UPSC Current Affairs Quiz : 5 February 2024

Solution: b)

Statement 1 is incorrect.

The Indian Navy has unveiled new epaulettes for Admirals, inspired by the naval ensign and Chhatrapati Shivaji’s rajmudra, as part of an initiative to reflect India’s rich maritime heritage and move away from British nomenclature.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s Rajmudra is a royal seal and symbol of his dream of a Maratha Swarajya.

The seal includes Sanskrit inscriptions that express Shivaji’s gratitude to his father and his commitment to ruling his land independently and the welfare of his subjects.

The Rajmudra’s text is in Sanskrit, unlike other royal seals from the time, which were usually carved in Persian.

Source

Solution: b)

Statement 1 and 4 is correct.

Solution: b)

While a company can go for repurchase of its shares when it is sitting on a lot of cash but does not have many avenues to invest and prefers to return cash to shareholders, the case of Paytm is different – it’s sitting on huge losses and now using part of investors’ proceeds for the buyback.

Who is eligible to participate in buyback?

To be eligible to participate in the share repurchase process, a shareholder needs to hold the shares of the company, which has announced the buyback, before the record date declared in the announcement. The share also needs to be held in the demat form.

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Ambergris, which means grey amber in French, is a waxy substance that originates from the digestive system of protected sperm whales. 

Ambergris is a rare substance, which contributes to its high demand and high price in the international market. Traditionally, it is used to produce perfumes which have notes of musk. While there are records of it being used to flavour food, alcoholic beverages and tobacco in some cultures in the past, it is rarely used for these purposes presently.

While there is a ban on the possession and trade of ambergris in countries like the USA, Australia and India, in several other countries it is a tradable commodity, though with limitations in some of them. In the Indian context, sperm whales are a protected species under Schedule 2 of the Wildlife Protection Act and possession or trade of any of its by-products, including Ambergris and its byproducts, is illegal under provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. 

Solution: b)

Statement 1 is incorrect.

The Anthropocene epoch as a term was first coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and biology professor Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present geological time interval, in which the Earth’s ecosystem has gone through radical changes due to human impact, especially since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

There are numerous phenomena associated with this epoch, such as global warming, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, mass-scale soil erosion, the advent of deadly heat waves, deterioration of the biosphere and other detrimental changes in the environment.

The planet’s geological time scale is divided into five broad categories: eons, epochs, eras, periods, epochs and ages. While eon is the broadest category of geological time, age is the smallest category. Each of these categories is further divided into sub-categories. For instance, Earth’s history is characterised by four eons, including Hadeon (oldest), Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic (youngest).