive power of the Union under any of the provisions of this Constitution, it shall be lawful for the President to hold that a situation has arisen in which the Government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Article 356 provides for provisions regarding the failure of Constitutional machinery in States. The article explicitly puts the onus of such determination on executive, i.e. President and the Governor of the State concerned, and not the Judiciary.

Statement 1 is incorrect. The proposed Maharashtra Government ‘Shakti law’ involves two bills — the Maharashtra Shakti Criminal Law (Maharashtra Amendment) Act, 2020, and the Special Court and Machinery for Implementation of Maharashtra Shakti Criminal Law, 2020.
The draft legislation seeks amendments to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act to include new offences, increase punishments and speedier investigations and trials.
Statement 2 is correct. Stringent punishment, including the death penalty and heavy fines on the perpetrators is a key feature of the draft bill. The perpetrators will be punished with imprisonment for life for not less than ten years but may extend to the remainder of natural life or with death in cases characterised as ‘heinous’.
The draft bill also incorporates provisions with respect to social media. Threatening and intimidating women on social media will be an offence with a maximum punishment of two years and a Rs 1 lakh fine.

The Sports Ministry has approved the inclusion of four Indigenous Games to be a part of Khelo India Youth Games 2021, scheduled to take place in Haryana. The games include: Gatka, Kalaripayattu, Thang-Ta and Mallakhamba.
Gatka is a traditional form of martial arts in Punjab, which is historically associated with Sikh Gurus and is popular among the masses as Sikh martial art.
Manipuri martial art is called Thang-Ta (sword and spear). It is dedicated to fighting skill and worship.
Kalaripayattu, also known simply as Kalari, is an Indian martial art that originated in modern-day Kerala.
Mallakhamb is a traditional sport of India in which a gymnast performs aerial yoga or gymnastic postures and wrestling grips in concert with a vertical stationary or hanging wooden pole, cane, or rope.

Goa Liberation Day is observed on December 19 every year in India and it marks the day Indian armed forces freed Goa in 1961 following almost 450 years of Portuguese rule.
Following the death of Pt. Nehru, Shri Gulzari Lal Nanda was a sworn in as Prime Minister of India on May 27, 1964. Again on January 11, 1966, he was sworn in as Prime Minister following the death of Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri at Tashkent.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 began following Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar, which was designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency against Indian rule.

Statement 1 is correct. Guru Tegh Bahadur was the ninth Guru of the Sikh religion. He was beheaded on the orders of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb on 24 November 1675 in Delhi.
Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib and Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib stand at the sites of beheading and cremation of his body.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Mughal King Akbar reigned from 1556 to 1605, whereas Guru Tegh Bahadur was born on 1 April 1621 in Amritsar and was named Tyaga Mal at birth.

The highly infectious variant of SARS-COV-2 that has been reported to have emerged in south-east England that is spreading rapidly to the rest of the UK and is already present elsewhere in the world.
The World Health Organisation said its Evolution Working Group is working closely with the UK medical authorities to understand how the variant, now called B.1.1.7, is likely to affect the course of the pandemic. It has been detected in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia.
Scientists say two aspects of B.1.1.7 give cause for concern. One is the unprecedented number of mutations it carries. The other is the speed with which it is supplanting other strains of the Sars-Cov-2 virus in south-east England.

Both statements are correct.
In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that greatly exceeds the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above.
A test facility designed or considered for hypersonic testing should simulate the typical flow features of this flow regime. To develop satellite launch rockets, space shuttles, etc., it is essential to test in the hypersonic range of Mach number 5 or more. The hypersonic wind tunnel is used to test flight characteristics in a hypersonic region.
# Defence minister recently inaugurated the advanced Hypersonic Wind Tunnel test facility in Hyderabad. With this India has become the third country to have such a huge facility in size and capability after America and Russia.

A mutation is a change in a DNA sequence. Mutations can lead to changes in the structure of an encoded protein or to a decrease or complete loss in its expression.
–When a cell divides, it makes a copy of its DNA — and sometimes the copy is not quite perfect. That small difference from the original DNA sequence is a mutation.
— Mutations can also be caused by exposure to specific chemicals or radiation. Ultraviolet (UV) light has strong genotoxic effects to produce DNA damage, induce mutations, and, in the worst case, cause the development of tumors.

Both statements are correct.
The FNCAS9 Editor-Limited Uniform Detection Assay (FELUDA) test is a paper strip test for diaagnosis of SARS-COV-2.
It uses CRISPR-Cas technology for the detection of genes specific to SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In this method, a protein called FnCas9 and a guide RNA (gRNA) which helps in recognising the viral genes is used. If the patient sample has the viral gene, this gRNA-FnCas9 complex binds to the gene and using a paper strip this binding can be visualised.

Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) has set up many global indices, one of which is a composite of Indian stocks-the MSCI India index.
The MSCI Indexes are a measurement of stock market performance in a particular area. Like other indexes, such as the Dow Jones Averages or the S&P 500, it tracks the performance of the stocks included in the index.
MSCI has indexes for a variety of geographic sub-areas, as well as global indexes for stock categories such as small-cap, large-cap, and mid-cap. The four most popular track emerging markets, frontier markets, developed markets excluding the United States and Canada, and the world market.
# MSCI Inc will cut seven Chinese firms from some of its global indexes, it said recently, the third major index publisher after S&P Dow Jones Indices and FTSE Russell to do so following U.S. restrictions on owning the companies.