Daily Current Affairs Quiz: June 27, 2022

ANSWER: D

• South Korea launched its first satellite successfully using a homegrown rocket, boosting the nation’s expanding aerospace ambitions and proving it has the necessary technologies to build larger missiles and launch spy satellites in the midst of tensions with rival North Korea.
• The three-stage Nuri rocket successfully launched a working “performance verification” satellite to a target altitude of 435 miles from South Korea’s space launch facility on a southern island.

Key Points:

• An unmanned South Korean station in Antarctica received signals from the satellite informing it of its condition.
• It is carrying four smaller satellites that will be launched for Earth observation and other missions in the following days.
• With the launch, South Korea became the tenth country in the world to successfully launch a satellite using homegrown technology.
• It was the second Nuri rocket launch by South Korea.
• When the first attempt was made in October of last year, the third stage rocket’s engine prematurely burned out, preventing the fake payload from entering orbit after reaching the appropriate height.

ANSWER: D

• A National Green Tribunal (NGT) monitoring committee announced recently that Punjab’s groundwater will drop below 300 metres by the year 2039.
• Punjab’s central and southern districts, such as Barnala, Bathinda, Fatehgarh Sahib, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Moga, SAS Nagar, Pathankot, Patiala and Sangrur, are among the most affected as the average yearly rate of fall of groundwater levels works out to be approximately 0.49 metre per year.
• Punjab’s area under paddy, that includes all varieties, is close to 25-27 lakh hectares. Punjab’s water resources can only tolerate paddy’s area to the tune of 10-12 lakh hectares.
• While agriculture experts and environmentalists suggest phasing out the paddy crop, as one of the main solutions for the groundwater crisis, farmers expect assured purchase of the alternative crops planted as a replacement for paddy.

ANSWER: D

• Kerala will soon have its own red list of birds. The Kerala Bird Monitoring Collective led by Kerala Agricultural University and the Bird Count India will conduct the regional red list assessment.
• Kerala will become the first State to have a region-specific red list of birds. Assessment will be done on the basis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines.
• But there are limitations for the global assessment as it is a process prepared in a global context. A species seen common at the global level may be a threatened species at the regional level.
• The IUCN guidelines for preparing the red list have five main criteria. The population size reduction measured over 10 years or three generations is one of the major guidelines. Geographic range on the basis of extent of occurrence or area of occupancy is another. Small population size and decline, very small or restricted population, and quantitative analysis indicating the probability of extinction in the wild are the other criteria.
• According to the global IUCN red list, Kerala has 35 threatened species of birds. In that, Red¬headed vulture and White¬rumped vulture are critically endangered. Steppe Eagle, Banasura Chilappan and Nilgiri Chilappan are endangered and 11 species are vulnerable.
• The Kerala Bird Atlas accounts for nearly three lakh records of 361 species, including 94 very rare species, 103 rare species, 110 common species, 44 very common species, and 10 most abundant species.
• According to the atlas, most of the endemics are concentrated in the Western Ghats while the threatened species are cited mostly.

ANSWER: C

• Flipkart, e-commerce marketplace, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), Telangana to enable market access for Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in the state.
• Flipkart aims to empower local farming communities and SHGs of Telangana by providing pan-India market access to more than 400 million customers on its platform.
• As part of this collaboration, Flipkart will directly source premium quality pulses, millets, staples, and spices from the local farmers, contributing to improve income and business growth.
• Flipkart will further engage with these communities through virtual and on-ground training and capacity-building initiatives to provide them with an understanding of quality, pricing, and licenses required to be a part of FPO ecosystem.
• Flipkart is currently working with multiple FPOs, small and marginal farmers across the country to build sustainable and scalable partnerships.
• It has trained over 10,000 farmers across the country, on product quality and food safety to enable market access and empower and prosper the farmer community in India.

ANSWER: C

History

• On December 7, 1987, the United Nations General Assembly decided to observe June 26 as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. It did so to strengthen their efforts in order to achieve the goal of making the society free of drug abuse.

Theme for 2022

• “Addressing drug challenges in health and humanitarian crises”
• The theme has been selected in the wake of widespread humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a major global health crisis.

ANSWER: D

• The UN convention on biological diversity confirmed that the Cop15 biodiversity conference will now take place in Montreal, Canada, from 5 to 17 December, after it became clear China would not be able to host the event in Kunming due to the country’s zero-Covid policy.
• The UN Biodiversity has announced that the second part of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) will take place between 5 to 17 December.
• The summit due to be held in December is aimed at authorising the final version of the draft UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
• The decisions in the second part of COP15 will be taken on how the world will work on reducing the extinction risk that threatens more than one million species, protecting 30% of land and sea and eliminating the funds spent on environmentally-damaging government subsidies as well as restoring degraded ecosystems.

ANSWER: C

• The G7 is an informal forum of leading industrialised nations, which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• A number of international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, are also participating in the Summit.
• As of 2022, G7 countries make up 10% of the world’s population, 31% of global GDP, and 21% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Summit website. China and India, the two most populous countries with among the largest GDP figures in the world, are not part of the grouping.
• In all G7 countries, annual public sector expenditure exceeded revenue in 2021. Most G7 countries also had a high level of gross debt, especially Japan (263% of GDP), Italy (151%) and the US (133%).
• The G7 countries are important players in global trade. The US and Germany in particular are major export nations. Both sold goods worth well over a trillion US dollars abroad in 2021.

ANSWER: B

• At Asian Track Championship, Ronaldo Singh made cycling history by becoming the first Indian cyclist to win a silver medal in a continental competition in the senior division.
• The feat accomplished by Ronaldo was the best in a continental competition by an Indian cyclist.
• Yamasaki won the Gold and Andrey Chugay won Bronze.

ANSWER: A

• Dr Janardan Singh, Head of Department of Organic Agriculture and Natural Farming at Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University (HPAU), Palampur, has been conferred with the prestigious Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Award for his contribution in the field of teaching and research.
• He was felicitated at the 13th International conference on Agriculture, Horticulture and Plant Sciences that was organised by the Society of Tropical Agriculture in New Delhi.
• He also presented a paper on natural farming at the conference. He has been teaching for over 30 years.

ANSWER: D

• A two-day event ‘Vishwa Dharohar Utsav’, which was organised to celebrate the ninth anniversary of the day when Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) got the status of world heritage site (WHS) from the UNESCO, concluded at Sai Ropa in Banjar, Kullu.
• The deliberate discussions were held on wildlife conservation and management, ecotourism, community involvement, rescue and release of wild animals, institutional capacity building in wild life and such other related subjects.
• GHNP was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2014, in recognition of its outstanding significance for biodiversity conservation.
• The park protects over 1,000 plant species, including many medicinal herbs, 31 mammal species and 209 bird species, as well as amphibians, reptiles and insects.
• Four of GHNP’s mammal species and three of its bird species are globally threatened, including the musk deer and the western horned tragopan.