Current Affairs Quiz - June 2022

Notes:
China emerged as the top buyer of Indian rice during the pandemic, importing 16.34 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) or 7.7 per cent of India’s total rice export in financial year 2021-22.
In 2021-22, India’s total rice export (both basmati and non-basmati) was 212.10 LMT. Out of China’s total rice import from India, nearly 97 percent was broken rice, which has seen a rise in demand from that country. India used to export broken rice mostly to African countries, earlier.

Notes:
Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) is the artificial intelligence-based chatbot of Google.
Recently, the chatbot was claimed to have become “sentient” meaning to have the ability to use senses to feel. The chatbot is claimed to converse similar to human beings on subjects like religion, consciousness and robotics.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet has approved a proposal of the Department of Telecommunications for the auction of 72 GHz of spectrum for a 20-year-period.
It will make way for providing 5G services to public and enterprises. 5G services is said to be about 10 times faster than 4G.The Cabinet also decided to enable the development of ‘Private Captive Networks’ to promote innovation in industry 4.0 applications.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi released a special postal stamp commemorating the 200th anniversary of Mumbai Samachar, Asia’s oldest running newspaper.
The Prime Minister participated in ‘Dwishatabdi Mahotsav’ of Mumbai Samachar. The Gujarati newspaper was first published in 1822 as a weekly by Parsi scholar Fardunjee Marzban.

Notes:
Indian men’s football team captain Sunil Chhetri became the joint fifth highest goalscorer in international football history.
He is also third on the list of active international goal-scorers, just behind Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Chhetri achieved this feat during India’s AFC Asian Cup Qualifier match against Hong Kong, which was won by India.

Notes:
The annual World Competitiveness Index compiled by the Institute for Management Development was recently released.
India has registered the sharpest rise among the Asian economies, with a six-place jump from 43rd to 37th rank on the index due to gains in economic performance. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China were the top-performing Asian economies. Denmark was placed on top, while Switzerland slipped from the top to the second position.

Notes:
Microsoft has shut down its iconic Internet Explorer (IE) browser after 27 years. It was one of the oldest browsers launched in the year 1995.
Microsoft has asked its users to switch to its modern Edge browser, while the virtual version of the older browser will be available to users. In 2022, Chrome is the most popular and widely used browser in the world with over 70 % market share.

Notes:
NPCI International, the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lyra Network of France for ‘Acceptance of UPI & Rupay Card in France.
India is doing 5.5 billion UPI transactions in a month. France is the first Western country with which India has partnered to expand its UPI services.

Notes:
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin launched ‘Ennum Ezhuthum’ scheme to bridge learning gaps in primary education.
The scheme will ensure that all students under eight years of age in the state are able to read with comprehension and have basic arithmetic skills by 2025. A committee was formed to design the syllabus for the scheme, to help each student develop their own skill set. The scheme will be implemented in government and government-aided schools for 3 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.