Current Affairs Quiz - June 2022

Notes:
Europe’s biggest start-up conference – Vivatech 2020 has recognized India as the ‘Country of the year”
Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw inaugurated the India pavilion at the Vivatech technology exhibition. Around 65 start-ups from India are participating in the conference with government support. India has created 100 unicorns in few years while Europe has created 26 unicorns.

Notes:
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) recently notified the cost inflation index (CII) for FY 2022-23 as 331.
For the previous year (FY 2021-22) CII was notified as 317. The CII is used to calculate an asset’s inflation-adjusted cost price, with which Long-term capital gains or losses are then calculated. This notification will apply to the Assessment Year 2023-24 and future years.

Notes:
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras have developed a robot to clean septic tanks without human intervention.
Named HomoSEP, the product development was further supported by GAIL (India). Initially, ten units are planned to be deployed across Tamil Nadu. The robots have been developed to eliminate manual scavenging.

Notes:
Vaikom Muhammed Basheer was a famous writer of Malayalam literature. He was a recipient of the Sahitya Academy Fellowship and Padma Shri award.
The 28th death anniversary of writer Vaikom Muhammed Basheer is set to be marked at his residence at Beypore with a range of programmes named ‘Basheer Fest’. The event will be organised in association with Chalachitra Academy, Folklore Academy and Sahitya Akademi and others.

Notes:
Edakoodam is the name of a wooden puzzle toy, which was popular among children and was a part of every household in Kerala, during earlier times.
There are many efforts being taken in Kerala to popularise the wooden puzzle by teaching the art of making and solving Edakoodam popular among children and adults.

Notes:
The Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has declared IT resources of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) as ‘critical information infrastructure’.
The Information Technology Act of 2000 defines ‘Critical Information Infrastructure’ as a “computer resource, the incapacitation or destruction of which shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety”. The government has the power to declare any data, database, IT network or communications infrastructure as CII.

Notes:
The Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change has defined a list of items that will be banned from next month. The announcement of ban was made last year.
As per the notification, the manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of following single-use plastic, including polystyrene and expanded polystyrene, commodities shall be prohibited with effect from the 1st July, 2022.

Notes:
Sri Lankan cabinet passed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution to empower Parliament over the executive president.
The 21st Amendment is expected to dissolve the section, which gives unfettered powers to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after abolishing the 19th Amendment that will strengthen Parliament. It also includes reforms including barring dual citizens from contesting elections to hold public office.

Notes:
Former US President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 to free African Americans in secessionist Confederate states from slavery. It remained ineffective for more than two years as the slave owners withheld this information from their slaves. The last of the enslaved African Americans were freed on June 19, 1865 – two months following the end of the Civil War.

Notes:
The UN announced world’s first-ever floating city named Oceanix City in April this year. It is going to be set up off the coast of South Korea’s second-largest city, Busan. The construction process is going to commence next year.