QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 02 May 2017

Solution: d.

The selection panel consists of the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Leader of the Opposition, the Chief Justice of India or his nominee, and an eminent jurist nominated by the President on the basis of recommendations of the first four members of the selection panel.

TH: Lokpal and the law;

Pg 59.4, Indian Polity 5^th Edition by M Laxmikanth;

Solution: b.

“The government was on weak legal footing when it claimed it was awaiting the passage of these amendments, mainly of one that related to the leader of the largest party in opposition in the Lok Sabha being considered as the Leader of the Opposition for the purposes of forming the Selection Committee to choose the Lokpal. The selection panel consists of the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Leader of the Opposition, the Chief Justice of India or his nominee, and an eminent jurist chosen by them. The court has noted that the Act provides for the selection committee to make appointments even when it is truncated due to a vacancy. It has made it clear that the fact that some amendments have been proposed and a parliamentary panel has submitted a report would not constitute a legal bar on enforcing the existing law.”

TH: Lokpal and the law;

Solution: a.

Mistral is a cold wind.

• A new study has found an atmospheric melting phenomenon in the region (of the ice shelves on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula) to be far more prevalent than anyone had realised.
• This is the foehn winds (same name used for local winds in Europe’s Alps) that drop over the big mountains of the peninsula, raising the temperature of the air on the leeward side well above freezing.
• They’re warm and they’re dry and they’re downslope. If you take the spring, the air over the ice shelf is usually minus 14 but during the foehn winds it’s above freezing. Such warm, downslope winds are well known across the Earth, of course; and they all have a local name.
• The chinook winds, for example, that drop over the Rockies and Cascades in North America are the exact same thing. Foehn is just the title they garnered originally in Europe’s Alps. And while their presence (‘hairdryer winds’ or foehn) on the White Continent has also long been recognised, the effort to try to quantify their behaviour has been a recent one.

Improvisation: BBC: Antarctica’s troublesome ‘hairdryer winds’;

Solution: d.

The larger the GWP, the more that a given gas warms the Earth compared to CO2 over that time period. The time period usually used for GWPs is 100 years. GWPs provide a common unit of measure, which allows analysts to add up emissions estimates of different gases (e.g., to compile a national GHG inventory), and allows policymakers to compare emissions reduction opportunities across sectors and gases.

Improvisation: IE: CO2 levels breach a new ceiling;

EPA: Understanding GWPs;

Solution: c.

A question on the concept of rent-seeking was posted here a few weeks ago.

• Generating profit usually requires risking capital in hopes of a return, while earning wages tends to be labor-intensive and requires hard work. Rent is the easiest and least risky type of income one can earn, as it requires only the ownership of resources and the ability to use those resources to generate income through lending their use to others.
• Because rent income necessitates less risk or work than other types of income, it follows logically that individuals and companies seek to earn this income whenever possible. Rent-seeking becomes a problem when entities engage in it to increase their share of the economic pie without increasing the size of the pie.
• An example of rent-seeking is when a company lobbies the government for loan subsidies, grants or tariff protection. These activities don’t create any benefit for society; they just redistribute resources from the taxpayers to the company.

Investopedia: Rent-Seeking;

Improvisation: TH: Rent Seeking;