Daily Current Affairs MCQ UPSC / IAS / 20-06-19

Table of Contents

MCQ 1

SCO is a regional grouping for security issues crested by shanghai 5
India is a founding member
USA is just an observer not a member

Choose correct
(A) 1 & 2
(B) All
(C) 1 & 3
(D) None

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, also known as the Shanghai Pact, is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organization which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai.
Founding members: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The cooperation was renamed to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation after Uzbekistan joined the organization in 2001.
Presently, the SCO comprises eight member states, namely the Republic of India, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan;.
The SCO counts four observer states, namely the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Republic of Belarus, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Mongolia.
The SCO has six dialogue partners, namely the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, the Republic of Turkey, and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.

MCQ 2

Universal access to quality early childhood education is perhaps the best investment that India can make for our children’s and our nation’s future.
Access for children aged 3 – 8 years to a flexible, multifaceted, multilevel, play based and activity-based education is of utmost importance.
The mandate of the NCERT will be expanded to include the development of a Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Education.

Choose correct regarding provisions given above in draft education policy
(A) 1 & 2
(B) 2 & 3
(C) 1 & 3
(D) All

Professionalisation of high quality educators for early childhood education: State Governments will prepare cadres of professionally qualified educators for early childhood education, through stage-specific professional training, mentoring mechanisms, and career mapping. Necessary facilities will also be created for the initial professional preparation of these educators and their Continuous Professional Development (CPD).
Current Anganwadi workers and educators handling the pre-school education component of the ICDS will be given the opportunity to participate in a 6-month special training programme to enable them to carry out effective early childhood teaching-learning practices.
Instituting an effective and quality regulatory system for ECCE: An effective quality regulation or accreditation system for ECCE will be instituted as recommended in the National ECCE Policy (2013). This regulatory system will cover all pre-school education – private, public, and philanthropic – in order to ensure compliance with essential quality standards.
Extension of the RTE Act to include early childhood education: Given the necessity and importance of developmentally-appropriate learning during a child’s most critical phase of brain development, the availability of free and compulsory quality pre-primary education for all 3-6 year olds will be included as an integral part of the RTE Act (see P8.4.1). Here, by ‘compulsory’, it is meant that it will be obligatory for the public system to provide appropriate and quality educational infrastructure, facilities, and educators to all children in the age group 3-6 years, with a special emphasis on reaching the most socio-economically disadvantaged children through ECCE services.

MCQ 3
The Union Cabinet has approved the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2019. choose which are the correct key provisions

The Bill makes declaration of talaq a Non-cognizable offence, attracting up to three years’ imprisonment with a fine.
For this offence related punishment information relating to the offence can be given by anyone
Its strictly non bailable offence. Bail cant be granted in any case except the accused approaches high or supreme court and gets its approval.

(A) 1 & 3
(B) All
(C) 1 only
(D) None

The Union Cabinet has approved the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2019.

The proposed Bill will protect the rights of married Muslim women and prevent divorce by the practice of instantaneous and irrevocable ‘talaq-e-biddat’ by their husbands.
It provides the rights of subsistence allowance, custody of minor children to victims of triple talaq i.e. talaq-e-biddat.
The Bill makes all declaration of talaq, including in written or electronic form, to be void (i.e. not enforceable in law) and illegal.
Definition: It defines talaq as talaq-e-biddat or any other similar form of talaq pronounced by a Muslim man resulting in instant and irrevocable divorce. Talaq-e-biddat refers to the practice under Muslim personal laws where pronouncement of the word ‘talaq’ thrice in one sitting by a Muslim man to his wife results in an instant and irrevocable divorce.
Offence and penalty: The Bill makes declaration of talaq a cognizable offence, attracting up to three years’ imprisonment with a fine. (A cognizable offence is one for which a police officer may arrest an accused person without warrant.)
The offence will be cognizable only if information relating to the offence is given by: (i) the married woman (against whom talaq has been declared), or (ii) any person related to her by blood or marriage.
The Bill provides that the Magistrate may grant bail to the accused. The bail may be granted only after hearing the woman (against whom talaq has been pronounced), and if the Magistrate is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for granting bail.
The offence may be compounded by the Magistrate upon the request of the woman(against whom talaq has been declared). Compounding refers to the procedure where the two sides agree to stop legal proceedings, and settle the dispute. The terms and conditions of the compounding of the offence will be determined by the Magistrate.
Allowance: A Muslim woman against whom talaq has been declared, is entitled to seek subsistence allowance from her husband for herself and for her dependent children. The amount of the allowance will be determined by the Magistrate.
Custody: A Muslim woman against whom such talaq has been declared, is entitled to seek custody of her minor children. The manner of custody will be determined by the Magistrate.
Significance:
Time has come to put an end to the suffering of Muslim women who have been at the receiving end of instant talaq for several years. More than 20 Islamic countries have already banned the practice.

MCQ 4
Recently we heard about Windrush generation. What is that

It’s a pest attacking crops of barley and wheat
It’s a new class of antibiotics
The Windrush generation refers to citizens of former British colonies who arrived before 1973
None

UK Home Secretary has issued another personal apology for the Windrush scandal, involving migrants being wrongly denied their British citizenship rights, as a latest official update revealed that hundreds more Indians were caught up in the row.

What is Windrush Scheme?

The Windrush Scheme enables Commonwealth citizens, their children, and some other long term residents of the UK to obtain documentation confirming their status free of charge.

Who is eligible for support under the scheme?

a Commonwealth citizen who settled in the UK before 1 January 1973 or has right of abode.
a child of a Commonwealth citizen parent who settled before 1 January 1973, where you were born in the UK or arrived in the UK before the age of 18.
a person of any nationality who settled in the UK before 31 December 1988 and is settled in the UK.
Background:
The Windrush generation refers to citizens of former British colonies who arrived before 1973, when the rights of such Commonwealth citizens to live and work in Britain were substantially curtailed.
The name derives from the ship MV Empire Windrush, which on June 22, 1948, docked in Tilbury, Essex, bringing nearly 500 Jamaicans to the UK.
The immigrants came at the invitation of the British government, which was facing a labour shortage due to the destruction caused by World War II.
While a large proportion of them were of Jamaican/Caribbean descent who came on the ship Windrush, Indians and other South Asians were also affected by the UK government’s handling of their immigration status.

Problem for many immigrants

A scandal over the treatment of members of the Windrush generation has been mounting in recent months as a multitude of reports have come out about mostly elderly people being denied services, losing their jobs and even facing deportation.
Many of the Windrush generation had arrived as children on their parents’ passports. And although they have lived in Britain for many decades – paying taxes and insurance – they never formally became British citizens.
Amid the tightening of the immigration rules, an estimated 50,000 long-term UK residents could now be facing problems.

MCQ 5
Regarding Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG), choose correct

It’s a spacecraft launched by NASA scientists
It will check conditions for landing on the Sun surface in future

(A) Only 1
(B) Only 2
(C) Both
(D) None

A joint team of German-Russian scientists is all set to launch next week a space telescope, which will create a threedimensional (3D) X-ray map of the universe and unveil unknown supermassive black holes, dark energy and stars, the Nature reported.

SRG will carry two independent X-ray telescopes:

A German-built eROSITA (Extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array)
A Russian-built ART-XC (Astronomical Roentgen Telescope — X-ray Concentrator)

About the telescope:

It will create a three-dimensional (3D) X-ray map of the universe and unveil unknown supermassive black holes, dark energy and stars.
The telescope will be launched into space on a Russian-built Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 21, 2019.
The four-year mission will survey the entire sky eight times and track the evolution of the universe and dark energy — a mysterious repulsive force — that is accelerating its expansion.
It also aims to detect up to three million supermassive black holes — many of which are unknown — and X-rays from as many as 700,000 stars in the Milky Way.
The telescope is the first to be sensitive to high-energy ‘hard’ X-rays and map the entire sky.
The SRG will also find how dark matter — the main engine of galaxy formation — is spread in the universe.
The SRG will, however, not detect gamma radiation.
Background:
X-ray sky surveys have also been conducted by previous missions, but they were not able to map the entire sky.
While Germany’s ROSAT mission in the 1990s was sensitive only to ‘soft’ X-rays, with energies of about 2 keV, existing missions, such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and NuSTAR, can see high-energy radiation and resolve tiny details of cosmic structures. But, they see only small parts of the sky.

MCQ 6

The Shadow Lines & Sea of Poppies are the well known writings of Amitav Ghosh
He is a well known writer of Bengali language in which he has won jnanpeeth award

Choose correct
(A) Only 1
(B) Only 2
(C) Both
(D) None

Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956) is an Indian writer and the winner of the 54th Jnanpith award, best known for his work in English fiction.
The Circle of Reason won the Prix Médicis étranger, one of France’s top literary awards. The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar.
The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997. Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize.
It was the co-winner of the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2009, as well as cowinner of the 2010 Dan David Prize. River of Smoke was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2011. The government of India awarded him the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2007. He also received – together with Margaret Atwood – the Israeli Dan David Prize.
Ghosh famously withdrew his novel The Glass Palace from consideration for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, where it was awarded the best novel in the Eurasian section, citing his objections to the term “commonwealth” and the unfairness of the English language requirement specified in the rules.
Ghosh received the lifetime achievement award at Tata Literature Live, the Mumbai LitFest on November 20, 2016.
He was conferred the 54th Jnanpith award in December 2018 and is the first Indian writer in English to have been chosen for this honour
The Jnanpith Award is one of the prestigious literary honours in the country. The award was instituted in 1961.
Eligibility: Any Indian citizen who writes in any of the official languages of India is eligible for the honour.
Initially English language was not considered for the Award but after 49th Jnanpith Award, English language was added to the list of languages for consideration.

MCQ 7

Strait of Hormuz is located between Iran & UAE
It joins gulf or Persia & Gulf of Aden 3. All ships traffic from Mediterranean sea passes through it to enter Indian ocean region

Choose correct
(A) 1 & 2
(B) 1 & 3
(C) all
(D) None