Today in History (February 29^th, 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?

1. Dioxy ribonucleic acid
2. Dioxyribonucleic analytics
3. deoxyribonucleic acid
4. None of the above

Ans. (c)

B) The DNA consists of a double-stranded molecule built up by four bases these are the_____

1. ACTP
2. ACGT
3. ACTM
4. ACTB

Ans. (b)

C) The Naxal ideology in India believes in the ideas of _____

1. Mao Zedong
2. Confucius
3. BR Ambedkar
4. 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

1. Hyderabad
2. Ayodhya
3. Kanpur
4. Agra

Ans. (c)

E) In a first in the private sector, two facilities for the manufacture of ammunition and missiles were opened by 

1. Adani Aerospace
2. Relience Defence
3. DRDO
4. Tata Defence Institute

Ans. (a)

F) Mission Utkarsh is related with which one of the following?

1. Child education
2. Girls free education
3. Nutrition for adolescent girls
4. Nutrition for Scheduled Tribes students

Ans. (c)

G) What is the aim of Mission Utkarsh?

1. To control anaemia among adolescent girls
2. To abolish female feticide
3. To increase education among girls
4. To provide technical education for girls

Ans. (a)

H) Who is the minister of Ayush?

1. Sarwnand Sonowal
2. Smriti Irani
3. S Jaishankar
4. 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 32^nd
• Before Sweden, Hungry was the latest (31^st) member of NATO.