Q1. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal said that the  government is committed to reducing emissions from the shipping sector and all the major ports will be made fully self-sustainable on electricity by

1. 2025
2. 2030
3. 2035
4. 2040 None of These
   
5. None of These

Q2.  Which among  the  following  is the highest contributor to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India from the Gulf region ?

1.  Qatar
2. Bahrain
3. Saudi Arabia
4. United Arab Emirates
5. None of These

Q3. Name the senior politician who has appointed as the prime minister of  Sri Lanka?

1. Ranil Wickremesinghe
2. Dinesh Gunawardena
3. Sirimavo Bandaranaike
4. Dudley Senanayake
5. None of These

Q4. Who among the following is the fourth richest person in the world?

1. Bernard Arnault
2. Jeff Bezos
3. Gautam Adani
4. Mukesh Ambani
5. None of These

Q5. Which is the India's largest air  carrier ?

1. Vistara
2. Air India
3. AirAsia India
4. Alliance Air
5. None of These 

      Answers

1------------2   2030

2---------4   United Arab Emirates

3----------2   Dinesh Gunawardena

4-----------3   Gautam Adani

5-----------5   None of These Ans : IndiGo

Droupadi Murmu has been elected as the 15th President of India, NDA's presidential candidate crossed the 50 per cent mark of total valid votes at the end of the third round of counting.

In the third round, a total of 1,333 votes were valid. The total value of valid votes is 1,65,664. Droupadi Murmu got 812 votes, and Yashwant Sinha got 521 votes.

According to Returning Officer PC Mody, up to the third round, the cumulative total valid votes was 3,219 with a total value of 8,38,839 of which Droupadi Murmu gets 2,161 votes of the value of 5,77,777. Yashwant Sinha gets 1,058 votes of the value of 2,61,062.

Earlier, he said, the votes of the 15 MPs were declared invalid and added that all the votes of MPs have been counted. Eight MPs did not vote in the presidential election, he added.

The opposition parties in Assam are going hammer and tongs at the BJP-led government in the state for allegedly insulting the poor beneficiaries of a populist scheme.

What riled them is its move to segregate the beneficiaries of the scheme called “Arunodoi” by putting up signboards outside their houses so they could be easily identified.

Under the scheme, 19.1 lakh BPL families are provided with a monthly financial assistance of Rs 1,000.

TMC will abstain from voting process for Vice-President election scheduled to be held on August 6.

"We were not consulted when Margaret Alva’s name was decided. A senior leader of the opposition party tried to contact our party chief Mamata Banerjee when Alva’s name was already decided. So, we decided to abstain from voting process for Vice-President election," said Abhishek Banerjee.

Five days ago, NDA announced former West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s name as their candidate for Vice-President.

The government spent Rs 911.17 crore on advertisements in newspapers, television channels and web portals in the past three years, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur told the Rajya Sabha on  july 21 .

The advertisements were paid for by the Central Bureau of Communications from financial year 2019-20 till June 2022, he said.

The government spent Rs 295.05 crore on advertisements in 5,326 newspapers in 2019-20, Rs 197.9 crore in 5,210 newspapers in 2020-21, Rs 179.04 crore in 6,224 newspapers in 2021-22 and Rs 19.25 crore in 1,529 newspapers in 2022-23 (till June), Thakur said.

During the same period, the government spent Rs 98.69 crore on advertisements in 270 television (TV) channels in 2019-20, Rs 69.81 crore in 318 TV channels in 2020-21, Rs 29.3 crore in 265 news channels in 2021-22 and Rs 1.96 crore in 99 TV channels in 2022-23 (till June), Thakur said.

On web portals, the government's spending on advertisements was Rs 9.35 crore on 54 websites in 2019-20, Rs 7.43 crore on 72 websites in 2020-21, Rs 1.83 crore on 18 websites in 2021-22 and Rs 1.

Incidence of Leftwing extremism reduced by 77 per cent from an all-time high of 2,258 cases in 2009 to 509 in 2021, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

Indicating a sharp decline in the Naxal violence across six states – Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha and Bihar – the MHA said that deaths (of civilians and security men) resulting from the Maoist insurgency also reduced by 85 per cent from the peak of 1,005 in 2010 to 147 in 2021.

Chhattisgarh, however, took the lead in the number of deaths of security personnel. While 22 paramilitary force jawans and policemen were killed in 2019, the number went up to 36 the next years and followed by 45 in 2021.

Only six security men were killed in Leftwing extremist violence till June this year.

The government said that the curb in Naxal-related violence was the outcome of a national policy and action plan launched in 2015.

The 9th ASEAN-India Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crimes (SOMTC) was held in a virtual mode on  july 21 .

The consultation was co-chaired by Mahaveer Singhvi, Joint Secretary (Counter Terrorism), Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), from the Indian side and Puah Kok Keong, Deputy Secretary (Policy), Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore, from the ASEAN side.

Both sides strongly condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and emphasized the need to strengthen international cooperation to combat terrorism and transnational crimes in a comprehensive and sustained manner.

During the Consultation, both sides discussed ways to enhance cooperation interalia, in the areas of terrorism, illicit drug trafficking, trafficking in persons, international economic crime and cyber crime under the framework of ASEAN-India Work Plan to combat Transnational Crimes. Institutional linkages and capacity building programmes between the two sides were also discussed.

The 10th ASEAN-India SOMTC Consultation on Transnational Crimes will be held in 2023 in Indonesia.

Paving the way for the re-introduction of cheetah in the country, India and Namibia   on july 20 entered into an agreement under which eight big cats are expected to reach the country next month. Cheetah, was declared extinct in the country in 1952, will be re-introduced in India in the Kuno-Palpur National Park in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district.

The first batch comprising four male and as many female cheetahs will arrive from Namibia in August and talks are on with South Africa too. The animals are expected to land in India before August 15.

The main goal of the reintroduction project in India is to establish a viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the big cat species to perform its functional role as a top predator and provides space for its expansion within its historical range, thereby contributing to its global conservation efforts.

While the current carrying capacity for Kuno National Park is a maximum of 21 cheetahs, once restored, the larger landscape can hold about 36 cheetahs. 

Financial and administrative support to the cheetah reintroduction programme in India would be provided by the Union environment ministry.