10 PM Daily Current Affairs Quiz | March 30 2021

Statement 1 is incorrect. The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 allows the central government to order for recall of motor vehicles if a defect in the vehicle may cause damage to the environment, or the driver, or other road users.
Statement 2 is correct. It defines a good samaritan as a person who renders emergency medical or non-medical assistance to a victim at the scene of an accident. The assistance must have been in good faith, voluntary, and without the expectation of any reward. Such a person will not be liable for any civil or criminal action for any injury to or death of an accident victim, caused due to their negligence in providing assistance to the victim.
# Supreme Court has ordered the Centre to launch a national online platform, which could be operated and accessed across the country for submission of accident reports, claims and responses to claims, etc.

The International Ranger Awards recognize the remarkable work of rangers in protected and conserved areas around the world. Hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, in collaboration with the International Ranger Federation, Global Wildlife Conservation, and Conservation Allies, these awards are intended to improve rangers’ capabilities, raise awareness about the critical role they play in conservation efforts, and help share rangers’ unique stories and perspectives.
The award has been announced for 10 professionals across the globe and Mahinder Giri, a range officer who has been deployed at Rajaji Tiger Reserve (RTR) for the past few years, has become the only ranger from Asia to win the prestigious International Ranger Award.

Ex Desert Flag is an annual multi-national large force employment warfare exercise hosted by the United Arab Emirates Air Force. The Indian Air Force participated for the first time in Exercise Desert Flag-VI along with air forces of United Arab Emirates, United States of America, France, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Bahrain. Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Egypt and South Korea participated as observer forces.
The objectives for the exercise were to expose coalition participating forces to large force employment, sharpen tactical capabilities, and enhance interoperability along with fostering closer relations between the participating forces. The aim for the participating crew and specialist observers was to expose them to operational environment in scenarios requiring multinational forces working together.

The Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process (HoA-IP) was founded on November 2nd, 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey. The Heart of Asia provides a platform for sincere and results-oriented regional cooperation by placing Afghanistan at its center, in recognition of the fact that a secure and stable Afghanistan is vital to the prosperity of the Heart of Asia region.
This platform was established to address the shared challenges and interests of Afghanistan and its neighbors and regional partners. The Heart of Asia is comprised of 15 participating countries, 17 supporting countries, and 12 supporting regional and international organizations.
# India is part of the process and External Affairs Minister reached Dushanbe on a three-day visit to Tajikistan to attend the 9th Ministerial Conference of Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process on Afghanistan.

Statement 1 and 2 are correct.
Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are cryptographic assets on blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other. Unlike cryptocurrencies, they cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency.
Statement 3 is incorrect. A bitcoin is fungible — by trading one for another bitcoin, and nothing in value changes hands. NFTs, on the other hand, are a class of cryptocurrency assets in which each item, or token, is entirely unique.
Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but its blockchain also supports these NFTs.
# NFTs can be anything digital (such as drawings, music, your brain downloaded and turned into an AI), but a lot of the recent trend is around using the tech to sell digital art.

The traditional vaccines consist of either killed or weakened forms of a virus or bacterium. These provoke an immune response that allows the body to fight off the actual pathogen later on.
RNA vaccines deliver genetic information that allows the body’s own cells to produce a viral protein. Synthetic mRNA that encodes a viral protein can borrow this machinery to produce many copies of the protein. These proteins stimulate the immune system to mount a response, without posing any risk of infection.
# COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for cells to make spike protein, that is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.
# The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Bharat Biotech International are looking at bringing the messenger RNA platform to India after seeing its successful use in quick development of covid-19 vaccines by US-based Pfizer and Moderna.

The most widely accepted today about how the Moon was made is the giant-impact theory. It proposes that the Moon formed during a collision between the Earth and another small planet, about the size of Mars. The debris from this impact collected in an orbit around Earth to form the Moon.
Scientists have long agreed on the existence of the planet, called Theia, and its role in creating the moon. The theory goes that Theia crashed into Earth early in its life and knocked loose a chunk of rock that would later become the moon.
A new study led by Qian Yuan, a geodynamics researcher at Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, suggests that the remnants of Theia is still inside Earth, probably located in two continent-size layers of rock beneath West Africa and the Pacific Ocean.

The Great Bitter Lake in Egypt is one of several lakes located along the Suez Canal, which connects the eastern Mediterranean and Red Seas. As the canal is built only to allow ships to travel in a single lane, the Great Bitter Lake is a location where ships can change their position in line (like the passing lane on the highway) before proceeding to either Port Said to the north, or the port of Suez to the south. The lake also provides an intermediate harbor for ships traversing the Canal.

Statement 1 is correct. Agriculture irrigation accounts for nearly 78% followed by domestic use 6%, industries 5% of water resources use in India.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Only about half of India’s gross cropped area (198 million hectares) is irrigated. Groundwater contributes about 64 per cent, canals 23 per cent, tanks 2 per cent and other sources 11 per cent to irrigation.# As per the UN’s report on Sustainable Development Goal-6 (SDG-6) on “Clean water and sanitation for all by 2030”, India achieved only 56.6 per cent of the target by 2019.
# As per the Niti Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index (2019), 75 per cent households in India do not have access to drinking water on their premises and India ranks 120th amongst 122 countries in the water quality index.

Considering the importance of availability of labour force data at more frequent time intervals, National Statistical Office (NSO) launched Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) on April 2017. The objective of PLFS is primarily twofold:
— to estimate the key employment and unemployment indicators (viz. Worker Population Ratio, Labour Force Participation Rate, Unemployment Rate) in the short time interval of three months for the urban areas only in the Current Weekly Status (CWS)
— to estimate employment and unemployment indicators in both usual status (ps+ss) and CWS in both rural and urban areas annually.