• The annual ranking of the world’s most liveable cities has just been released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), and 2022’s Global Liveability Index shows some marked differences from the previous year.
• The EIU, which is a sister organization to The Economist, ranked 173 cities around the world on a variety of factors, including health care, crime rates, political stability, infrastructure and access to green space.

2022’s Global Liveability Index: The top 10           

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Copenhagen, Denmark
3. Zurich, Switzerland
4. Calgary, Canada
5. Vancouver, Canada
6. Geneva, Switzerland
7. Frankfurt, Germany
8. Toronto, Canada
9. Amsterdam, Netherlands
10. Osaka, Japan and Melbourne, Australia (tie)

10 LEAST LIVEABLE CITIES AROUND THE WORLD IN 2022:

1. Tehran, Iran
2. Douala, Cameroon
3. Harare, Zimbabwe
4. Dhaka, Bangladesh
5. Port Moresby, PNG
6. Karachi, Pakistan
7. Algiers, Algeria
8. Tripoli, Libya
9. Lagos, Nigeria
10. Damascus, Syria

Key points:

• The cities in India have fared poorly in the list of the world’s most liveable cities. India’s national capital New Delhi has been ranked 112th in the list of most liveable cities. While India’s financial capital Mumbai is ranked at 117th position.
• The Pakistani city of Karachi and Bangladesh capital Dhaka are among the least liveable cities in the world.

About NASSCOM:

• The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) is a non-governmental organisation in India that works to promote the country’s technology sector. NASSCOM was founded in 1988 and is a non-profit organisation. NASSCOM launched a programme in 2013 to support 10,000 businesses in India by 2023. NASSCOM supports activities aimed at Indian start-ups.

KEY POINTS:

• NASSCOM, an Indian non-governmental trade association and advocacy group, claims that an integrated AI and data use plan could boost India’s GDP by $500 billion by 2025.
• The NASSCOM, in collaboration with EY and with backing from Microsoft, EXL, and Capgemini, has introduced an AI Adoption Index to track sectoral progress on AI adoption in the nation.
• The index was the first comprehensive analysis of AI adoption trends in India, starting with four important industries: banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, healthcare, and industrials & automotive.
• Together, these industries could account for more than 60% of AI’s potential value-add to the nation’s GDP by 2025, which is estimated to be between $450 and $500 billion.
• According to the top body, investments in AI have increased significantly over the past two years, rising from $36 billion in 2020 to a high of $77 billion in 2021.
• Even while India’s current pace of AI investments was projected to expand at a CAGR of 30.8 percent and reach $881 million by 2023, it would still only account for 2.5 percent of the $340 billion in total worldwide AI expenditures.
• This would present a huge chance for Indian businesses to increase their investments in and adoption of AI in order to promote equal growth across all sectors.

• Mo Bus, Odisha-based public transport service has been honoured with a prestigious United Nations award, for their role and efforts in helping the world recover better from Covid19.
• According to UN, the public transport service has been recognised for its role in “promoting gender-responsive public services to achieve the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)”.
• Among the other winners of this year’s awards, announced by Liu Zhenmin, United Nations Under Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs during a virtual event to commemorate the United Nations Public Service Day (celebrated on June 22), were public service initiatives from Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine.

Recognition for Odisha:

• The UN recognition said the “problem” was that “bus services in the city of Bhubaneswar needed improvement”, as a result of which “the majority of people used private vehicles, two-wheelers and auto-rickshaw to commute instead of taking public transportation”.
• As the “solution”, the Odisha government in 2018 “reorganized the public transit services in the city to provide an integrated, reliable and inclusive public bus service system”. Mo Bus, the UN noted, has incorporated “real-time technologies like live tracking, travel planner and e-ticketing”, and an e-rickshaw system called ‘Mo E-Ride’ has been introduced as a last-mile feeder service.

• The people of Goa have celebrated the Sao Joao festival, the feast of St John the Baptist with traditional enthusiasm after a two-year coronavirus-induced gap.
• The festival is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, who baptised Lord Jesus on the river of Jordan and is celebrated at the onset of monsoon.
• Siolim, a village in North Goa, hosts a traditional canoe parade on the occasion of Sao Joao.

About the Festival:

• A large number of people participated in the boat parade in Siolim village of Goa’s Bardez taluka, marking the beginnng of revelry in the ‘Sao Joao’ festival.
• Traditionally, people jump into the well but since the wells are fast disappearing, people prefer to celebrate it in swimming pools.
• The festival is marked to herald the monsoon season in the state every year in June. People are often seen having a great time by enjoying and dancing in the artificial rain which adds charm to the celebrations.

• A two-day event ‘Vishwa Dharohar Utsav’, which was organised to celebrate the ninth anniversary of the day when Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP) got the status of world heritage site (WHS) from the UNESCO, concluded at Sai Ropa in Banjar, Kullu.
• The deliberate discussions were held on wildlife conservation and management, ecotourism, community involvement, rescue and release of wild animals, institutional capacity building in wild life and such other related subjects.
• GHNP was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2014, in recognition of its outstanding significance for biodiversity conservation.
• The park protects over 1,000 plant species, including many medicinal herbs, 31 mammal species and 209 bird species, as well as amphibians, reptiles and insects.
• Four of GHNP’s mammal species and three of its bird species are globally threatened, including the musk deer and the western horned tragopan.

• Dr Janardan Singh, Head of Department of Organic Agriculture and Natural Farming at Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University (HPAU), Palampur, has been conferred with the prestigious Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Award for his contribution in the field of teaching and research.
• He was felicitated at the 13th International conference on Agriculture, Horticulture and Plant Sciences that was organised by the Society of Tropical Agriculture in New Delhi.
• He also presented a paper on natural farming at the conference. He has been teaching for over 30 years.

• At Asian Track Championship, Ronaldo Singh made cycling history by becoming the first Indian cyclist to win a silver medal in a continental competition in the senior division.
• The feat accomplished by Ronaldo was the best in a continental competition by an Indian cyclist.
• Yamasaki won the Gold and Andrey Chugay won Bronze.

• The G7 is an informal forum of leading industrialised nations, which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• A number of international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, are also participating in the Summit.
• As of 2022, G7 countries make up 10% of the world’s population, 31% of global GDP, and 21% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Summit website. China and India, the two most populous countries with among the largest GDP figures in the world, are not part of the grouping.
• In all G7 countries, annual public sector expenditure exceeded revenue in 2021. Most G7 countries also had a high level of gross debt, especially Japan (263% of GDP), Italy (151%) and the US (133%).
• The G7 countries are important players in global trade. The US and Germany in particular are major export nations. Both sold goods worth well over a trillion US dollars abroad in 2021.

• The UN convention on biological diversity confirmed that the Cop15 biodiversity conference will now take place in Montreal, Canada, from 5 to 17 December, after it became clear China would not be able to host the event in Kunming due to the country’s zero-Covid policy.
• The UN Biodiversity has announced that the second part of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) will take place between 5 to 17 December.
• The summit due to be held in December is aimed at authorising the final version of the draft UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
• The decisions in the second part of COP15 will be taken on how the world will work on reducing the extinction risk that threatens more than one million species, protecting 30% of land and sea and eliminating the funds spent on environmentally-damaging government subsidies as well as restoring degraded ecosystems.

History

• On December 7, 1987, the United Nations General Assembly decided to observe June 26 as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. It did so to strengthen their efforts in order to achieve the goal of making the society free of drug abuse.

Theme for 2022

• “Addressing drug challenges in health and humanitarian crises”
• The theme has been selected in the wake of widespread humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a major global health crisis.