QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 30 June 2020

Solution: c)

National Security Exception laid out in Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows WTO members to breach their WTO obligations for purposes of national security.

Border hostilities potentially give India room to invoke the national security clause in the WTO rules. This would allow it to impose tariffs on imports from China while exempting other trading partners.

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Solution: b)

Bambusa tulda also know as Indian timber bamboo or Bengal Bamboo is native to the Indian subcontinent, Indochina, Tibet, and Yunnan, and naturalized in Iraq, Puerto Rico, and parts of South America. It prefers a tropical or subtropical climate. It is used extensively by the paper pulp industry in India and with near solid culms makes an excellent strong timber.

The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has proposed bamboo plantation for its asset monetisation. Bambusa Tulda, used for making Agarbatti sticks, has been planted in Maharashtra with an aim to support the local Agarbatti industry and to create regular income flow for training centres.

In 2018 the Government amended the Indian Forest Act, 1927 omitting bamboo grown on non-forest areas from the definition of a tree. This exempted it from requiring permits for felling or transportation.

Solution:  a)

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering. In 2001, its mandate was expanded to include terrorism financing.

The objectives of FATF are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. FATF is a “policy-making body” that works to generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas.

Since 2000, FATF has maintained the FATF blacklist (formally called the “Call for action”) and the FATF greylist (formally called the “Other monitored jurisdictions”).

The FATF Secretariat is located at the OECD headquarters in Paris.

The effect of the FATF Blacklist has been significant, and arguably has proven more important in international efforts against money laundering than has the FATF Recommendations. While, under international law, the FATF Blacklist carried with it no formal sanction, in reality, a jurisdiction placed on the FATF Blacklist often found itself under intense financial pressure.

Solution: d)

Six official committees have so far estimated the number of people living in poverty in India — the working group of 1962; V N Dandekar and N Rath in 1971; Y K Alagh in 1979; D T Lakdawala in 1993; Suresh Tendulkar in 2009; and C Rangarajan in 2014.

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Solution: b)

Serious concerns were expressed regarding the virtual clearances granted to two projects passing through a wildlife sanctuary and national park in Goa.

The four-laning of highway and the laying of a line-in lineout (LILO) transmission line which will result in habitat fragmentation and have direct impacts on wildlife in Goa’s Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park.

Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary and Mollem National Park is a protected area located in the Western Ghats of South India, in Goa.

It contains several important temples dating to the Kadambas of Goa, and home to waterfalls, such as Dudhsagar Falls and Tambdi Falls. The parkland is also home to a community of nomadic buffalo herders known as the Dhangar.

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