ANSWER: A

 ANSWER: D

ANSWER: B

 ANSWER: A

• The India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline Project, signed in 2018 , will connect Siliguri in West Bengal in India and Parbatipur in Dinajpur district of Bangladesh.
• The Friendship pipeline from India will start supplying diesel to Bangladesh from June.
• The 131.5  kilometer  long pipeline has been constructed for importing diesel from India, 126.5 km of which is in Bangladesh and 5 km in India.The IBFPL project aims to facilitate the transportation of imported fuel oil and reduce its transport costs for Bangladesh
• Pre-commissioning of Diesel Imports The pre-commissioning of diesel imports through this pipeline is currently underway.The international pipeline will carry diesel from the Siliguri based marketing terminal of the Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) to Parbatipur depot of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC)
• The pipeline has a capacity of one million metric tonne per annum (MMTPA) and is being built under grant assistance from the government of India.
• It will enable fuel oil products to be exported from India’s Siliguri Marketing Terminal in West Bengal State to Bangladesh
• Dhaka-Delhi agreement on fuel oil- According to the Dhaka-Delhi agreement, fuel oil would be transported to Bangladesh for 15 years through the pipeline in the first phase and the term would be extended on the consensus of the countries.

ANSWER: C

• National Disaster Response Force day is observed on January 19 by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)
• The 18th National Disaster Response Force day was celebrated on January 19, 2023 by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).
• The day has been celebrated on this day since 2006 when the rescue force was officially formed.
• The specialised, multi-skilled rescue force is made up of battalions from the Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and the Assam Rifles.
• The NDRF is the primary agency responsible for conducting rescue operations during disasters like drowning, building collapses, landslides, devastating floods, earthquakes and cyclones.

About NDRF

• With 12 battalions and 13,000 NDRF personnel spread across the country, the NDRF has managed to save 1.44 lakh human lives and evacuated more than 7 lakh stranded individuals in its 17 years of service.
• In 2021 alone, the NDRF saved 12,000 lives in various rescue operations.

History of NDRF

• India saw a series of natural disasters in the later 1990s and early 2000s.
• These included the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, the Gujarat earthquakes in 2001, and the Mumbai floods in 2005 among others. While Indian Armed Forces were deployed for rescue and recovery missions, there was a need for a dedicated rescue operation-focused response force.
• Therefore, the Disaster Management Act of 2005 was enacted.
• The act formulated the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) as the apex body for natural disasters and the NDRF as the specialised rescue force under the NDMA’s mandate.

 ANSWER: C

• Directorate General of Foreign Trade has notified amended rules for extending Export Obligation under AAS.
• Move will help automate entire Export Obligation extension process with minimal human intervention and lead to ease of doing business.
• AAS is a duty exemption scheme issued by Government of India under Foreign Trade Policy 2015-2020 under the purview of DGFT, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• It exempts payment of import duties on raw materials/inputs required for manufacturing products for export.
• It allows duty free import of inputs, which are physically incorporated in an export product.
• It additionally allows packaging material, fuel, oil, catalyst which is consumed / utilized in production of export product.

ANSWER: C

• UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and S&P Global have launched Nature Risk Profile.
• NRP is aimed at enabling financial sector to measure and address nature-related risk by providing scientifically robust and actionable analytics on nature impacts and dependencies.
• Its methodology is based on Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted in December 2022.
• GBF includes a target for governments to take legal, administrative or policy measures to encourage and enable businesses to regularly monitor, assess, and transparently disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity.

ANSWER: A

• FITUR is one of the world’s largest international travel exhibitions at Madrid
• Ministry of Tourism, Government of India is participating in FITUR from 18^thto 22^nd January in Madrid which is one of the world’s largest international travel exhibitions.
• India’s participation at FITUR is significant to step up the recovery of inbound tourism to pre-pandemic levels.
• Ministry of Tourism has taken a space of 253 sq. mtr., with over 30 participants co-exhibiting with the India Pavilion to participate in the Exhibition.
• Incredible India organized various Culture Performances, Yoga Sessions, Mehndi and Bollywood Dance Performances.

ANSWER: B

• Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, held a meeting with representatives of various gram panchayats on the main campus yesterday.
• Pradhans and up-pradhans of Nauni Majhgaon, Oachghat, Shamrod, Daro Deoria and Kotla Panjola gram panchayats of Solan and Sirmaur districts attended the meeting, which aimed at roping in people of rural areas for the development of community projects.
• The VC said the main aim of the meeting was to understand the needs of these panchayats so that the university could develop community-based projects integrating their resources.
• Various subjects such as traditional beekeeping, plantation of multipurpose trees and fodder-based grasses, natural farming practices, millet production and traditional mud-based community structures for storing agricultural produce were discussed in the meeting.

 ANSWER: C

• The much-awaited quick response (QR)-based system for the sale of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), the raw material used for manufacturing drugs, has become operational from January.
• The new system will ensure that APIs sold in the market adhere to the set standards, thus maintaining the efficacy and genuineness of the manufactured drugs. The code can be scanned to obtain the details of the product.
• Manufacturers have for long been flagging the non-availability of quality APIs, claiming suppliers were re-labelling and re-packing the original product after its import.
• The introduction of QR code would help companies understand when the product was imported, besides ensuring the quality of the drugs. He said the system would also ensure that the product was sold at genuine rates as there was a tendency to hoard the APIs and sell these at inflated rates whenever there was a crisis.
• A committee had recommended the QR code tracing and tracking system in 2019. It was finally notified in January 2022, though its implementation was delayed for a year to allow the API traders to sell their old stock.

 Need of such action

• As many as 54 drug samples have been declared substandard in the state over the last two months.
• A majority of these lacked the desired level of assay, which is the active ingredient in a drug that determines its efficacy. Manufacturers, at times, attribute this to the substandard API, which is difficult to be pre-tested before manufacturing.

How it will help

• QR coding will ensure that active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) adhere to quality standards
• The code can be scanned to verify the origin of raw material used for manufacturing drugs
• The system comes following complaints of re-labelling of original product after import

 ANSWER: C

ANSWER: C

ANSWER: C