Current Affairs Quiz - July, 2023

Notes:
The top military leadership of Pakistan and neighboring Iran agreed to step up cooperation and intelligence sharing and take actions to prevent attacks by separatist militants along their porous border.
The agreement was reached during a visit by Pakistan’s powerful army chief General Asim Munir to Tehran following a surge in attacks in the country’s southwestern Baluchistan province, which shares a long border with Afghanistan and Iran.

Notes:
The Department of Pharmaceuticals’ Research & Development (R&D) scheme, titled “Promotion of Research and Development and Innovation in the pharma-medtech sector,” will soon be sent for approval by the Union Cabinet.
The proposal has been reviewed in the Empowered Technical Group (ETG) meeting and is currently awaiting approval from Minister of Chemical and Fertilizer.

Notes:
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) retained India’s economic growth forecast at 6.4 per cent for FY24.
The forecast is based on recovery in consumption demand in both rural and urban areas. The Indian economy grew 7.2 per cent in 2022-23. In an update to its Asian Development Outlook (ADO), ADB lowered its inflation projection for current fiscal year (FY24) at 4.9 per cent.

Notes:
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) asked its affiliated schools to consider providing the option of Indian languages mentioned in Schedule 8 of the Constitution as a medium of instruction, in addition to the existing options, from pre-primary classes to Class 12.
The move is a part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which envisages the use of mother tongue or regional or Indian languages as the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, and preferably till Grade 8 and beyond.

Notes:
Indian Navy decommissioned INS Kirpan and handed over the indigenously built missile corvette to Vietnam People’s Navy (VPN).
INS Kirpan served for 32 years in the Indian Navy.  Navy Chief R. Hari Kumar announced that this is the first-ever occasion that India is offering a fully-operational corvette to any friendly foreign country.

Notes:
The Yellow Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean located between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea fired ‘several cruise missiles’ into the Yellow Sea between China and the Korean peninsula, the South Korean military reported.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the inauguration of ‘Semicon India 2023’, exhibition highlighting India’s semiconductor capabilities and chip design innovation, taking place in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
The event will witness the participation of prominent companies such as Foxconn, Micron, AMD, IBM, Marvell, Vedanta, LAM Research, NXP Semiconductors, and STMicroelectronics, showcasing India’s significant progress in nurturing a global semiconductor manufacturing and design ecosystem.

Notes:
The BRICS Urbanisation Forum, which was initially launched in New Delhi in February 2013, will hold its first in-person follow-up event in Durban, South Africa.
During the two-day conference, representatives from the five BRICS nations will engage in discussions about crucial urban development matters, aiming to explore how cities worldwide are enhancing their resilience to these challenges.

Notes:
NASA regards Bennu as one of the most dangerous asteroids in the solar system. University of Arizona planetary science expert, Dante Lauretta, and astrophysicist, Brian May, have collaborated to produce “Bennu 3-D: Anatomy of an Asteroid,” the world’s first comprehensive 3D atlas of an asteroid.
The book, featuring data and images from the Osiris-Rex mission, details their undertaking with NASA to collect samples from the near-Earth asteroid, Bennu.

Notes:
New Space India Ltd (NSIL), the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), revealed their second consecutive commercial space mission, named PSLV-C56, which is scheduled to launch on 31 July.
The mission’s primary payload is the DS-SAR satellite from Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), intended for satellite imaging applications by Singaporean government agencies.