Current Affairs Quiz
1. The government has extended the deadline for linking Aadhaar with small saving schemes by ___________
a) March 31 2018
b) June 30 2018
c) September 30 2018
d) December 31 2018
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Answer a) March 31 2018. The government has extended the deadline for linking Aadhaar with small saving schemes by three months to March 31, 2018. The 12-digit Aadhaar number was made mandatory for all small savings schemes, including post office deposits and Kisan Vikas Patra, in October 2017. Meanwhile, the deadline for linking Aadhaar to avail welfare scheme benefits was also extended to March 31.
2. Who has been appointed as MD and CEO of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)?
a) Satish Pradhan
b) Santanu Paul
c) Raj Kamal Verma
d) Dilip Asbe
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Answer d) Dilip Asbe. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for retail payment systems in India, has appointed Dilip Asbe as Managing Director and CEO of the organisation. Asbe was appointed CEO-in-charge in August last year. He had come in place of AP Hota, whose term as MD and CEO had ended on August 10 last year.
3. Who has been appointed as new Northern Ireland secretary?
a) Justine Greening
b) Karen Bradley
c) Priti Patel
d) Nicky Morgan
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Answer b) Karen Bradley. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley is to take over from James Brokenshire as Northern Ireland secretary. Her appointment follows the resignation of James Brokenshire due to health reasons. Mrs Bradley, 47, has been the MP for Staffordshire Moorlands since May 2010, and became a Home Office minister in 2014.
4. Rajesh Ranjan has been appointed as the next High Commissioner of India to ___________
a) Botswana
b) Namibia
c) Eritrea
d) Uganda
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Answer a) Botswana. Rajesh Ranjan presently Director in the Ministry of External Affairs has been appointed as the next High Commissioner of India to Botswana.
5. India’s fastest supercomputer with “multi-petaflops” was dedicated to nation in ________
a) Hyderabad
b) Chennai
c) Pune
d) Kolkata
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Answer c) Pune. India’s fastest supercomputer with “multi-petaflops” was dedicated to nation in Pune. Union minister for science and technology Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the powerful computer. Petaflops is a measure of a computer’s processing speed. Flops stands for floating point operations per second, which is a measure of computer performance, useful when floating-point calculations are required. The supercomputer has been installed at the High Performance Computing (HPC) facility at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune.
6. A string of butterfly parks, providing natural habitat for beautiful flying insects that is getting endangered, will soon play as ‘eco-monitors’ in _________
a) Tamil Nadu
b) Andhra Pradesh
c) Maharashtra
d) Kerala
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Answer d) Kerala. A string of butterfly parks, providing natural habitat for beautiful flying insects that is getting endangered, will soon play as ‘eco-monitors’ in Kerala. The State-run Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) has drawn up an ambitious programme to create a number of butterfly gardens/parks in selected schools and other spots in the State. The objective of setting up butterfly parks was not only to provide a natural environ for the flying insects but also to use them as ‘environment-monitors.
7. Which state government has banned e-cigarette recently?
a) Bihar
b) Gujarat
c) Uttar Pradesh
d) Haryana
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Answer a) Bihar. The state government has banned even e-cigarette in Bihar. E-cigarette is smoked through electronics nicotine delivery system (ENDS) for nicotine intake. Its manufacture, distribution, sale, purchase, display and advertisement also stand banned. Even online purchase of e-cigarettes has been banned in the state. State drug controller (SDC) Ravindra Kumar Sinha issued the notification in this regard recently and also sent it to all assistant drug controllers (ADCs) and drug inspectors for its strict enforcement in their respective areas.
8. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) was observed on?
a) January 07
b) January 08
c) January 09
d) January 10
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Answer c) January 09. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) is celebrated on 9th January every year to mark the contribution of Overseas Indian community in the development of India. January 9 was chosen as the day to celebrate this occasion since it was on this day in 1915 that Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Pravasi, returned to India from South Africa, led India’s freedom struggle and changed the lives of Indians forever.
9. Ola, the taxi hailing app, has tied up with _________ to provide a range of integrated offers, including micro-credit to their customers
a) ICICI Bank
b) Yes Bank
c) HDFC Bank
d) Axis Bank
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Answer a) ICICI Bank. Ola, the taxi hailing app, has tied up with ICICI Bank to provide a range of integrated offers, including micro-credit to their customers and digital payment facilities to driver partners, respectively. As per the partnership, ICICI Bank customers can now book and pay for Ola on the bank’s mobile app and wallet itself. Besides, the bank will also provide micro-credits to Ola customers, wherein they can use the credit for 3-4 rides and then repay later. The bank will, however, use analytics and algorithms to understand the creditworthiness of the riders. ICICI Bank customers will get the dual benefit of booking a cab and making payments directly through their ‘iMobile’ and ‘Pockets’ application.
10. _____________ and Dynamics Inc have announced plans to introduce the first battery-powered, interactive payment cards in the Indian market in 2018
a) Federal Bank
b) IndusInd Bank
c) South Indian Bank
d) Yes Bank
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Answer b) IndusInd Bank. IndusInd Bank and Dynamics Inc have announced plans to introduce the first battery-powered, interactive payment cards in the Indian market in 2018. The new IndusInd Bank card from Pennsylvania-based Dynamics, which designs and manufactures intelligent, battery-powered payment cards, has multiple buttons that let the consumer use a single card to pay in multiple ways.
11. Flipkart’s payments arm PhonePe has partnered mobile wallet company _________ to allow the latter’s customers pay for transactions at PhonePe’s partner merchants
a) MobiKwik
b) Paytm
c) FreeCharge
d) Tez
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Answer c) FreeCharge. Flipkart’s payments arm PhonePe has partnered mobile wallet company FreeCharge to allow the latter’s customers pay for transactions at PhonePe’s partner merchants. According to the deal terms, PhonePe has now enabled its over 45 million users to link their existing FreeCharge wallets to the PhonePe app. Once linked, PhonePe customers will be able to spend their FreeCharge wallet balance at all online and offline merchant outlets that accept payments via PhonePe.
12. China has agreed to stop road construction activity at Bhising area in upper Siang district of ___________
a) Uttarakhand
b) Himachal Pradesh
c) Sikkim
d) Arunachal Pradesh
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Answer d) Arunachal Pradesh. China has agreed to stop road construction activity at Bhising area in upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. It was on December 26, 2017 India discovered that China was trying to construct an operational track – an unpaved road for movement of men and material – along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh.
13. Who has been handed a five-month back-dated suspension by the BCCI for testing positive for a banned substance during a domestic T20 competition in March 2017?
a) Irfan Pathan
b) Yusuf Pathan
c) Yuvraj Singh
d) Gautam Gambhir
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Answer b) Yusuf Pathan. Yusuf Pathan has been handed a five-month back-dated suspension by the BCCI for testing positive for a banned substance during a domestic T20 competition in March last year. The suspension will run retrospectively from August 15 last year, and will expire on January 14. Yusuf inadvertently ingested a prohibited substance Terbutaline, which can be commonly found in cough syrups.
14. Who won the Kolkata Open International Invitation Snooker Championship?
a) Yasin Merchant
b) Geet Sethi
c) Pankaj Advani
d) Aditya Mehta
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Answer d) Aditya Mehta. Asian Games medallist Aditya Mehta bounced back to down English pro Alfie Burden 5-4 in a thrilling final and clinch the Kolkata Open International Invitation Snooker Championship. This is his third Kolkata Open title since it’s inception.
