Daily Current Affairs Quiz: June 13, 2023

ANSWER: C

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: C

• The first meeting of the Joint Committee of India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) held successfully. India and the UAE look to more than double non-oil bilateral trade to USD 100 billion by 2030.

COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC COOPERATION AGREEMENT (CEPA)

• CEPA is a comprehensive agreement between India and the United Arab Emirates that seeks to enhance the economic and commercial ties between the two countries.
• The agreement aims to increase trade and investment, improve market access, and promote economic growth between India and the UAE.
• CEPA was signed in 2020 and is seen as a significant milestone in the economic relationship between India and the UAE.
• Under CEPA, the two countries have committed to reducing barriers to trade and investment, which will make it easier for businesses from both countries to engage in trade and investment activities.
• The agreement includes provisions for reducing tariffs on goods, services, and investment, as well as for promoting the movement of people, goods, and services between India and the UAE.
• CEPA is expected to provide a major boost to the economic relationship between India and the UAE, as it will increase trade and investment, improve market access, and provide a more favorable environment for businesses to operate in.
• The agreement is expected to benefit a range of sectors, including but not limited to information technology, engineering, pharmaceuticals, and services sectors.
• CEPA is expected to promote the development of economic and commercial ties between India and the UAE, and to provide a foundation for further cooperation between the two countries in the future.
• It is projected to reach US$100 billion in goods trade and over US$1.5 billion in trade in services in the next five years. Built on three pillars of trust, transparency, and talent.

BENEFITS

• For India:
  • Preferential market access provided by the UAE on more than 97 percent of its tariff lines, accounting for 99 percent of Indian exports to the UAE in value terms
  • Preferential market access for labour-intensive goods such as textiles, leather, footwear, sports goods, plastics, furniture, agricultural and wood products, engineering goods, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles.
  • Preferential market access for services sector including computer-related services, health, tourism, travel, engineering, and accountancy.
  • Creation of more than one million jobs for the Indian workforce through enhanced trade liberalisation and market access.
  • UAE committed to issuing 140,000 employment visas to skilled Indian professionals by
  • Three-year visa for intra-corporate transfers and a 90-day visa for business visitors and contractual suppliers from India
• Benefits for the UAE:
  • Boost to the UAE’s GDP (US$9 billion) by 1.7 percent by 2030.
  • Zero-duty market access for 90 percent of exports from the UAE into India, benefiting commodity exporters of petrochemicals, aluminum, and copper.

ANSWER: A

• The Central government plans to complete 3D digitisation of all museums under its administrative control by the year-end for better conservation of artefacts.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• Museums include Salar Jung museum, Hyderabad, the Allahabad Museum in Prayagraj, the Indian Museum, Kolkata, the Victoria Memorial Hall, the National Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art.
• Besides aiding conservation, 3D digitisation in the museum space can offer visitors new ways to access and explore the collection.
• 3D models can be used in augmented reality and virtual reality learning experiences, and facilitate 3D printing.

3D SCANNING

• It will mean analysing a real-world object or environment to collect three-dimensional data of its shape and possibly its appearance. The collected data is then used to construct digital 3D models.
• The entire process was being carried out by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the MeitY and Union Culture Ministry for this.

JATAN VIRTUAL MUSEUM BUILDER SOFTWARE

• The 3D digitisation would be done using the JATAN virtual museum builder software which has been designed and developed by Human Centres Design and Computing Group, Centre for Development of Smart Computing, Pune.
• JATAN is a digital collection management system for Indian museums.
• It is a client server application with features such as image cropping, watermarking, unique numbering, and management of digital objects with multimedia representations.
• It can create 3D virtual galleries and provide public access through web, mobile or touch screen kiosks.

ABOUT C-DAC

• It is the apex research and development wing of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
• It was established in the year
• Its main purpose was to carry out research and development in Electronics, IT and other associated areas.
• It was setup to build Supercomputers in the context of the denial of the import of Supercomputers by the USA.
• C-DAC build India’s first indigenously built supercomputer Param 8000 in 1991.
• Applications of Param 8000: long-range weather forecasting, remote sensing, drug design and molecular modelling.

ANSWER: B

• The Ministry of State for Culture inaugurated the exhibition “Hamari Bhasha, Hamari Virasat ” under the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (AKAM) at the National Archives of India in New Delhi, commemorating the 75th International Archives Day.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

• The exhibition aims to celebrate India’s linguistic diversity, highlighting its status as one of the most linguistically diverse countries globally, with approximately 788 languages spoken. India is thus one of the four most linguistically diversified countries in the world, along with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
• The exhibition features a variety of original manuscripts, including the ancient Gilgit Manuscripts (written between the 5th -6th centuries CE, which is the oldest surviving manuscript collection in India), Tattvartha Sutra (Ancient Jain Text), Ramayana, and Srimad Bhagwad Gita, among others. Furthermore, the National Archives of India has made over 72,000 manuscripts available, both physically and through digitization, ensuring their accessibility to people worldwide.

WHAT ARE MANUSCRIPTS?

• A manuscript is a handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value.
• These are found in hundreds of different languages and scripts. Often, one language is written in a number of different scripts.
• For example, Sanskrit is written in Oriya script, Grantha script, Devanagari script and many other scripts.
• These are distinct from historical records such as epigraphs on rocks, farmans, revenue records which provide direct information on events or processes in history. Manuscripts have knowledge content.

ABOUT GILGIT MANUSCRIPTS:

• It was written between the 5″ -6″ centuries CE, which is the oldest surviving manuscript collection in India.
• It was written on the birch bark folios documents written on pieces of inner layer of the bark of birch trees were found in Kashmir region.
• It contains both canonical and non-canonical Jain and Buddhist works that throw light on the evolution of many religious-philosophical literature.

ABOUT THE DAY

• International Archives Day is a day of celebration and awareness of the importance and value of archives and archivists. It is celebrated on June 9 every year, since 2008, to commemorate the date when the International Council on Archives (ICA) was created under the auspices of UNESCO in 1948.

ANSWER: A

• First national conference of tribal writers held in J&K.
• The 2-day conference, organised at the Jammu University’s Bhaderwah campus was attended by 37 Adivasi writers, poets and cultural experts.
• Aim – To provide a platform for Adivasi writers to foster cultural exchange and address the challenges they face in preserving their unique identities.
• It is an initiative of Jharkhandi Bhasha Sahitya Sanskriti Akhara and the Anjuman-e-Taraqqi Gojri Adab.
• Representation of Tribals – Santhali, Gondi, Ho, Bhundhari, Koya, Banjara, Kharia, Kudhuk, Gujjar, Bakerwal, Gaddi and Munda, attended the conference.
• States Participated – Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Andhra Pradesh.

ANSWER: D

• Silvio Berlusconi, the boastful billionaire media mogul who was Italy’s longest-serving premier despite scandals over his sex-fueled parties and allegations of corruption, died on Monday. He was 86.
• Berlusconi’s extensive political career included appointments as Italian prime minister from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011.
• He worked as a member of the European Parliament since 2019, where he also served from 1999 to 2001.
• His Forza Italia party is currently a junior partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling right-wing coalition.

ANSWER: A

• Australia has won the World Test Championship after a crushing win over India in the final at The Oval, London.
• This was India’s second consecutive defeat in a WTC final; they had lost to New Zealand in the title clash of the inaugural edition in 2021.
• This was India’s fourth defeat in the ICC finals after their Champions Trophy victory in England in 2013. India lost the final of the T20 World Cup to Sri Lanka in 2014, then lost the Champions Trophy final to Pakistan in 2017 before a defeat to New Zealand in the WTC final in 2021.
• Australia also became the first men’s team in world cricket to win an International Cricket Council (ICC) world title in all three formats.
• Australia achieved the feat when they decimated India in the final of the World Test Championship 2021-23 at The Oval to become the new world champions of the longest format of the game.
• Australia won the first-ever 50-over World Cup in 1987 and went on to win 4 more titles, becoming the most successful side in 50-over World Cups.
• Australia also won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2006, beating the West Indies in the final.
• Player of the match – Travis Head

ANSWER: A

• The Indian hockey team emerged champions of the Women’s Junior Asia Cup in Japan’s Kakamigahara by defeating South Korea 2-1 in a captivating final.
• Annu (22nd) and Neelam (41st) scored for India and Park Seo-yeon (25th) for Korea.
• This is India’s first title while South Korea (4) and China (3) share the honours from the previous editions.
• Acknowledging the team’s unbeaten streak in six matches — it also helped them qualify for the 2023 Women’s Junior World Cup in Chile — Hockey India (HI) declared a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh per player and Rs.1 lakh each for the support staff.

ANSWER: A

• Japan’s Tokito Oda defeated top-ranked Alfie Hewett of Britain in the French Open wheelchair final to become the sport’s youngest Grand Slam champion 2023.
• The 17-year-old is also guaranteed to become the youngest ever world number one in the discipline.
• With this win, he also becomes the sport’s youngest Grand Slam champion.
• While Diede de Groot from Netherlands has secured the 2023 French Open – Wheelchair women’s singles.

ANSWER: B

• A special session for children ‘Bal Satra’ was organized on ‘World Day against Child Labour’ at Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, Shimla.
• 68 children, 43 of them girls, selected from seven states including Himachal Pradesh, participated in the special session for ‘Bal Vidhan Sabha’.
• The students performed the role assigned to them while exhibiting confidence and high level of awareness about issues confronting the state.
• Jahnavi, a class 10 student from a government school, a resident of Sundernagar in Mandi district, played the role of the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh.
• There were also protests in the House as opposition MLAs (students) entered the well of the House to protest on the issue of drug problem.
• The CM, Vidhan Sabha Speaker, several ministers, MLAs and parents of the students witnessed the two-and-a-half hour proceedings
• Speaker Kuldeep Pathania said taking part in the Bal Vidhan Sabha was a lifetime experience for these 68 children who have been selected from 25,000 entries from nine states.
• The Vice-Chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivash Narayan Singh was the guest of honour.
• Earlier this session was held in the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly.