1. Indian activist Safeena Hussain, who has been awarded the prestigious $500,000 WISE Prize recently, has been awarded for her work related to______
A. Girls’ education 🗹
B. Environment
C. Poverty
D. Women empowerment
- Indian activist Safeena Hussain has been awarded the prestigious $500,000 WISE Prize for her work promoting girls’ education across rural India. Her NGO Educate Girls has helped over 1.4 million girls re-enroll in schools in remote villages, drawing global recognition to grassroots education reform.
2. Waters near which city are venue of biggest ever multilateral exercise Milan-2024 of Indian Navy?
A. Goa
B. Mumbai
C. Vishakhapatnam 🗹
D. Cochin
- Indian Navy will conduct its biggest ever multilateral exercise Milan-2024 in Vizag deploying both its aircraft carriers, INS Vikramaditya and new indigenous INS Vikrant. The event involving 50 friendly foreign navies aims to demonstrate India’s expanding military prowess as security provider in the Indian Ocean region.
3. Recently, Bharat Adivasi Party, a lesser- known tribal rights party clinched its first electoral win in which state?
A. Chhattisgarh
B. Madhya Pradesh 🗹
C. Mizoram
D. Telangana
- A lesser-known tribal rights party clinched its debut electoral win in Madhya Pradesh, signalling the rising political assertion of marginalized adivasi communities.
- The Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) candidate defeated opponents fromn national parties to capture the Sailana constituency, located in a scheduled tribe reserved seat. Rajkumar Roat, founder of the BAP has won the Chorasi seat in the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly polls. The party calls itself the first environment-friendly party.
4. Kavach technology is related to _______
A. Railways 🗹
B. Cryptocurrency
C. Mining
D. Automobile
- India expects its indigenous rail safety system Kavach to be ready for international export within five years, as trials prove its effectiveness in preventing signal jumping and high-speed derailments. Kavach is being deployed across India’s vast 66,000km railway network to curb accidents blamed on human error by controllers or drivers.
- The system is designed to bring any train violating signals or speed limits to a halt automatically using sensors and cameras that relay data to a central control room.
5. As per the recently announced roadmap by which year, there will be a mandatory 5% blending of compressed biogas (CBG) in city gas distribution (CGD)?
A. 2024
B. 2025
C. 2027
D. 2029 🗹
- The recently announced roadmap by the National Biofuels Coordination Committee (NBCC) lays out a phased plan for mandating blending of compressed biogas (CBG) into city gas distribution (CGD) networks across India.
- As per this roadmap, city gas distribution entities will have to start blending compressed biogas with compressed natural gas (CNG) for transportation and piped natural gas (PNG) for households from the financial year 2025-26. The blending percentage will be 1% of total compressed natural gas and piped natural gas consumption in FY26, progressively increasing to 3% in FY27 and 4% in FY28. From financial year 2028-29 onwards, the obligatory compressed biogas blending percentage has been set at 5% of overall CNG and domestic PNG demand.
6. Which country is recently re-elected to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Council with the highest tally?
A. India 🗹
B. Russia
C. USA
D. Japan
- The Assembly of the International Maritime Organisation has elected the Members of its Council for its assembly for the 2024-25 biennium. India has been re-elected to the International Maritime Organisation (IM0) Council with the highest tally. India’s re-election falls under the Category of 10 states with “the largest interest in international seaborne trade”, alongside Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
7. As per the report by the Environment ministry and UNDP, India has phased out which ozone depleting chemical?
A. HCFC 141b 🗹
B. CCl3F
C. Halon 1211
D. CFC-112
- As per a report by the Environment ministry and UNDP, India has successfully phased out ozone depleting and climate warming chemical HCFC 141b (1,1-Dichloro-1-fluoroethane) and is ahead of schedule in eliminating another such gas in new equipment manufacturing. As against the 35 per cent phase-out target for HCFCs, India has achieved an impressive 44 per cent reduction.
8. Which space organisation, has announced its plan to launch its first X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat)?
A. ISRO 🗹
B. NASA
C. JAXA
D. ESA
- Indian Space Research Organisation has announced a plan to launch its first X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPOSat) aiming to investigate the polarisation of intense X-Ray sources. The mission objectives include – measurement of X-Ray polarization in the energy band of 8-30 keV emanated from X-Ray sources and long-term spectral and temporal studies of cosmic X-Ray sources in the energy band of 0.8-15 keV. The mission life is expected to be 5 years.
9. Where was the 5th edition of Global Ayurveda Festival held in 2023?
A. Chennai
B. Mathura
C. Thiruvananthapuram 🗹
D. Varanasi
- Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar recently inaugurated the 5th edition of Global Ayurveda Festival in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.
- The Global Ayurveda Festival (GAF) 2023 with the theme ‘Emerging Challenges in Healthcare and a Resurgent Ayurveda’ was held from 1 – 5 December. The conclave witnessed the participation of Kerala Governor, Chief Minister of Kerala, Union Ayush Minister, Union Minister of Animal Husbandry Parshottam Rupala, President of the Republic of Mauritius, Minister of State for Indigenous Medicine of Sri Lanka, among others.
10. Which institution releases official quarterly and annual estimates of India’s Gross Domestic Product?
A. NSO 🗹
B. NITI Aayog
C. NASSCOM
D. DPIIT
- India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at 7.6% in the July-September 2023 quarter, as per initial estimates from the National Statistical Office. GDP growth of 7.6 per cent beat most estimates, including 6.5 per cent projected by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In the April-June quarter, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 6.2 percent.
