Current Affairs Quiz - May 2022

Notes:
Foxtail orchid or Kopou Phool is the State Flower of Assam. Foxtail Orchid (Rhynchostylis retusa) is used in the Bohag Bihu festival of the state.
A private orchid garden is being maintained by a farmer and conservationist of Assam. It includes a number of Foxtail orchids and other orchid breeds like rhynchostlis retusa white, Dendrobium lituiflorum yellow, Vanda ampullaceal among others.

Notes:
Actor Deepika Padukone is the first Indian to be signed on as a ‘House Ambassador’ by Louis Vuitton.
The brand recently launched its Dauphine bag campaign, featuring Deepika along with Emma Stone and Zhou Dongy. Deepika Padukone is also a part of the eight-member competition jury of the Cannes Film Festival along with actor-filmmaker Rebecca Hall and Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi.

Notes:
Union Bank of India has launched Trade nxt, a cross border trade finance service for Indian exporters and importers.
The platform eliminates the need for companies to visit a bank branch to initiate a trade transaction. All export and import transactions, including entry and processing of letters of credit, bank guarantees, export/import bills, disbursement of export credit, outward and inward remittances can be done in one place.

Notes:
Beverage major PepsiCo and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have awarded six women farmers of West Bengal for breaking gender stereotypes and implementing best practices related to collaborative potato farming.
The awards were provided as a part of a programme for women farmers’ economic empowerment. PepsiCo procures around 70 per cent of its total potato requirement for food processing from nearly 27,000 farmers in West Bengal.

Notes:
The World Economic Forum said 100 new startups, including five from India, have joined its Technology Pioneers Community.
The start-ups include entities from healthcare and financial services to the metaverse.  World Economic Forum released the 2022 cohort of Technology Pioneers ahead of its annual meeting in Davos. The five Indian entities include Vahan, SmartCoin Financials, Proeon, Pandocorp and Recykal.

Notes:
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to declare 16 May as the International Day of Living Together in Peace in 2017.
The Day aims to urge people to live together in a united and peaceful way. The year 2000 was recognised as ‘The International Year for a Culture of Peace’ and the UN declared the decade from 2001 to 2010 as the “International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for Children of the World.”

Notes:
India announced the appointment of Naveen Srivastava, the additional secretary in the external affairs ministry, as the next ambassador to Nepal.
Srivastava will succeed Vinay Kwatra, who became foreign secretary this month. India and Nepal signed six agreements during the Nepal visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including one for the 490-MW Arun-4 hydropower project.

Notes:
The Supreme Court slammed Kerala as it failed to comply with January 2017 order requiring them to compensate victims who suffered effects of endosuflan pesticide.
The judgment had directed three steps – identification of victims, disbursal of ₹5 lakh compensation to each victim, and setting up medical facilities to deal with the long-term health effects arising from the effects of endosulfan. The Supreme Court banned the use of Endosulfan in 2012.

Notes:
Union Science and Technology Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh launches the Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) and Scientific Research Infrastructure Sharing Maintenance and Networks (SRIMAN) Guidelines on the occasion of Technology Day.
Dr Jitendra Singh also presented awards to 7 most successful Start-ups for their pioneering work in areas like Quantum data security, covid testing kits, A-I powered Robot for electronic assembly, Cryogenic technologies and Cyber security systems

Notes:
As per a new study, Lower respiratory infection caused by Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) was responsible for more than 1,00,000 deaths in children under five in 2019 across the world.
RSV is the most common cause of acute lower respiratory infection in young children. The study was done based on age brackets. It highlighted that there were over 45,000 deaths in infants under six months old in 2019. The incidence rate of RSV in India is 53 per 1,000 children per year.