Current Affairs Quiz - July 2022

Notes:
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has Union Finance Minister as chairperson, the Union Minister of State (Finance) from the Centre. Each state can nominate a minister in-charge as a member.
The two-day meeting of the 47th Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council was recently held in Chandigarh. The Council agreed to levy 18 per cent tax on cheques, lose or in book form. Hotel accommodations below Rs 1,000 will be taxed at 12 per cent among other changes.

Notes:
The UK government announced 75 fully-funded scholarships for Indian students to study in the UK, beginning September 2022, in honour of India’s 75th anniversary of Independence.
The scholarships are being offered in association with top Indian companies. There are about 18 scholarships for women in STEM fields offered by the British Council in India. The UK government has sponsored the Chevening international honours programme since 1983, in which India is the largest participant.

Notes:
The Mercer’s 2022 cost of living city ranking was recently released with the list of the most expensive cities for international employees.
Mumbai is the most expensive city in India for foreign employees, at rank 127 globally. It is followed by New Delhi at rank 155. Pune and Kolkata are the least expensive Indian cities in the ranking at 201 and 203 respectively.

Notes:
The NITI Aayog released its report titled ‘Harnessing Green Hydrogen — Opportunities for Deep Decarbonisation in India’.
It has recommended tax breaks like reduction or exemption of GST and custom duties on green hydrogen production. It has also proposed setting up green hydrogen corridors and offering grants to start-ups working on green hydrogen solutions.

Notes:
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue in June rose to ₹144,616 crore, the second-highest since the inception of GST five years ago.
The new high collection is on the back of rapid economic recovery and stricter compliance, as per the Union Finance Ministry said. In April, the collection was the highest ever at ₹1,67,540 crore. This is the fifth time the monthly GST collection crossed the ₹1.40 lakh crore mark and fourth month at a stretch since March 2022.

Notes:
NITI Aayog and World Food Programme (WFP) have launched a report titled ‘Take Home Ration-Good Practices across the State/Union Territories’.
The report presents a set of good and innovative practices adopted in the implementation of the Take Home Ration (THR) value chain by the States and UTs. Take Home Ration has been provided in Indian under the Supplementary Nutrition component of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).

 

Notes:
The UN Ocean Conference 2022 concluded with the unanimous adoption of the Lisbon Declaration “Our Ocean, our future, our responsibility.”
More than 150 countries agreed to scale up science-based and innovative actions to address the ocean emergency. The Lisbon Declaration takes into account the capacity challenges being faced by the developing countries, mainly the Small Island Developing States and Least Developing Countries.

Notes:
Indian Government’s think tank NITI Aayog released compendium of Ayush practices to manage COVID-19.
The compendium provides information focused on practices adopted by various states and UTs of India for strengthening the country’s fight against COVID-19.

Notes:
Rahul Narwekar, a first-time MLA, was elected as the Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly defeating Shiv Sena candidate Rajan Salvi.
The 45-year old leader is the youngest speaker of India, as of now. Earlier Eknath Shinde took over as the new Chief Minister while Devendra Fadnavis took oath as the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra.

Notes:
Scientists in the US have developed a rapid Covid-19 test that can accurately detect all current variants of SARS-CoV-2 within hours named CoVarScan.
Scientists typically use whole genome sequencing, to determine which variant of Covid-19 a patient has been infected with and it is time-consuming and expensive.