Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2022

Notes:
IIT Kharagpur Director VK Tewary announced that IIT Kharagpur is to set up an engineering institute in Malaysia.
The institute had compiled a compendium of 75 innovations undertaken by its staff and researchers. The engineering institute has also set up the 260-bed Syama Prasad Mookerjee Institute of Medical Sciences.

Notes:
India and Bangladesh agreed to start negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) at an early date. The decision was taken in a meeting between Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and his Bangladeshi counterpart Tipu Munshi.
A joint feasibility study on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), has been carried out after the two countries agreed to explore the possibility of negotiating a trade pact. The bilateral trade between India and Bangladesh increased to USD 18.2 billion in 2021-22.

Notes:
The Union Mines Ministry approved the purchase of two new surveyor ships, to replace RV Samudra Shaudhikama and RV Samudra Kaustabh.
The new ships would conduct marine surveys for the Geological Survey of India (GSI). The RV Samudra Shaudhikama and RV Samudra Kaustabh were built in the Netherlands and commissioned in 1984.

Notes:
The Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), ARTPARK (AI and Robotics Technology Park) and Google have partnered together for ‘Project Vaani’ Initiative.
The digital project aims to map the language diversity of India by collecting speech sets of about a million people across 773 districts. The project aims to record over 150,000 hours of speech, part of which will be transcribed in local scripts. The goal is to boost development of automatic speech recognition, speech to speech translation and natural language understanding.

Notes:
Afghanistan’s supreme leader has ordered judges to fully enforce aspects of the Sharia system. It is the Islamic law that include public executions, stonings, floggings and the amputation of limbs for thieves among others.
‘Hudud’ refers to offences for which certain types of punishment are mandated under Islamic Law, while ‘Qisas’ is translated as retaliation in kind.

Notes:
The Election Commission of India has developed a prototype of a remote electronic voting machine (RVM) for domestic migrant voters.
It has invited political parties for a demonstration. If implemented, migrant voters do not need to travel to their home district to exercise their franchise and this will be a major move to increase voter participation.

Notes:
Leaders and people of Meghalaya paid rich tribute to the Freedom Fighter U Kiang Nangbah on his 160th death anniversary.
U Kiang Nangbah had revolted against the British when Khasi-Jaiñtia Hills region were not part of India. He was hanged publicly at in Jowai town on December 30, 1862.

Notes:
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) releases the financial stability report (FSR) twice a year in every June and December.
As per the recent report, the gross non-performing asset (GNPA) ratio of scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) fell to a seven-year low of 5.0 per cent. The net non-performing assets (NNPA) have dropped to ten-year low of 1.3 per cent in September 2022.

Notes:
The first consignment under the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) was flagged off from Chennai.
Another flagging off ceremony of the export consignments from Tamil Nadu under ECTA was held on at Ennore Adani Container Terminal, in Tamil Nadu.  The pact will boost overall bilateral trade and benefit various labour intensive sectors of India as import duty from existing 5% becomes zero.

Notes:
The US Census Bureau said the world’s population is projected to be at 7.9 billion on New Year’s Day 2023.
This is an increase of 73.7 million since January 2022 and an increase in global population of 0.9 percent over the previous year. The Census Bureau projected that there will be 4.3 births and two deaths globally every second in January 2023.