Today in History (February 29th, 1504)
On this day, Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica, used a predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.
Let’s revise
A) What is the full form of DNA?
- Dioxy ribonucleic acid
- Dioxyribonucleic analytics
- deoxyribonucleic acid
- None of the above
Ans. (c)
B) The DNA consists of a double-stranded molecule built up by four bases these are the_____
- ACTP
- ACGT
- ACTM
- ACTB
Ans. (b)
C) The Naxal ideology in India believes in the ideas of _____
- Mao Zedong
- Confucius
- BR Ambedkar
- Jawahar Lal Nehru
Ans. (a)
D) In a first in the private sector, two facilities for the manufacture of ammunition and missiles were opened in
- Hyderabad
- Ayodhya
- Kanpur
- Agra
Ans. (c)
E) In a first in the private sector, two facilities for the manufacture of ammunition and missiles were opened by
- Adani Aerospace
- Relience Defence
- DRDO
- Tata Defence Institute
Ans. (a)
F) Mission Utkarsh is related with which one of the following?
- Child education
- Girls free education
- Nutrition for adolescent girls
- Nutrition for Scheduled Tribes students
Ans. (c)
G) What is the aim of Mission Utkarsh?
- To control anaemia among adolescent girls
- To abolish female feticide
- To increase education among girls
- To provide technical education for girls
Ans. (a)
H) Who is the minister of Ayush?
- Sarwnand Sonowal
- Smriti Irani
- S Jaishankar
- Mansukh Mandaviya
Ans. (a)
Summary of Today’s News
Appointment of Lokpal Chairperson
- Former Supreme Court judge A.M. Khanwilkar was appointed the Chairperson of the anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal.
- The Lokpal has been working without its regular chief after Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosecompleted his term on May 27, 2022.
- Justice Pradip Kumar Mohantyis currently the Acting Chairperson.
- In India, the ombudsman is known as Lokpal ( “protector of people”) or Lokayukta ( People’s appointee).
- The Lokpal, established as an independent anti-corruption ombudsman at the central level to investigate allegations of corruption against public officials, including PM, derives authority from the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act, 2013.
- Social activist Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption in 2011 further fueled public demand, leading to the eventual passage of the Lokpal Act.
Sudarshan Setu
- PM Modi inaugurated ‘Sudarshan Setu’, the country’s longest cable-stayed bridge on the Arabian sea.
- The bridge connects Bhent Dwarka island to mainland Okha in Gujarat’s Dev bhumi Dwarka district.
Bhent/Bet Dwarka
- Bhent Dwarka is an island near Okha port, which is nearly 30 km from Dwarka town, where the famous Dwarkadhish temple of Lord Krishna is situated.
- Before the construction of the bridge, pilgrims had to rely on boat transport to reach Bet Dwarka.
Google DeepMind’s Genie
- Google DeepMind has introduced Genie,
- Genie is a new model that can generate interactive video games from just a text or image prompt.
- Genie is a foundation world model that is trained on videos sourced from the Internet.
- The model can generate an endless variety of playable (action-controllable) worlds from synthetic images, photographs, and even sketches.
- Genie can be prompted to generate a diverse set of interactive and controllable environments.
The importance of Genie: This opens up many possibilities, especially new ways to create and step into virtual worlds.
- With Genie, anyone will be able to create their own entirely imagined virtual worlds.
Ecocide
- Fratricide, the killing of one’s brother.
- Mariticide, the killing of one’s husband.
- Matricide, the killing of one’s mother.
- Filicide, the killing of one’s child.
- It means destruction of the natural environment by deliberateor negligent human action.
- In other words it means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.
- Belgium has become the first country in Europe to recognize ‘ecocide’ as a national as well as an international crime.
- The term Ecocide was invented by American Biologist Arthur Galston in 1970.
- In India Ecocide is has not been declared as a crime as other conventional crimes.
Steadfast Defender 2024
- It is NATO’s most extensive military exercise since the Cold War era.
- It involves 90,000 forces from 31 member countries and NATO partner Sweden and is conducted across various NATO nations.
Key Points about NATO
- NATO is a security alliance of 31 countries from North America and Europe.
- It was formed in 1949.
- NATO’s fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies’ freedom and security by political and military means.
- It is a system of collective defence where independent member states agree for mutual defence in case of any attack by an external party.
- Article 5 of the Washington Treaty states that an attack against one ally is an attack against all.
- This article forms the core of the Alliance, a promise of collective defense.
- Headquarter: Brussels, Belgium.
- Sweden is set to join North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It will be 32nd
- Before Sweden, Hungry was the latest (31st) member of NATO.