Current Affairs Quiz - February 2022

Notes:
A tapestry representing Picasso’s iconic “Guernica” has been returned to the United Nations. It used to hang outside the Security Council chambers.
The 7.5-meter-wide tapestry is returned by the Rockefeller family to the UN, where it will be hung again.  The tapestry was commissioned in 1955 and woven in consultation with Picasso. Picasso did his original “Guernica” painting during the Spanish Civil War.

Notes:
Union Power Minister R K Singh launched a hackathon, named Powerthon-2022, to find tech-driven solutions for quality power supply.
REC Limited, in collaboration with Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Bombay, acts as the nodal agency. It is launched under RDSS (Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme). New ideas and concepts will be rewarded with licence.

Notes:
India has agreed to provide a grant to Sri Lanka to implement a ‘Unitary Digital Identity framework’. It is modelled similar to India’s flagship Aadhaar card.
Sri Lanka’s Cabinet decided that the Government will prioritise the implementation of the Framework as a national level programme. It will introduce personal identity verification device based on biometric data for citizens.

Notes:
Businessman Gautam Adani overtook Reliance Industries Chairperson Mukesh Ambani as Asia’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
The real-time data on the index showed that Adani’s net worth stood at USD 88.5 billion (approximately Rs 6.6 lakh crore) and Ambani’s at USD 87.8 billion (approximately Rs 6.5 lakh crore). Adani was the 10th richest person in the world as on the date.

Notes:
Geo-location technology specialist TomTom has released the 11th edition of its annual TomTom Traffic Index. It is a report analysing traffic trends seen in 404 cities in 58 countries, during 2021.
India fared better than the global average of 10% decrease in congestion. But, four cities from India featured in the Index’s global top-25 list namely Mumbai (5th), Bengaluru (10th), and New Delhi (11th) and Pune (21st).

Notes:
As per a recent research, Kaziranga National Park in Assam, is releasing more carbon than it is absorbing.
The National Park is home to the largest-population of the one-horned rhinoceros in the world. Usually, forests absorb more carbon than they release, which makes them carbon sinks. This is mainly due to decreasing rainfall in the region.

Notes:
Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest.
Russia and Belarus have started joint military exercises close to the Belarusian border with Ukraine. Russia has already amassed forces along its own border with Ukraine, and in the annexed Crimean peninsula.

Notes:
The Indian Army has recently commenced Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging of its ammunition inventory.
This will lead to increased efficiency in technical activities and reduce inventory carrying costs. The first consignment of RFID tagged ammunition was despatched from Ammunition Factory Khadki to Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) Pulgaon.

Notes:
A team of astronomers has discovered a new planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the Sun.
The planet named ‘Proxima d’, is the third detected in the system. It is among the lightest of the exo-planets discovered so far. The astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile to spot this exo-planet.

Notes:
The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) recently launched an agro ecology-based programme JIVA.
It aims to promote natural farming under NABARD’s watershed and wadi programmes in 11 states covering five agro-ecological zones. It aims to nudge the farming community towards natural farming.