Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2022

Notes:
Maritime logistics arm of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Singapore-based AG&P signed agreement to use Liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier as a floating storage unit in India.
The LNG carrier is owned by ADNOC Logistics and Services (ADNOC L&S). It will be used at AG&P’s LNG import terminal in India which will be commissioned in the second half of 2024. It is the third agreement is for a floating storage unit lease in India and the Philippines.

Notes:
The Karnataka government has introduced a new startup policy (2022-27), which aims to add around 10000 startups more in the state in the next five years.
The new policy has been framed by the Department of Electronics and IT/BT. As a part of the policy, the state government will launch an INR 100 Cr venture capital fund to support deep-tech startups working in AI&ML, electric vehicle, med-tech, robotics and drones, among others.

Notes:
Indian scientist Professor Thalappil Pradeep, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras received VinFuture special prize on 20th Dec. 2022 in Hanoi.
He was awarded for innovation of a low-cost filtration system to remove arsenic and other heavy metals from groundwater. Thalappil was earlier conferred with the Padma Shri in honour of his work to develop affordable and safe drinking water solutions using nanomaterials.

Notes:
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has approved Bharat Biotech’s intranasal Covid vaccine as a booster dose for those above 18 years of age.
India’s first intranasal Covid vaccine iNCOVACC will be added to the CoWin app, which is a web platform for vaccination registration in the country. At present, only Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Serum Institute’s Covishield and Covovax, Russian Sputink V and Biological E Ltd’s Corbevax are listed in the CoWin portal.

Notes:
England player Sam Curran became the most expensive player in IPL history in the INR 18.50 crore deal signed by Punjab Kings.
Sam Curranwas the Player of the Final and the Tournament at the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia, and since September this year he has taken 25 wickets in 14 T20s at an economy rate of 7.08.
Ben Stokes became Chennai Super Kings’ costliest signing at INR 16.25 crore while Sunrisers Hyderabad bought Harry Brook for INR 13.25 crore.

Notes:
Indian badminton star PV Sindhu is the only Indian player in the top 25 in Forbes’ annual list of the highest-paid female athletes in the world.
The 27-year-old made 7 million US Dollars of her earnings, after having won a singles gold and doubles silver at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year in Birmingham. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka tops the list, for the third straight year.

Notes:
The Ministry of Railways has formulated a new scheme to modernise over 1,000 small stations over the coming years.
Amrit Bharat Station Scheme is a part of its station redevelopment drive. The key features of the proposed stations include provisions for roof top plazas, longer platforms, ballast-less tracks, and 5G connectivity.

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:
Telangana government has launched the 10th phase of Rythu Bandhu, the investment support scheme for farmers.
Under this phase, 7,676 crores will be deposited in the bank accounts of over 70 lakh farmers towards investment support for the Rabi crop season. The investment support is disbursed at a rate of 5000 rupees per acre.