ANSWER: C

 ANSWER: D

 ANSWER: B

 ANSWER: C

• The light tank Zorawar being jointly developed jointly by the DRDO and private sector firm L & T is expected to be ready for trials in the high-altitude mountainous border with China by the end of 2023.

About Zorawar Tank

• It is an indigenously designed and developed Light Tank.
• It is designed to operate in varying terrain from high altitude areas and marginal terrains to island territories.
• It will be highly transportable for rapid deployment to meet any operational situation.
• Zorawar will have niche technologies to include Artificial Intelligence, Drone integration, Active Protection System, High Degree of Situational Awareness and amphibious operation capability.
  • An active protection system is designed to protect vehicles from anti-tank guided missiles and projectiles away from combat vehicles.
• It will weigh less than 25 tonnes with a high power-to-weight ratio as well as superior firepower and protection.
• The tank has been named after the legendary General Zorawar Singh Kahluria who led multiple successful victories in Tibet.
  • He was a military general who had served under Jammu’s Raja Gulab Singh in the 19^th

ANSWER: D

• PM has recently said that the new Mega Textile Park at Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh will strengthen Make in India and will create new job opportunities for the youth.
• The Centre has selected sites in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh to set up new textile parks under the PM Mega Integrated Textile Regions and Apparel (PM MITRA) scheme.
• PM MITRA Park will be developed by a Special Purpose Vehicle which will be owned by the Central govt (49%) and State govt.(51%) and in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) Mode.
• It will offer the opportunity to create an Integrated Textiles Value Chain right from spinning, weaving, processing/dyeing and printing to garment manufacturing etc. at one location and will reduce the logistics cost of the Industry.
• Each MITRA Park will have an incubation centre, common processing house and a common effluent treatment plant and other textile related facilities such as design centres and testing centres.

FUNDING

• The parks will be set up by 2026-27.
• The total outlay for the project is Rs 4,445 crore, though the initial allocation in the 2023-24 Budget is only Rs 200 crore.
• The Ministry of Textiles (nodal ministry) will disburse Development Capital Fund of ₹500 crore in two tranches for each of the seven facilities.
• A Competitive Incentive Support upto Rs 300 crore per park to the units in PM MITRA Park shall also be provided to incentivise speedy implementation.

 ANSWER: A

• The Union government is looking to formally launch the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) this year to “democratise e-commerce” and “to provide alternatives to proprietary e-commerce sites”.

ABOUT ONDC

• Background- The government wants to change the fundamental structure of the e-commerce market from the current “platform-centric model to an open-network model”.
• The ONDC is an open source network set up modelled after the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) project that is seen as a success by many.
  • The UPI project allows people to send or receive money irrespective of the payments platforms on which they are registered.
  • Similarly, the government wants to ensure that buyers and sellers of goods in the e-commerce market can transact regardless of the platforms on which they are registered.
• It will enable local commerce across segments, such as mobility, grocery, food order and delivery, hotel booking and travel, among others, to be discovered and engaged by any network-enabled application.
• It is an initiative of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• It consists of-
  • buyer-side apps where consumers can place orders,
  • seller-side apps that onboard merchants and display their listings, and
  • logistics platforms that handle deliveries.
• Thus project ONDC is mainly aimed at curbing “digital monopolies”.
• ONDC could give a huge booster shot to smaller online retailers and new entrants.

ANSWER: B

• Rising cases of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in livestock of Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of West Bengal were reported recently.

ABOUT LUMPY SKIN DISEASE

• It is an acute to chronic, highly infectious viral disease that affects cattle.
• It is caused by the lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV), which belongs to the genus capripoxvirus, a part of the poxviridae family (smallpox and monkeypox viruses are also a part of the same family).
• The first reported outbreak of LSD occurred in Zambia in 1929.
• The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that its mortality rate is less than 10%.
• Symptoms include –fever, nodules on the skin, mucous membranes and internal organs, emaciation, enlarged lymph nodes, oedema of the skin, and sometimes death.
• It is not transmissible to humans.
• Transmission: LSD is primarily spread between animals through the bite of vectors, such as mosquitoes and flies.
  • Indirectly it can spread from contaminated equipment, movement of infected animals
• Treatment:
  • It has no direct antiviral treatment.
  • There are no specific antiviral drugs for treating LSD, and treatment primarily involves supportive care for the affected animals by use of antibiotics, painkillers, and wound care sprays.
  • As there’s no treatment, vaccines are used to control disease transmission

Other info

• Lumpi-ProVacInd is a live attenuated vaccine developed jointly by ICAR’s National Research Centre on Equines and the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, which is targeted to protect cattle against the LSD virus, and provides 100% protection.
• It is expected to be commercially launched soon.

 ANSWER: A

• World Metrology Day is celebrated on 20^th May each year.
• It is an annual celebration of the signature of the Metre Convention on 20^th May 1875 by representatives of seventeen nations.
  • Metre Convention was an international treaty signed in Paris which established the basis for international agreement on units of measurement.
• The theme for World Metrology Day 2023 is ‘Measurements supporting the global food system’.

ANSWER: D

• World Turtle Day is an annually observed on every May 23^rd.
• World Turtle Day is marked to raise awareness about the need to protect turtles and tortoises and their nesting sites around the world.
• World Turtle Day was founded by the American Tortoise Rescue (ATR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and welfare of turtles and tortoises.
• It was first celebrated in the year 2000.

 ANSWER: B

• A delegation of 45 students of various higher education institutions from Goa state, including IIT Goa, visited different temples like Bhutnath temple, Trilokinath temple, Panchavakra temple and a in the town as part of the second phase of the government’s ambitious cultural and educational endeavour ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat YuvaSangam’ programme.
• The nodal institute of Goa is IIT Goa, while the nodal institute of Himachal Pradesh is IIT Mandi.
• The programme gives an opportunity to the students of different states to know about the culture and tradition of different states where they visit under this programme.