QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 21 March 2017

Solution: c.

• Regarding Statement 2 – no such amendment is required. The High Court order is sufficient.
• The Uttarakhand High Court, on Monday, declared that the rivers Ganga and Yamuna, all their tributaries and streams were “living persons”, having the status of a legal person with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person. The court ordered that the Director of the Namami Gange programme, the Uttarakhand Chief Secretary, and the Advocate-General of Uttarakhand would serve as “parents” for the rivers and would be the human faces to “protect, conserve and preserve” the rivers and their tributaries.
• A river in New Zealand, The Whanganui River, was the first in the world to be granted the same legal rights as a person (March 15^th, 2017). The NZ Parliament passed a bill recognising the river as a legal entity. The river’s interests will be represented by two people – one from the Maori tribes (who had been fighting for over 160 years to get this recognition for their river) and one from the crown.

TH: Ganga, Yamuna termed ‘living persons’;

BBC;

Solution: d.

Singara (Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu) was the first choice for the location of the INO. However, permission was not granted for the same.

Since the laboratory cavern needs to be more than 1000 m underground (so that there is at least 1000 m cover all-round to absorb/reduce natural cosmic radiation), the choice of site is primarily dictated by the rock quality, in order to obtain a stable safe environment for such long-term activity. Geologically, southern Indian mountains have the most compact, dense rock while the Himalayas are mostly metamorphic sedimentary rock. The mountains of Tamil Nadu (Specifically, the West Bodi Hills), in general, are the most attractive possibility, offering stable dense rocks with maximum safety for locating such a laboratory.

• Under the guidelines laid down by the MoEFCC, any project that falls within 5 km from an inter-State boundary or within a notified national park or a sanctuary has to be considered a Category ‘A’ project that involves a number of processes before an Environmental Clearance is granted.
• Since it was near a national park (Madhikettan Shola National Park in Kerala), the INO was also asked to get clearance from the National Board for Wildlife. Taking into account these new facts, the NGT Bench asked the INO to make a fresh application for the Environmental Clearance.

TH: Green nod for Neutrino project suspended;

INO: Factors in deciding location of project;

Solution: d.

• “We led neutrino research when our physicists used a gold mine at Kolar in Karnataka to set up what was then (1960s) the world’s deepest underground laboratory. This was called the Kolar Gold Field Lab.”
• “Neutrinos are so abundant among us that every second, there are more than 100 trillion of them passing right through each of us — we never even notice them. This is the reason why INO needs to be built deep into the earth — 1,300 metres into the earth. At this depth, it would be able to keep itself away from all the trillions of neutrinos produced in the atmosphere and which would otherwise choke an over-the-ground neutrino detector.”
• “Can neutrinos cause cancer? Not at all! Neutrinos are the least harmful of all elementary particles, as they almost never react with solid bodies. A few people with whom we have discussed this topic, tend to confuse the “neutrino” for the “neutron”. This has also led to the confusion that neutrinos can be weaponised, which is far from the truth.”

An article by APJ Abdul Kalam and Srijan Pal Singh regarding neutrinos and INO which appeared in The Hindu in 2015: Going all out for neutrino research;

INO: FAQs;

Improvisation: TH: Green nod for Neutrino project suspended;

Solution: c.

“At the World Diamond Conference held in Delhi, I had announced in the presence of the Russian President that we would set up a Special Notified Zone to achieve this. This promise has been kept. Amendments have been made to our laws to enable rough diamonds to enter and exit, duty free for the purpose of viewing. The Special Notified Zone at the Bharat Diamond Bourse became operational in November, 2015. This has already shown good results. Earlier only eighty to ninety big merchants used to get access to global rough diamonds by travelling to Belgium, Africa and Israel. Now, about three thousand small and medium merchants have this privilege through the new Special Notified Zone.”

2016: Bharat Diamond Bourse celebrates first anniversary of IDTC;

PM’s speech at International Diamond Conference;

Solution: d.

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the following four GST related bills:

1. The Central Goods and Services Tax Bill 2017 – provisions for levy and collection of tax on intra-state supply of goods or services or both by the Central Government.
2. The Integrated Goods and Services Tax Bill 2017 – provisions for levy and collection of tax on inter-state supply of goods or services or both by the Central Government.
3. The Union Territory Goods and Services Tax Bill 2017 – provisions for levy and collection of tax on intra-UT supply of goods and services in the Union Territories without legislature. Union Territory GST is akin to States Goods and Services Tax (SGST) which shall be levied and collected by the States/Union Territories on intra-state supply of goods or services or both.
4. The Goods and Services Tax (Compensation to the States) Bill 2017 (The Compensation Bill) – provides for compensation to the states for loss of revenue arising on account of implementation of the goods and services tax for a period of five years as per section 18 of the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016.

PIB: Cabinet approves four GST Bills;

Solution: b.

Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC) is an autonomous organization of the Government of India established under Society Registration Act, 1860 under the aegis of Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. The main objectives of the ISLRTC are:

• to develop manpower for using, teaching and conducting research in Indian Sign Language (ISL),
• to promote the use of ISL as an educational mode,
• to carry out research in collaboration with universities, national and international bodies to create linguistic records in ISL,
• to train and orient various professionals (and community leaders and the public at large for understanding and using Indian Sign Language) and
• to collaborate with organizations of the Deaf.

DEPwD Order;

PIB;