Current Affairs Quiz - July 2022

Notes:
The British government launched an ‘Aviation Passenger Charter’ to help passengers know their rights when faced with problems at airports.
Long queues and cancelled flights caused by staff shortages have caused chaos, prompting airlines to cut back their schedules. The new charter helps passengers know what to do if they are confronted by cancellations, delays or missing baggage.

Notes:
The government slashed the newly-introduced windfall tax on petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, and crude oil, after a global oil price ease.
The move, which is effective from July 20, will give relief to top fuel exporters like Reliance Industries, and oil explorers like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). A windfall tax is levied on companies deemed to have made unreasonably high profits, normally due to unusually favourable market factors.

Notes:
The US House of Representatives passed a bill to protect marriage equality. It is also feared that the Supreme Court could roll back the recognition of same-sex marriage.
The legislation ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ was passed as 47 Republicans joined all Democrats in supporting the measure. The bill will now go to the Senate for a vote.

Notes:
Karnataka has been ranked first in the NITI Aayog’s India Innovation Index (2021) for third third time in a row. The first edition was released in October 2019 and second in January 2021.
The India Innovation Index ranks states and union territories on the basis of innovation capabilities. Telangana, Haryana and Maharashtra stood second, third and fourth in the list of top states. Manipur topped the ‘North East and Hill States’ section and Chandigarh won the ‘Union Territory and City States’ category.

Notes:
The Government has prohibited import of human embryos in line with the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 and The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021.
This was announced by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. Earlier, imports were prohibited except for research purposes based on the guidelines of the Department of Health Research. Surrogacy is a practice where a woman gives birth to a child for an intending couple with the intention to hand over the child after the birth to the couple.

Notes:
The Asian Development Bank cut its economic growth forecast for India to 7.2% for 2022-23 from 7.5% estimated in April.
The reasons cited are higher-than-expected inflation and monetary tightening. It also lowered the GDP growth estimate for 2023-24 to 7.8% from the 8% estimated earlier. ADB raised the inflation forecast for India to 6.7% for FY23 from the 5.8 % estimated earlier.

Notes:
Nasscom Foundation has set up a call centre to help women farmers scale up their business called the “DigiVaani Call Center”.
It has been set up in collaboration with non-profit Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP). The project is run on a pilot basis to initially reach out to 20,000 rural women entrepreneurs across six states- Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Rajasthan. The project has been funded by Google.

Notes:
Varuna, India’s first drone that can carry human pay-load has a range of 25 km. The passenger drone can carry 130 kg payload and has 25-33 minutes of flight time.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently watched the demonstration of India’s first passenger drone, Varuna. ‘Varuna’ drone has been designed and developed by a startup ‘Sagar Defence Engineering’.

Notes:
National Broadcasting Day is an annual event observed on July 23 in India, to remind Indian citizens about the impact of radio on our lives.
India’s official broadcaster ‘Prasar Bharati’ includes All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan. The Indian Broadcasting Company ltd (IBC) was taken over by the British and transformed into All India Radio (AIR) in 1936.

Notes:
India signed an ‘Agreement to curb trans-border crimes’ with Bangladesh. The countries also decided to complete pending developmental work within 150 yards of the international border.
The agreements were signed during the Director-General level border co-ordination conference between India and Bangladesh, held in Dhaka after two years.