Current Affairs Quiz - July 2022

Notes:
National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi is organizing a festival “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav – 22nd Bharat Rang Mahotsav, 2022.
NSD is an autonomous organization under Ministry of Culture. The festival aims to remember and pay tribute to our freedom fighters, under ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav 2022’. The festival will be inaugurated in New Delhi and it will be organized in 5 other cities of Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Amritsar, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Notes:
Public sector lender Punjab National Bank (PNB) has gone live on the account aggregator ecosystem as financial information user (FIU) as well as financial information provider (FIP).
Union Bank of India, Canara Bank and Indian Bank have also connected to the account aggregator system. Other banks including SBI, BOB and UCO Bank are in the testing phase and some others are in the development phase.

Notes:
NTPC and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) have signed an agreement to set up a joint venture company for meeting the power requirements of projects of IOC refineries.
NTPC Green Energy (NGEL), a wholly owned subsidiary of NTPC, will form the JV Company for supplying RE-RTC power to Indian Oil Corporation.

Notes:
The United Nations General Assembly had officially declared International Moon Day to be marked every year on 20 July.
It celebrates the day humans first walked on the moon in 1969. This was the day when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, Earth’s only satellite on 20 July 1969. Lunar module pilot Edwin Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong 19 minutes later and they spent about two and a quarter hours outside the spacecraft while collecting 21.5 kg of lunar material.

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:
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:
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi recently resigned after a collapse in support among his coalition backers,
President Sergio Mattarella called for an election for a new parliament in September. Mario Draghi was a former president of the European Central Bank. The country has been fighting inflation surge and an economic slowdown.

Notes:
India and Maldives signed MoU for judicial cooperation to accelerate court digitization and boost prospects for IT companies & start-ups in both countries.
India was among the first countries to recognise the Maldives after its independence in 1965 and to establish diplomatic relations with the country. Maldives has a strategic importance in Geographic Location of the Maldives with respect to key International Shipping Lanes (ISLs).

Notes:
Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) through its autonomous Institute National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has developed Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD) technology for conversion of sea water to potable water.
Three desalination plants using the technology have been developed and demonstrated at Kavaratti, Agati and Minicoy Islands of Lakshadweep