English: Odd Sentence – Set 34

Directions (1-10): Choose the odd sentence out of the given five sentences in each question.

1. Since then, there was no word from them, but for the version of Harjit Masih, the 40th hostage who had managed to escape.
   The government’s announcement that the remains of 39 Indian workers, kidnapped four years ago by the Islamic State, have been found near Mosul in Iraq, has brought a painful closure to the episode.
   According to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, remains found in a mass grave have been matched conclusively with DNA samples for all but one of the men declared missing almost four years ago.
   This inquiry should also help answer larger questions about the operating procedure followed by the authorities.
   Part of a group of construction labourers held by the IS shortly after the fall of Mosul in June 2014, they had last contacted their families in the middle of that month and said they were being held in a basement while fighting raged outside.
   Option D
   BCEA

    

2. Colombia’s presidential election, due in May 2018, will have a bearing on the fragile peace accord of 2016 that ended one of the longest civil wars in history.
   Now, in the March 11 parliamentary vote, Mr. Uribe’s Democratic Centre Party has emerged as the largest bloc in the Senate with 19 seats.
   FARC, contesting polls for the first time, finished with less than 1% of the vote, but is assured representation in parliament thanks to the accord.
   The accord between the Colombian security forces and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had won President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize; it is to his credit that the government managed to implement the accord in bits and pieces despite unremitting hostility from the right-wing opposition led by former President Álvaro Uribe.
   The result of the parliamentary election held this month has framed the stiff challenge the pro-peace parties face.
   Option C
   AEDB

    

3. No wonder he found ready support from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamool Congress is fighting the Left and the Congress on one side, and the BJP on the other.
   A third front is, by definition, destined for the third place.
   The parties Mr. Rao seems to have in mind do not add to each other’s vote banks: they are mostly fighting their own battles in their own areas.
   When Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao mooted a non-BJP, non-Congress ‘federal’ front, he was already defining the alliance negatively, in terms of its opponents rather than as a coming together of like-minded parties.
   In its very formation, such a coalition concedes the dominance of the other two players.
   Option C
   BEDA

    

4. Mr. Modi was linked to corruption with a reference to the bank scam, and Mr. Shah to murder with a reference to the Sohrabuddin encounter killing.
   The party is clearly seeking the middle ground: equal economic opportunities for all without, however, instilling the fear of tax terrorism or overbearing regulation.
   As president of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi seems to be taking on a more aggressive avatar, attacking the BJP for its divisive ideology and its failings on the governance front.
   Most of his speech was a tirade against the party and its two main leaders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.
   But at the Congress plenary in Delhi, he had little to say by way of presenting an alternative vision, other than claiming for his party the space given up by the BJP.
   Option B
   CEDA

    

5. The laboratory cavern will be located 1,300 metres underground, with an access tunnel. The rock cover is necessary to minimise the naturally occurring cosmic ray backdrop.
   The observatory, which is to come up in Bodi West Hills in Theni district, Tamil Nadu, is regarded as a symbol not just of India’s push for research in particle physics; it also signals the intent to nurture centres of excellence.
   A year after the National Green Tribunal suspended the environmental clearance granted to the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), the Expert Appraisal Committee (Infra 2) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has overturned the NGT verdict and granted environmental clearance for the project.
   Neutrinos are subatomic particles that are extremely difficult to detect.
   Despite the 17 conditions laid down by the Expert Committee while granting approval, the manner in which the clearance was granted leaves much to be desired.
   Option E
   CBDA

    

6. While Pakistan’s foreign office claimed they did not have security clearance to enter the diplomatic zone, India saw it as an attempt to stop the work, adding that power and water connections were tampered with.
   While surveillance of diplomats by intelligence agencies in New Delhi and Islamabad is not new, matters have escalated in the past month, and the treatment of diplomatic officials by both sides has dropped to new lows.
   Regardless of the provocation or the sequence of events, there is an urgent need for India and Pakistan to address allegations of harassment of each other’s diplomats and interference in High Commission work.
   The spark for this round of ‘tit-for-tat’ actions appears to be an incident in February, when alleged ISI agents roughed up Pakistani construction workers headed for the Indian mission’s new building site in Islamabad.
   The timing is clearly more than just coincidence, and the incidents mark a deliberate policy by India and Pakistan to give their intelligence agencies a carte blanche to target the other side.
   Option E
   CBDA

    

7. The recent finding that microplastic particles are found even in ‘safe’ bottled water indicates the magnitude of the crisis.
   The problem is staggering: eight million tonnes of waste, including bottles and packaging, make their way into the sea each year.
   Microplastics are particles of less than 5 mm that enter the environment either as primary industrial products, such as those used in scrubbers and cosmetics, or via urban waste water and broken-down elements of articles discarded by consumers.
   There is little doubt that the global production of plastics, at over 300 million tonnes a year according to the UN Environment Programme, has overwhelmed the capacity of governments to handle what is thrown away as waste.
   Plastics are now widely present in the environment, as visible waste along coastlines, in lakes and rivers, and even in the soil.
   Option B
   EADC

    

8. Clearly, the effort was not to join hands with other parties against the BJP, but to isolate the YSRCP politically.
   The desertion of the NDA happened alongside the announcement of a no-confidence motion against the NDA government.
   Sometimes, the opponent is less important than the rival. The decision of the Telugu Desam Party to leave the National Democratic Alliance is more about its competition with the YSR Congress Party and less about its conflict with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
   But importantly, the TDP moved it separately, independent of the one served by the YSRCP.
   With an Assembly election looming next year, neither the TDP nor the YSRCP can afford to be seen as an ally of the BJP.
   Option E
   CBDA

    

9. The attack brings home the point that it is crucial for Britain to continue a coordinated security strategy with the rest of the EU once Brexit happens.
   The military grade nerve agent used in the attack, the first of its kind in Europe since World War II, has been identified as being from the Novichok class of chemical agents developed by Russia during the Cold War.
   The attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who had defected to the U.K., and his daughter Yulia in the cathedral city of Salisbury on March 4 was an outrageous act flouting all international norms.
   The modus operandi of the attack was similar to the polonium poisoning of another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006, an attack that is likely to have been approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin according to a U.K. inquiry.
   It is therefore entirely reasonable that Britain asked Russia to clarify if it was behind the attack or had somehow lost control over the nerve agent, two possible explanations for the Salisbury incident.
   Option A
   CBDE

    

10. It is estimated that overall, bank finance for imports into India is around $140 billion, of which over 60% is funded through such buyers’ credit.
    LoUs are among the most popular instruments to secure overseas credit by importers — known as buyers’ credit in banking parlance — because of their attractive pricing.
    While the central bank had earlier blamed “delinquent behaviour by one or more employees of the bank” and failure of internal controls for the PNB-Nirav Modi fiasco, RBI Governor Urjit Patel has finally commented on the fraud.
    A month after the ₹12,800-crore letters of undertaking (LoUs) fraud at Punjab National Bank came to light, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to ban such instruments as well as letters of comfort issued by bankers to businesses for international transactions.
    While the government has been in firefighting mode, unleashing all investigative agencies to probe the fraud, this is the first major step by the central bank on the issue, apart from asking banks to ensure there are no slip-ups between their core banking systems and the SWIFT mechanism used for international money transfers.
    Option C
    DEBA