Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2022

Notes:
The United States has added a key anti-Pakistani militant group and its al-Qaida branch to its list of ‘global terrorists’.
As per the State Department, both groups operate from Afghanistan, but they have hideouts in Pakistan’s former tribal regions.

Notes:
The Kanger Valley National Park is located in Chhattisgarh. It is also home to a population of Chhattisgarh’s state bird, the hill myna.
Bird watchers and forest department officials recently counted 200 types of birds in Chhattisgarh’s first-ever inter-state bird survey conducted in the Kanger Valley National Park.

Notes:
The Government authorised sale and encashment of electoral bonds through 29 branches of State Bank of India (SBI) across the country.
The electoral bonds can be purchased by a person who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India. A person (individual) can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.

Notes:
India’s first gold ATM and world’s first real time gold ATM has been launched in Hyderabad. The gold ATM enables customers to buy gold without going to a physical jewellery store.
Goldsikka, a company that specialises in buying and selling of gold, introduced the ATM with technology support from a Hyderabad-based startup OpenCube. In the ATM, the buyer selects the price and gold worth the amount is released to the buyer.

Notes:
The FIH Hockey Men’s World Cup 2023 will be hosted by Odisha at Bhubaneswar-Rourkela from 13 January, 2023.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik launched the trophy tour of the FIH Odisha Hockey Men’s World Cup 2023. The trophy will travel across 13 states and one Union territory and then across all districts of the state.

Notes:
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) saw a huge rise of 650 percent in value at the semi-urban and rural stores in India, according to a report by fin-tech company PayNearby.
According to the report, the demand for micro-ATMs and mPOS devices increased by 25 percent. There was sharp growth of over 200 percent in the cash collection business with a monthly average of Rs 1400 crores.

Notes:
The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new report titled ‘Preventing injuries and violence: an overview’.
The report says that injuries and violence cause about 12, 000 deaths around the world each day. It also highlighted the need for scaling up efforts for prevention of injury related deaths, which account for 1 in 12 deaths worldwide. Road traffic injuries, homicide and suicide were listed among the top 5 causes of death among people aged 5-29 years.

Notes:
Bharti Airtel announced its partnership with Facebook parent Meta to jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure that would extend a subsea cable ‘2Africa Pearls’ to India.
Last year, Meta announced a new segment of 2Africa Pearls in collaboration with regional partners. The 37,000-km subsea cable connected 23 countries, when it was launched in 2020. The cable would connect Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Notes:
In the 19th annual Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen was ranked first for her leadership during the Ukraine war.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde came on second position while US Vice-President Kamala Harris was on third. From India, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is at 36^th rank. SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, SAIL Chairperson Soma Mondal, Biocon Chair Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Nykaa CEO Falguni Nayar were on the list.

Notes:
The USA’s White House has supported Congress to pass a legislation that seeks to eliminate the per country quota on green cards.
This seeks to allow U.S. employers to focus on hiring people based on merit, not their birthplace. The bill if passed would benefit several hundreds of thousands of immigrants specially Indian-Americans. A Green Card, or a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to immigrants to the U.S. as evidence of grant of privilege of residing permanently.