Daily Current Affairs Quiz: July 08, 2023

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: D

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: A

• Recently X-class solar flares led to radio blackouts in parts of the US, Pacific Ocean.

ABOUT SOLAR FLARES

• Solar flares are giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light, and high-speed particles into space.
• These flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
• It happens when energy stored in ‘twisted’ magnetic fields (usually above sunspots) is suddenly released.
• They can affect radio communications, power grids and navigation signals and endanger astronauts and spacecraft.
• Solar flares can be divided into various categories based on their brightness in X-ray wavelengths.
• The smallest are A-class, followed by B, C, M, and X, the largest.
• Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output.
• Within each letter class, there is a finer scale from 1 to 9.

Severity decreases from top to bottom.

ANSWER: D

• The world has become a little less safe than last year, as reported by Institute of Economics and Peace in its flagship Global Peace Index 2023 report.
• The 17th edition of the GPI ranked 163 independent states and territories, comprising 7% of the world’s population, according to their level of peacefulness.
• It measures the state of peace across three domains:
  • Societal safety and security;
  • Ongoing domestic and international conflict;

MAJOR FINDINGS

• The average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.42%.
• Top 5- Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world – a title it has held since 2008.
  • It is accompanied at the top by Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, and Austria.
• Bottom 5– Afghanistan is the least peaceful country in the world for the eighth consecutive year.
  • It is followed by Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• India has occupied the 126^th spot in the rankings, two higher than its previous position.
• The report stated that India experienced an improvement of 3.5 per cent in overall peacefulness over the past year, owing to improvements in violent crime, neighbouring countries’ relations, and political instability.
• Among other countries, Nepal, China, Sri Lanka, United States of America, and Pakistan, and have been ranked 79, 80, 107, 131, 146, respectively.

ANSWER: A

• The Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DAPRG) has recently launched the third edition of the NeSDA portal.
• The 2023 framework also proposes to evaluate the e-Governance at the City level by assessing City Portal.

About National e-Governance Service Delivery Assessment (NeSDA) Portal

• NeSDA framework was launched in August
• Objective– To measure the depth and effectiveness of existing e-Governance service delivery mechanisms.
• This framework is based on the Online Service Index (OSI) of UN eGovernment Survey.
• The framework covers six sectors, Finance, Labour & Employment, Education, Local Government & Utilities, Social Welfare (including Agriculture & Health) and Environment (including Fire) sectors.
• The Department has successfully released 2 editions of NeSDA study, viz., NeSDA 2019 and NeSDA 2021.
• Improvement in the country’s e-Governance landscape due to last 2 editions of NESDA study may be summarized in the following key take aways:
  • Increase in e-Service Delivery
  • Rise in use of Integrated / Centralized Portals for delivery of e-Services
  • Improvement across assessment parameter scores
• DARPG undertakes NeSDA study biennially.
• This study assesses States, Union Territories (UTs), and focus Central Ministries on the effectiveness of e-Governance service delivery.
• NeSDA helps the respective governments improve their delivery of citizen centric services and shares best practices across the country for all States, UTs and Central Ministries to emulate.

ANSWER: B

• The 7^THedition of the Indian Navy – US Navy ,Salvage and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) exercise, SALVEX was conducted recently in Kochi.
• Indian Navy – US Navy have been participating in joint Salvage and EOD exercises since 2005.
• The exercise saw participation from both the navies which included the ships – INS Nireekshak and USNS Salvor in addition to Specialist Diving and EOD teams.

ANSWER: D

• The first IIT campus outside the country will be set up in Tanzania following the signing of an agreement between the both sides of education authorities.
• The IIT campus will be set up in Zanzibar under the name IIT Madras at Zanzibar (Tanzania).

ANSWER: C