Football World Cup 2018,offshore desalination plant,UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial: Vancouver 2017

1.Which country got disqualified for the first time in Football World Cup 2018?

Argentina Brazil Italy Sweden

2.Manu Sharma, the noted author has passed away. He hails from which state?

Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh

3.India's first offshore desalination plant will be set up by NIOT in which state?

Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Tamil Nadu

4."Project Saksham" is related to which of the following?

Indian Army Indian Navy Indian Railways Indian Roadways

5.Who represented India at 'UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial: Vancouver 2017'?

Dharamveer Prajapati Neelam Reddy Rituraj Singh Subhash Bhamre

Sewage Treatment plants,Artificial Intelligence (AI),Bestu Varas

1.Which City to get 2 new Sewage Treatment plants before March for Clean Ganga Process?

Chennai Varanasi Patna Mumbai

2.This software industry setting up centres of excellence on artificial intelligence (AI) and data sciences for a better understanding on the emerging technologies.

IBM HCL NASSCOM Infosys

3.Which state celebrate Bestu Varas recently?

Rajasthan Assam Bihar Gujarat

4.Which of the following introduce live location sharing for its users?

Instagram Twitter Facebook Whatsapp

5.This state prohibits using 'Dalit', 'Harijan' in official communications.

Karnataka Kerala Tamilnadu Andra Pradesh

GK & Current Affairs Quiz

1.The first-ever BRICS Games 2017 has started in which country?

South Africa Russia China Brazil

2.The Union Government has launched ECBC 2017 for new commercial buildings. What does “ECBC” stands for?

Energy Control Building Code Energy Conservation Building Code Energy Concatenation Building Code Energy Co-nation Building Code

3.Baldwin Lonsdale, who passed away recently, was the President of which country?

Vanuatu Zambia Uganda Greece

4.The iconic Taj Mahal Palace hotel of Mumbai has acquired an`image trademark’ under which act?

Trade Marks Act, 1989 Trade Marks Act, 1978 Trade Marks Act, 1958 Trade Marks Act, 1999

5.The 2017 World Refugee Day (WRD) is observed on which date?

June 20 June 21 June 19 June 22

CURRENT AFFAIRS 2017

1. Which city is hosting the 15th edition of “All India Meet of State Legal Services Authorities”?

New Delhi Surat Jaipur Lucknow

2.Which institution has topped the Times Higher Education (THE)’s Asia University ranking 2017?

Peking University, China Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore National University of Singapore (NUS) Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur

3.Which Indian-American personality has won the 2017 Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS) award?

Archana Verma Arjun Srinivasan Ramani Prathik Naidu Indrani Das

4.The first-ever Haryana Sahitya Sangam has started in which city?

Faridabad Panchkula Gurgaon Karnal

5.How much loan amount has been approved by the World Bank (WB) for the National Hydrology Project of India?

$175 million $210 million $222 million $325 million

Civil Service Exam Syllabus for IAS Preliminary Exam – General Studies

1.Who has been bestowed with the 2016 Saraswati Samman?

Naiyer Masud Sugatha Kumari Surjit Paatar Mahabaleshwar Sail

2.Who is the newly elected President of the European Council (EC)?

Andrej Plenkovic Christian Kern Donald Tusk Charles Michel

3.According to the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill 2016, the maternity leave has been extended from 12 weeks to how many weeks?

22 weeks 26 weeks 23 weeks 24 weeks

4.Which company has become the first Indian power utility to successfully deploy tele-protection service using Line-Differential Relay (LDR) over an IP/MPLS network?

Tata Power-DDL Adani Power Jindal Steel and Power Reliance Power

5.Which Indian institute has won the 2017 IEEE Spectrum Technology in the Service of Society Award?

IIT Bombay IIT Madras IIT Indore IIT Kolkata

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE - UPSC

1.The nationwide “Swachh Shakti Saptah” has been launched from which city?

Gandhinagar Gurugram Ahmedabad Noida

2. The Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) meeting will held in which of the following cities?

New Delhi Rawalpindi Lahore Agra

3.Which country to host the 2017 Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) summit?

Malaysia Indonesia Tanzania Seychelles

4.Who is the author of the book “When Crime Pays – Money and Muscle in Indian Politics”?

Milan Vaishnav Pankaj Mishra Parthasarathi Shome Vappala Balachandran

5.The annual tribal festival ‘Bhagoria’ will start in which of the following states?

Himachal Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh

Current Affairs Questions & Answers

1.What is the theme of 2017 World Wildlife Day (WWD)?

Stop wildlife crime Listen to the young voices The future of wildlife is in our hands It’s time to get serious about wildlife crime

2.Raymond Kopa, the football legend has recently passed away. He hails from which country?

Germany Brazil France Russia

3.Yumnam Yaima Singh, who passed away recently, was related to which field?

Politics Sports Journalism Marine Science

4.Which country to host 10th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV)?

Brazil Germany France India

5.Who is the newly appointed Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL)?

Ashok Mittal Rakesh Nangia Nikhil Arora P K Purwar

Government constitutes inter-departmental task force to crack down on benami firms

The Union Government has constituted inter-departmental task force comprising members of various regulatory Ministries and enforcement agencies to crack down on benami firms.

It is first major post-demonetisation move undertaken by Government for unearthing black money from shell companies used for large-scale money laundering and tax evasion.

Key Facts

The task force will be headed by Revenue Secretary and Corporate Affairs Secretary to monitor the actions taken by various agencies.

The involved agencies will invoke the stringent Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 against the shell companies and freeze their accounts and strike off the names of dormant companies.

It will also initiate disciplinary action against professionals abetting the companies and entry operators, who are used to launder unaccounted-for incomes into the banking system for projecting them as white money.

There are about 15 lakh registered companies in India, but only 6 lakh of them file their annual returns. It has raised suspicion that a large number of these companies are indulging in financial irregularities. During a small sample analysis of such companies conducted by Government has found that Rs.1,238 crore in cash was deposited in these entities during the November-December 2016 period, after demonetisation. It also has been found that 560 beneficiaries have laundered money to the extent of Rs. 3,900 crore with the help of 54 professionals, who have been identified by the Government.

Advanced Air Defence (AAD)

Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile dubbed as Ashwin was successfully test-fired from launching complex-IV of Dhamara Abdul Kalam defence base off Odisha coast. 

The test assed missile’s killing capability by intercepting a target, mimicking an incoming enemy missile in mid-air. The success of test has boosted India’s position in the exclusive club of AAD countries United States, Russia and Israel.

Key Facts

The interceptor missile is a 7.5-metre-long single stage solid rocket propelled guided missile.

It is equipped with a navigation system, a hi-tech computer, inertial navigation system and an electro-mechanical activator.

It can destroy the incoming hostile ballistic missile in the endo-atmospheric region (less than 30 km altitude) at a low altitude of less than 30 kms.

It has its own mobile launcher, secure data link for interception, independent tracking and homing capabilities and sophisticated radars.

India has a double-layered ballistic missile defence (BMD) system capable of tracking and destroying hostile missiles both outside (exo) and inside (endo) the earth’s atmosphere. 

The first phase BMD system capable of killing enemy missiles fired from 2,000 km away. 

It is expected to be inducted in the armed forces soon. The second phase BMD system, capable of destroying enemy missiles fired from 5,000 km away is still under development.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft completes fourth flyby of Jupiter

• NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft completed closest flyby of Jupiter mysterious cloud tops for the fourth time. All eight of Juno’s science instruments were switched on during the flyby.
•  During its closest approach it was roughly 4,300 km above Jupiter’s cloud tops and traveled at a speed of about 208,000 kmph.
•  Currently, Juno is locked in a 53-day orbit around Jupiter. It is expected to perform three dozen flybys over the next one and a half years.
•  During its flybys, Juno probes beneath the cloud cover of Jupiter and studies Jupiter’s auroras to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere
• Juno was launched in August 2011 to study Jupiter’s composition and evolution. It’s the first solar power spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and second after Galileo. 
• The unmanned spacecraft had successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit in July 2016 after a five year journey and traversing distance of nearly 2 billion miles. 
• The primary goals of the mission are to find out whether Jupiter has a solid core, how its atmosphere and magnetosphere formed, and whether there is water in the gas cloud shrouding the planet.
•  The information gathered from it will provide vital clues to how the planet formed and evolved, but also to how the solar system we live in came into existence. 
• The spacecraft has been named after the Roman goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter who is considered as the god of the sky in ancient Greco-Roman mythology.

SC asks Government to prepare plan for eradication of leprosy

•  The Supreme Court has asked the Central Government to prepare a comprehensive policy for implementation of a plan to eradicate leprosy from the country.
•  A three-judge SC bench asked the Government to submit the plan within four weeks.
•  The bench told the Centre that people are required to successfully implement the government policies at the ground level.
•  It was hearing a PIL which had rapped the Government authorities for their apathy in eradicating leprosy, saying despite it being curable, the disease still remains a stigma. 
• The PIL had mentioned that leprosy affects over 1 lakh 25,000 people in the country annually and government has failed to eliminate the disease despite medical treatment available since 1981.

About World Cancer Day

• The World Cancer Day (WCD) is observed every year on 4 February across the world to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment. 
• The theme (tagline) between 2016 and 2018 WCD is “We can. I can”.
•  It reflects on what everyone can do to raise awareness of cancer and asks to take pledge and action in fight against cancer. 
• Special three-year campaign for the World Cancer Day 2016-2018 seeks to explore how everyone- as individuals or as a collective – can do their part to reduce the burden of cancer globally. 
• The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) had instituted World Cancer Day (WCD in 2008 by formally writing the goals of the World Cancer Declaration. 
• The primary goal of observing the day is to reduce illness and death caused by it by 2020. 
• The origin of the day can be traced to 2000 at the first World Summit Against Cancer, which was held in Paris, France. UICC:
•  It is Geneva based leading international non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in 1933. Its purpose is to help the global health community to accelerate the fight against cancer.
•  It has a membership of over 800 organisations spread across 155 countries.