Select the most appropriate synonym of the given word.
 Amble

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them, while answering some of the questions.
Among those suffering from the global recession are millions of workers who are not even included in the official statistics : urban recyclers – the trash pickers, sorters, traders and reprocesses who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse. Their work is both unrecorded and largely unrecognized, even though in some parts of the World they handle as much as 20% of all waste.
The World’s 15 million informal recyclers clean up cities, prevent some trash from ending in landfills and thus, reduce climate change by saving energy on waste disposal techniques like incineration. In the developed countries they are the preferred ones since they recycle waste much more cheaply and efficiently than governments or private corporations can. In the developing World, on the other hand, they provide the only recycling services except for a few big cities. But as recession hits the markets Worldwide, the price of scrap metal, paper and plastic has also fallen. Recyclers throughout the World are experiencing a sharp drop in income. Trash pickers and scrap dealers saw a decline of as much as 80% in the price of scrap from October 2007 to October 2009. In some countries scrap dealers have shuttered so quickly that researchers at the Solid Waste Management Association didn’t have a chance to record their losses. In Delhi, some 80% of families in the informal recycling business surveyed by an organization said they had cut back on “luxury foods,” which they defined as fruit, milk and meat. About 41% had stopped buying milk for their children. By this summer, most of those children, already malnourished, hadn’t had a glass of milk in nine months. Many of these children have also cut down on hours spent in school to work alongside their parents. Families have liquidated their most valuable assets – primarily copper from electrical wires – and have stopped sending remittances back to their rural villages. Many have also sold their emergency stores of grain. Their misery is not as familiar as that of the laid-off workers of big name but imploding, service sector corporation, but it is often more tragic. Few countries have adopted emergency measures to help trash pickers. Brazil, for one, is  providing recyclers, or “catadores,” with cheaper food, both through arrangements with local farmers and by offering food subsidies. Other countries, with the support of non-governmental organizations  and donor agencies are following Brazil’s example. Unfortunately, most trash pickers operate outside official notice and end up falling through the cracks of programmes like these. In the long run,  though, these invisible workers will remain especially vulnerable to economic slowdowns unless they are integrated into the formal business sector, where they can have insurance and reliable wages. This is not hard to accomplish. Informal junk shops should have to apply for licences, and governments should create or expand doorstep waste collection programmes to employ trash pickers. Instead of sorting through haphazard trash heaps and landfills, the pickers would have access to the cleaner scrap that comes from households.

The need of the hour, however, is a more immediate solution. An efficient but temporary solution would be for governments where they’d have to pay a small subsidy to waste dealers so they could purchase scrap from trash pickers at about 20% above the current price. This increase, if well advertised and broadky utilized, would bring recyclers a higher price and eventually bring them back from the brink. Trash pickers make our cities healthier and more liveable. We all stand to gain by making sure that the work of recycling remains sustainable for years to come.

Which of the following is true regarding waste recycling in the developing countries?

Read the following passage and answer the questions given after it.

From January 28 to February 4, 2023, a Chinese-operated, large white high-altitude balloonwas seen in North American airspace, including Alaska, western Canada, and the contiguousUnited States. The American and Canadian militaries asserted that the balloon was for surveillance, while the Chinese government maintained it was a civilian meteorological research airship that had been blown off course. Analysts said that the balloon's flight path and structural characteristics made it dissimilar from those which have typically been used formeteorological research. The U.S. Department of State said that the balloon was capable oflocating electronic communication devices, including mobile phones and radios, and that American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft deployed to track the balloon in the air revealed that the balloon carried antennas and other equipment "clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment on board weather balloons." The State Department said that the spy balloon was part of a global Chinese military-directed surveillance effort in which Chinese spy balloons have flown over more than 40 nations in five continents. On February 4, the U.S. Air Force shot down the balloon over U.S. territorial waters off the coast of South Carolina, on the order of U.S. President Joe Biden. Debris from the wreckage was recovered and sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis. The incident increased U.S.-China tensions. The incident prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to delay a diplomatic visit to Beijing, which was set to be his first since 2018. Italso further strained Canada–China relations, as Canada summoned the Chinese ambassador because of the violation of Canadian airspace. On February 3, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that a second Chinese balloon was passing over Latin America, which China also said belonged to it. On February 10, the Air Force shot down another aerial object over U.S. territory at the order of President Biden.

Read the statements given below.

A. The US Air Force shot down the Chinese balloon over US territorial waters.

B. Tensions between China and US have increased and the visit of the U.S. Secretary of State to Beijing has been postponed. Ans

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow it. Each question has 4 options. Choose the correct option/answer for each question:

I worked for a brief while in a college in Delhi, and among my more uncomfortable memories is a language exercise, I gave a group of eight undergraduates: I asked them to imagine that they had already graduated and wanted them to write an application for a suitable job. Seven of the eight students wrote applications for the jobs of clerks. Even in one of the good universities, and in a college that had a reputation for its academic standards, the system has snuffed out all youthful ambition.

How long did the author work in a Delhi College?

In the following passage some words have been deleted. Fill in the blanks with the help of the alternatives given. Select the most appropriate option for each blank.

The Ashoka pillars are a series of columns (1)_____ in northern India by King Ashoka (2)______ his reign in the 3rd century BCE. (3)_____ pillars are inscribed with edicts by the Mauryan king. At an average (4)______ 50 feet in height and weighing up to 50 tons each, (5)______19 pillars survive today.

Select the most appropriate option for blank No. 2.

Directions : In the following question, sentences are given with blanks to be filled in with an appropriate word(s). Four alternatives are suggested for each question. Choose the correct alternative out of the four as your answer.

I have to recite Tagore’s sonnet, I will be the ____ one to do so in my school.

Select the option that will improve the underlined part of the given sentence.

She does not helping to getting angry when she sees someone being treated unfairly

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Fill in the blanks with the help of the alternatives given. Select the most appropriate option for each number.

A raptor’s day begins soon after dawn. They (1)______ their wings for a quick warm-up and are ready for the hunt. Nature (2)______ these birds so well that they do not need to hunt every day. By (3)______ a good kill on a particular day, the larger raptor can go without hunting (4)______ two or three weeks. These predators can do without regular meals. This helps them to (5)______ if there is bad weather or lack of food.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 5.