Instructions:
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
Comprehension:
Amidst the corona pandemic, particularly during the lockdown phase, some positive effects were observed on the wildlife. During the lockdown phase, animals had an increased and uninterrupted territory. In some areas,
wild animals were seen on roads and in residential areas. Less traffic, less human intervention and less pollution gave space to wildlife to thrive. It was definitely a rare phenomenon on the roads. Wildlife re-entered the areas snatched from them. However, these positive and negative impacts were transient and were largely observed during the complete lockdown phase only.
Some of the worst sufferers of the pandemic are stray animals like dogs and cats. They are no longer able to survive on waste food material from restaurants and shops because of shops being closed. Also, they are being
abandoned by their owners due to unfounded fears that they may spread COVID-19. The worst possibility is that the stray animals might eat disposed masks and gloves, which can become lethal.
Overall although a few positive impacts of COVID-19 on the environment were seen, these were the short-term effects induced largely by the nation-wide lockdown. Indeed, the pandemic is expected to pose long-term
adverse effects on the environment in future.
Some of the gravest long-term effects of corona are the dangers posed to the environment. These are: the phenomenal increase in the use of chemicals that abound in hand wash and sanitizers; the extensive use of
plastic by way of masks and gloves; the huge amount of hospital waste; and finally the effect of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications that get into lakes, rivers and streams which ultimately pollute our
waters. All these will eventually contribute to a tremendous increase in environmental pollution.
SSC Selection Post Matric 20221)Select the option that does NOT correctly complete the given sentence.
During the pandemic, stray animals were at greater risk because they ______.
were sent to distant animal shelters
SSC Selection Post Matric 20222)Select the statement that is NOT true as per the passage.
Today, wildlife continues to live in deserted residential areas.
SSC Selection Post Matric 20223)______ is NOT responsible for the increase in environmental pollution.
Kitchen waste from homes
SSC Selection Post Matric 20224)One major advantages of the complete lockdown for animals was more ______.
free space
SSC Selection Post Matric 20225)'Unfounded fear’ means fear based on:
false belief
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
Much to their annoyance, pen-pushers are routinely reminded that a picture is worth a thousand words—except that sometimes they can be wrong ‘words’ as happened last week when Reuters was forced to withdraw more than 900 pictures taken by a freelance photographer after it was suspected that he had ‘doctored’ two recent photographs of the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.
In one picture, the smoke billowing from an apartment block after an Israeli air strike was allegedly thickened by the photographer, Adnan Hajj, to dramatise the impact of the bombardment — and in another two flares were suspected to have been added to an image of an Israeli jet in action over Lebanon.
The allegation of doctoring, first made by several bloggers, was confirmed by Reuters after an inhouse investigation. Mr. Hajj, who had sold pictures to Reuters for more than 10 years, denied manipulating the two photographs and attributed the thick smoke in the first picture to “bad lighting” and the fact that he was “trying to remove dust marks.” As for the second, he said, “there was no problem with it — not at all.”
But Reuters was not convinced and said it was removing all of his pictures from its database and would not be using his services any more. “This represents a serious breach of Reuters’ standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him,” the news agency said.
The idea that the camera never lies is as misleading as the notion that all statistics are meant to mislead. What the ‘eye’ sees is not always what it looks like, thanks to the many ways in which first the camera and then the
photograph can be — and is often — manipulated. Indeed, a photograph can be manipulated in more ways — and more effectively — to convey a false reality than it is possible to do through the written word. Ask any clever photographer and he will tell you the tricks the camera can be made to play.
At a seminar recently, one journalist recalled how there was a time when British photographers, covering stories about famine or floods in Third World countries, would carry teddy bears with them in order to use them
as props for pictures supposedly showing that all that was left in the household, stricken by death and destruction, were children’s toys.
SSC Selection Post Matric 20226)The picture of smoke rising from an apartment depicted:
Israeli airstrike on Lebanon
SSC Selection Post Matric 20227)Who was accused of tampering with the pictures?
A freelance photographer
SSC Selection Post Matric 20228)According to the passage, it can be inferred that a camera:
often lies
SSC Selection Post Matric 20229)Reuters withdrew pictures of a freelance photographer because:
they had been altered
SSC Selection Post Matric 202210)'a picture is worth a thousand words’ means that:
pictures express more effectively than verbal descriptions