UPSC Quiz – 2024 : IASbaba’s Daily Current Affairs Quiz 21st March 2024

·       The FSSAI has been established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which is a consolidating statute related to food safety and regulation in India.

·       It lays down standards and guidelines in relation to articles of food, and provides for licensing, registration, and accreditation for food business operators.

·       Anyone selling or importing food in India needs a food licence issued by FSSAI.

·       FSSAI also directly monitors compliance of food regulations, especially in the area of food imports to India.

The FSSAI is responsible for the Food Certification in India.

It is mandated to specify systems for enforcing its standards, for accreditation of certification systems, and for certification of food safety management systems for food businesses.

·       It was fought between U.S. and Japanese forces on Okinawa.

·       Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyus Islands and lies 350 miles from mainland Japan.

·       The Americans wanted control of Okinawa because it had four airfields and could support tactical and strategic air operations.

·       Capturing Okinawa was regarded as a vital precursor to a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands.

·       Code named Operation Iceberg,the invasion of Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyus began on April 1, 1945.

·       The immense size of the invasion forces made it the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War.

·       By the time Okinawa was securedby American forces on June 22, 1945, the United States had sustained over 49,000 casualties, including more than 12,500 men killed or missing.

·       Okinawans caught in the fighting suffered greatly, with an estimate as high as 150,000 civilians killed.

·       Of the Japanese defending the island, an estimated 110,000 died.

·       The enormous casualties and the brutal fighting that occurred on Okinawa forced military planners to reconsider the invasion of Japan.

·       It directly influenced the American decision to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

·       It lays down rules and guidelines for specific risks associated with the use of AI in areas like biometric authentication, facial recognition, high-risk domains such as healthcare, and deep fakes.

·       Taking a horizontal, risk-based approach that will apply across sectors of AI development, the EU AI Act classifies the technology into four categories: Prohibited, high-risk, limited-risk, and minimal-risk.

·       High-risk systems, which have a significant impact on people’s lives and rights, such as those used for biometric identification or in education, health, and law enforcement, will have to meet strict requirements, including human oversight and security and conformity assessment, before they can be put on the market.

·       Systems involving user interaction, like chatbots and image-generation programmes, are classified as limited-risk and are required to inform usersthatthey are interacting with AI and allow them to opt out.

·       The most widely used systems, which pose no or negligible risk, such as spam filters and smart appliances, are categorised as minimal-risk. They will be exempt from regulation, but will need to comply with existing laws.

·       The act also enshrines the right of consumers to make complaints about the inappropriate use of AI by businesses, and to receive meaningful explanations for decisions taken by an AI that affect their rights.

·       Objective: To facilitate and accelerate the transition toclean and efficient energy and mobility systems using fuel cells and hydrogen technologies.

·       IPHE serves as a mechanism to organize and implement effective, efficient, and focused international research, development, demonstration, and commercial utilization activities related to hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

·       It is an annual report published by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

·       Dozens of experts and partners contribute to the report, including UN organizations, National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), and Global Data and Analysis Centers, as well as Regional Climate Centres, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), the Global Cryosphere Watch, and the Copernicus Climate Change Service operated by ECMWF.

Highlights of the 2023 Report:

·       2023 was the hottest year on record, with the global average near-surface temperature at 1.45 °Celsius (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.12 °C) above the pre-industrial baseline.

·       It was the warmest ten-year period on record.

·       Numerous records for indicatorsof the climate system, including greenhouse gas levels (GHGs), surface temperatures, ocean heat, sea level rise, Antarctic Sea ice cover, glacier retreat, etc., were broken.

·       On an average day in 2023, nearly one third of the global ocean was gripped by a marine heatwave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems.

·       Towards the end of 2023,over 90% of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year.

·       The global set of reference glacierssuffered the largest loss of ice on record (since 1950), driven by extreme melt in both western North America and Europe, according to preliminary data.

·       In 2023, renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% from 2022, for a total of 510 gigawatts (GW), the highest rate observed in the past two decades.