Current Affairs Quiz - June, 2023

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the 8th Governing Council Meeting of NITI Aayog, at New Delhi.
It was attended by Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors representing 19 States and 6 UTs. HE urged the Centre, States and UTs should work as Team India and fulfil the dreams and aspirations of people for a Viksit Bharat at 2047.

Notes:
India has moved WTO dispute panel over Information and communication technologies (ICT) import duties.
The WTO’s apex dispute resolution body, the Appellate Body, hasn’t been functional for nearly two years due to America’s blockage on appointment of judges.

Notes:
Israel-1 is an Israeli supercomputer that is set to be built by Nvidia. It will be partly operational by the end of this year.
The system is expected to deliver performance of up to eight exaflops of AI computing that will essentially make it one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers.

Notes:
Union Minister For Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat launched the Unified Registration Portal For GOBARdhan. It will act as a one stop repository to assess investment and participation in Biogas/CBG sector at the national level.
It streamlines the process of setting up CBG/Biogas plants in India. Any government, cooperative or private entity operating or intending to setup a plant in India can obtain a registration number here.

 

Notes:
Formation water is the waste water which is disposed during the crude oil excavation and processing.
A mixture with plant-based biomaterial, biosurfactant, and NPK fertilizer is found to restore this water. It was discovered by scientists of the Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST).

Notes:
As many as 62 Desiccation-Tolerant Vascular plant species have been discovered in the Western Ghats in India.
These species have potential applications in agriculture, especially in regions where there is scarcity of water.

Notes:
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launched a mobile app for street vendors to ease their loan application process under the PM SVANidhi scheme which completed three years.
It is a micro credit scheme which was launched by the Central government in 2020 to provide handholding support to street vendors, to tackle pandemic-induced economic stress.

Notes:
GAGAN (GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation) is an Indian satellite-based augmentation system that provides accuracy needed to rely on GPS for flight.
Recently, Asia’s first demonstration of performance-based navigation for helicopters was conducted by India using the GAGAN satellite technology.

Notes:
The Helmand is Afghanistan’s longest river. It originates near Kabul in the western Hindu Kush Mountain range and flows in a south-western direction through desert areas for about 1,150 kilometers before emptying into Lake Hamun, which spans the Afghanistan-Iran border.
Clashes broke out between Iran and Afghanistan along the border due to dispute over the sharing of water from the Helmand River. This conflict resulted in killing and wounding of troops.

Notes:
The Countervailing Duty (CVD) is commonly imposed to safeguard domestic companies that are unable to compete with low-cost imports benefiting from subsidies provided by the exporting country.
The Indian government is planning to impose this duty on stainless steel imports to prevent the flooding of cheap imports and protect the domestic manufacturers.