UPSC Quiz – 2021 : IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs Quiz 17th JUNE 2021

Solution (d)

NATO, also called as North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance of 30 European and North American countries. NATO implements North Atlantic Treaty which was signed in 1949. It comprises of a system of collective defence where independent member states agree for mutual defence in case of any attack by external party. Headquarter of NATO is located at Haren in Brussels, Belgium.

Member nations of NATO are: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom, United States, Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

Article Link: NATO leaders declare China a global security challenge

Solution (b)

New Shephard, named after astronaut Alan Shephard (the first American to go to space), is a rocket system developed by Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin to take astronauts and research payloads past the Karman line, the internationally-recognized boundary of space.

It aims at providing easier and cost-effective access to space for academic and research-oriented purposes. It will also allow space tourists to experience microgravity by taking them 100 km above the Earth. 

Article Link: What is New Shephard, the rocket system designed to provide cost-effective access to space?

Solution (d)

New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation. It is a successor to the START framework of 1991 (at the end of the Cold War) that limited both sides to 1,600 strategic delivery vehicles and 6,000 warheads.

According to recent findings in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Year Book 2021 Russia and the U.S. together possessed over 90% of global nuclear weapons. 

Report also mentions that India possessed an estimated 156 nuclear warheads at the start of 2021, compared with 150 at the start of last year, while Pakistan had 165 warheads, up from 160 in 2020.

Article Link: China, India, Pakistan expanding nuclear arsenal, says Swedish think tank

Solution (a)

Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) is a preferential tariff system extended by developed countries to developing countries (also known as preference receiving countries or beneficiary countries). It is a preferential arrangement in the sense that it allows concessional low/zero tariff imports from developing countries. 

The following 13 countries grant GSP preferences: Australia, Belarus, Canada, the European Union, Iceland, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Norway, the Russian Federation, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States of America.

Currently India is not a GSP status nation of the United States. US government under Trump’s administration withdrew its GSP (Generalized System of Preferences) benefits to India in 2019. 

Article Link: EU Parliament resolution puts spotlight on Sri Lanka’s rights situation

Solution (c)

The Karman line is the internationally recognized boundary of space. The line is named after Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963), a Hungarian American engineer and physicist, who was active primarily in aeronautics and astronautics. 

It is an imaginary boundary 100 kilometers (62 miles) above mean sea level. In theory, once this 100 km line is crossed, the atmosphere becomes too thin to provide enough lift for conventional aircraft to maintain flight. At this altitude, a conventional plane would need to reach orbital velocity or risk falling back to Earth.