QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz,19 May 2018

Solution: d.

WUP FAQs: The 2018 Revision is the most recent revision of World Urbanization Prospects which are the official United Nations estimates and projections of urban and rural population as well as urban agglomerations. The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations issues a new Revision every four years. The next one is due in the first half of 2022.

TH: Forecasting for the year 2050, the UN agency estimates that the percentage of urban residents in India would be 52.8, compared to 34 today, while Delhi would edge past Tokyo as the world’s most populous city by 2028.

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Solution: c.

TH;
“Japan and China have one of the most tense, yet economically intertwined relationships. Beijing believes Japan is yet to properly atone for its brutal invasion of China in the run-up to and during the Second World War. In the post-War alignment Japan has remained firmly tethered to the U.S., often putting it in an adversarial position vis-à-vis China. Perhaps the most challenging point of contention is the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands as they are known in China and Japan, respectively, in the East China Sea.”

Solution: b.

The governor has constitutional discretion in the following cases:

1. Reservation of a bill for the consideration of the President.
2. Recommendation for the imposition of the President’s Rule in the state.
3. While exercising his functions as the administrator of an adjoining union territory (in case of
4. Determining the  amount  payable  by  the  Government  of  Assam,  Meghalaya,  Tripura  and Mizoram  to  an  autonomous  Tribal  District  Council  as  royalty  accruing  from  licenses  for mineral exploration.
5. Seeking information  from  the  chief  minister  with  regard  to  the  administrative  and  legislative matters of the state

In  addition  to  the  above  constitutional  discretion  (i.e.,  the  express  discretion  mentioned  in  the Constitution),  the  governor,  like  the  president,  also  has  situational  discretion  (i.e.,  the  hidden discretion derived from the exigencies of a prevailing political situation) in the following cases:

1. Appointment of  chief  minister  when  no  party  has  a  clear-cut  majority  in  the  state legislative assembly or when the chief minister in office dies suddenly and there is no obvious successor.
2. Dismissal of  the  council  of  ministers  when  it  cannot  prove  the  confidence  of  the  state assembly
3. Dissolution of the state legislative assembly if the council of ministers has lost its majority.

In the news: Karnataka government-formation issues;

Solution: b.

As provided  by  the  Constitution,  the  Speaker  of  the  last  Lok  Sabha  vacates  his  office  immediately before the first meeting of the newly- elected Lok Sabha. Therefore, the President appoints a member of  the  Lok  Sabha  as  the  Speaker Pro Tem .  Usually,  the  seniormost  member  is selected for this. The President himself administers oath to the Speaker Pro Tem. The  Speaker Pro  Tem has all the powers of the Speaker. He presides over the first sitting of the newly-elected  Lok  Sabha. His main duty is to administer oath to the new members. He also enables the House to elect the new Speaker. When the new Speaker is elected by the House, the  office of the Speaker Pro  Tem  ceases to exist. Hence, this office is a temporary office, existing for a few days.

Indian Polity by M Laxmikant;

In the news: Karnataka government-formation issues;

Solution: a.

Chile: Much of northern Chile is desert; the central part of the country is a temperate region where the bulk of the population lives and where the larger cities, including Santiago, are located. South-central Chile, with a lake and forest region, is temperate and humid; the southernmost third of the country, cut by deep fjords, is an inhospitable region.

Why Chile is an astronomer’s paradise: By some calculations, by 2025 the country will be home to more than half the image-capturing capacity in the world. Much of the reason for that lies in the desert skies, which are among the clearest on earth. In some parts of the Atacama Desert, rainfall has never been recorded.

Altitude is also important, particularly for ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array). Radio telescopes pick up wavelengths from outer space, but the signals are often distorted by water vapour in the earth’s atmosphere. By building at altitude (altitudes in the Atacama desert at some places such as the Chajnantor plateau are 5,000m), in dry air, engineers can get above some of that moisture.

Being in the southern hemisphere, its observatories are not in direct competition with those in the United States and Europe, which gaze out at different skies. Politics and infrastructure are also factors. Chile has emerged as one of the most stable, prosperous countries in the region since its return to democracy in 1990. That stability is essential for long-term investment projects like these.

Improvisation: BBC;

The ALMA radio telescope is often in the news for discoveries that astronomers make using data collected by it.