Current Affairs Quiz Today – 04th Jan 2021

ANS: (B) India’s indigenously developed Air Droppable Container.

Explanation:

• SAHAYAK-NG is India’s first indigenously designed and developed Air Droppable Container.
• It is a GPS aided air dropped container with the capacity to carry a payload of up to 50 kg and can be dropped from a heavy aircraft.
• The successful maiden test was conducted by the DRDO along with the Indian Navy.

ANS: (B) 2 and 3 only

Explanation:

• The Spratly Islands are a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. Composed of islands, islets and cays and more than 100 reefs, sometimes grouped in submerged old atolls, the archipelago lies off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia, and southern Vietnam.
  • Named after the 19th-century British whaling captain Richard Spratly who sighted Spratly Island in 1843, the islands contain less than 2 km2 (490 acres) of naturally occurring land area spread over an area of more than 425,000 km2 (164,000 sq mi).
• The Strait of Hormuz is a strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. On the north coast lies Iran, and on the south coast the United Arab Emirates and Musandam, an exclave of Oman.
  • It provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is one of the world’s most strategically important choke points
• Socotra also called Soqotra, located between the Guardafui Channel and the Arabian Sea, is the largest of four islands in the Socotra archipelago. The territory is located near major shipping routes and is officially part of Yemen, and had long been a subdivision of the Aden Governorate.
  • In 2004, it became attached to the Hadhramaut Governorate, which is much closer to the island than Aden (although the nearest governorate was the Al Mahrah Governorate). In 2013, the archipelago became its own governorate, the Socotra Governorate.

ANS: (C) Reserve Bank of India

Explanation:

• The Reserve Bank of India releases the Financial Stability Report (FSR).
• The FSR reflects the collective assessment of the Sub-Committee of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) on risks to financial stability, as also the resilience of the financial system.
• The Report also discusses issues relating to development and regulation of the financial sector

ANS: (B) 1 and 3 only

Explanation:

The Himalayan trillium (Trillium govanianum), a common herb of the Himalayas was declared ‘endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

In recent years, the plant has become one of the most traded commercial plants of the Himalayan region, due to its high medicinal quality. It has been used in traditional medicine to cure diseases like dysentery, wounds, skin boils, inflammation, sepsis, as well as menstrual and sexual disorders. Recent experiments have shown that the rhizome of the herb is a source of steroidal saponins and can be used as an anti-cancer and anti-aging agent. This increased its market value and has now become an easy target for poachers.

Found in temperate and sub-alpine zones of the Himalayas, at an altitude from 2,400-4,000 metres above sea level, the existence of the plant has been traced across India, Bhutan, Nepal, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In India, it is found in – Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim, and Uttarakhand.