QUIZ – 2016: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 22 December 2016

Solution: c.

• At present, the revenue component (day-to-day costs/salaries) in the defence budget by far outstrips the capital outlay every year, leaving very little for new modernisation projects for the armed forces (low tooth-to-tail ratio).
• The overall aim of the committee is to ensure India’s combat capabilities and potential are enhanced, with a better tooth-to-tail combat ratio, within budgetary constraints. This move is aimed at ensuring leaner, meaner and cost-effective fighting forces.
• The tooth-to-tail ratio, referred to as T3R in the Army, is the ratio of fighting arms, which wage the actual battle such as infantry and armoured wings, to support services, such as logistics, signals and ordnance.

Insights Current Events: 21^st May 2016;

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BS: Three new defence committees;

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Improvisation: IE;

Solution: d.

• Scientists say they have identified a remarkable new feature in Earth’s molten outer core. They describe it as a kind of “jet stream” – a fast-flowing river of liquid iron that is surging westwards under Alaska and Siberia.
• The moving mass of metal has been inferred from measurements made by Europe’s Swarm satellites.
• This trio of spacecraft are currently mapping Earth’s magnetic field to try to understand its fundamental workings.
• The Swarm satellites (Click HERE) will provide data essential for modelling the geomagnetic field and its interaction with other physical aspects of the Earth system. It will offer a unique view of the inside of the Earth from space, enabling the composition and processes of the interior to be studied in detail and increase our knowledge of atmospheric processes and ocean circulation patterns that affect climate and weather.

BBC;

Solution: b.

• The last major unknown region on Earth has just been surveyed: the South Pole.
• Although the Americans have had a base at the bottom of the planet for decades, what lies underneath the thick ice there has been a mystery.
• Now, European scientists have flown instruments back and forth across the pole to map its hidden depths. As well as finding previously unknown valleys and mountains, the team says it has acquired important data that will have uses far from Antarctica.
• Known as PolarGAP, the project was largely funded by the European Space Agency (Esa) to gather measurements over an area of Earth that its satellites cannot see, as they generally only fly up to about 83 degrees in latitude.
• In particular, Esa wanted to understand the pole’s gravity field, to complete the dataset gathered by its recent gravity-sensing spacecraft, GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer).

BBC: Antarctic ‘pole of ignorance’ finally addressed;

Solution: b.

• The United Naga Council sees some of the lands – which have been declared to be separate and new districts – as a part of their ancestral Naga homeland, and that the Kukis (as well as Meiteis and Nepalis) who the Nagas sees as migratory) can at best be their tenants, occupying the place only so long as they enjoy the pleasure of their landlords.
• The Manipur Government’s move to carve out new districts is also sees as fracturing the Naga homeland – referred to often as ‘Nagalim’ – which has been the vocabulary of the NSCN(IM) in its peace talks with the Government of India ever since they began.

TH: Ending the Manipur blockade;

IE: Manipur under siege;

Solution: d.

Question being repeated.

IE: Smallness at the border;

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Solution: c.

The ten heads on the basis of which countries are ranked:

• Starting a business
• Dealing with construction permits
• Getting Electricity
• Registering property
• Getting credit
• Protecting minority investors
• Paying taxes
• Trading across borders
• Enforcing contracts and
• Resolving insolvency

There’s another head on labour, but that doesn’t enter the overall rankings.

IE: Smallness at the border;

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