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 Group of 7 (G7) leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US have concluded a two-day summit.
They also announced goals of an open and cooperative international Climate Club towards establishing it by the end of 2022. The G7 leaders also condemned “Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable war of aggression against Ukraine”.

Notes:
GST Day is celebrated on July 1 to mark completion of five years of Goods & Services Tax. It was introduced in 2017, with the idea of “One Nation- One Market- One Tax”.
GST is a multi-stage, indirect consumption-based tax system that subsumed a set of domestic indirect taxes such as service tax, value-added tax, purchase tax, excise duty among others.

Notes:
Every year on the third Saturday of September, the world celebrates ‘International Coastal Clean-Up Day.’
On September 17, 2022, the Government of India, in collaboration with other voluntary organizations and the local community, is set to launch the “Swachh Sagar, Surakshit Sagar” cleanliness campaign along India’s entire coastline.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Digital India Week 2022 in Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The theme for Digital India Week is Catalyzing New India’s Techade.
The Prime Minister also launched ‘Digital India Bhashini’ to enable easy access to the internet and digital services in Indian languages. ‘Digital India GENESIS’ – a National Deep-tech Startup Platform, to support successful start-ups in Tier-II and Tier-III cities with a total outlay of 750 crore rupees was also launched. A global repository of key projects implemented under India Stack ‘Indiastack.global’ was launched.

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:
Peter Brook, one of the greatest theatre directors of the 20th century, passed away recently at the age of 97.
He is also regarded as one of the world’s most innovative theatre directors. He was known for staging Peter Weiss’s “Marat/Sade” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”. He is known for bringing nine-hour adaptation of the Sanskrit epic “The Mahabharata” from France to New York in 1987.

Notes:
The privatisation of Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL) was completed as it has been handed over to Tata Steel Long Products (TSLP).
NINL is the second successful privatisation by the government, after Air India which was also bought by Tata Group. NINL, which is a joint venture of 4 CPSEs named MMTC, NMDC, BHEL, MECON and 2 Odisha government PSUs- OMC and IPICOL.

Notes:
Fields Medal is also described the Nobel Prize in mathematics. Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska, who works in Switzerland, was named as one of four recipients of the 2022 Fields Medal.
The Fields Medal is awarded by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), an international non-governmental and non-profit scientific organisation to promote international cooperation in mathematics.

Notes:
The 30 NATO allies signed the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland, sending the membership bids of the two countries to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals.
The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives have to formally approve the decisions of last week’s NATO summit. Turkey warned that it could still block the process if the countries fail to fully meet Turkey’s demand to extradite terror suspects.