Daily Current Affairs Quiz: July 23, 2022

ANSWER: B

• The Jal Shakti Ministry announced that Burhanpur has become the country’s first ‘Har Ghar Jal’ certified district, with all the 254 villages in the district having access to safe drinking water.
• Only 37 percent of households in the district had access to safe drinking water in August 2019 and in less than three years, all the houses are able to use the facility.
• In Madhya Pradesh, 42.71 percent of the households have been provided with a tap water supply as of July 22.
• Burhanpur as of August 15, 2019 had tap connections in just 37,241 houses. However, as of July 22, all the houses in the district – 1,01,905 have access to tap water in 254 villages, including in 43,701 tribal households.

ANSWER: A               

• The winners of the 68th National Film Awards were announced in New Delhi.
• Established in 1954, the prestigious awards are administered by the Government of India’s Directorate of Film Festivals.
• Because of Covid-19 related delays, this year’s ceremony honoured films from 2020, across several categories.

Winners: Feature Films

• Best Feature Film: Soorarai Pottru
• Best Director: Sachy, Ayyappanum Koshiyum
• Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment: Tanhaji
• Best Actor: Suriya for Soorarai Pottru and Ajay Devgn for Tanhaji
• Best Actress: Aparna Balamurali, Soorarai Pottru
• Best Supporting Actor: Biju Menon, Ayyappanum Koshiyam
• Best Supporting Actress: Lakshmi Priya Chandramouli, Sivaranjaniyum Innam Sila Pengallum
• Best Screenplay: Soorarai Pottru, Shalini Usha Nair and Sudha Kongara
• Best Screenplay (Dialogue Writer): Madonne Ashwin, Mandela
• Best Music Direction (Songs): Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, Thaman S
• Best Music Direction (Background Music): Soorarai Pottru, GV Prakash
• Best Male Playback Singer: Rahul Deshpande for Mi Vasantrao
• Best Female Playback Singer: Nanchamma, Ayyappanum Koshiyam
• Best Lyrics: Saina, Manoj Muntashir
• Best Audiography (Location Sound Recordist): Jobin Jayan, Dollu
• Best Audiography (Sound Designer): Anmol Bhave, Mi Vasantrao
• Best Audiography (Re-recordist of the final mixed track): Vishnu Govind and Sree Sankar for Malik
• Best Choreography: Sandhya Raju, Natyam
• Best Cinematography: Avijatrik, Supratim Bhol
• Best Costume Design: Nachiket Barve and Mahesh Sherla, Tanhaji
• Best Production Design: Anees Nadodi, Kappela
• Best Editing: Sreekar Prasad, Sivaranjiniyum Innum Sila Pengalum
• Best Make-up: TV Rambabu, Natyam
• Best Stunt Choreography: Rajasekhar, Mafia Sasi and Supreme Sunder, Ayyappanum Koshiyum
• Special Mention: Aimee Baruah for Semkhor, Vaanku, June, Kishore Kadam for Avwanchhit & Godakaath, and Varun Buddhadev for Toolsidas Junior
• Best Hindi Film: Toolsidas Junior
• Best Kannada Film: Dollu
• Best Malayalam Film: Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam
• Best Tamil Film: Sivaranjiniyum Innum Sila Pengalum
• Best Telugu Film: Colour Photo
• Best Haryanvi Film: Dada Lakhmi
• Best Dimasa Film: Samkhor
• Best Tulu Film: Jeetige
• Best Marathi Film: Goshta Eka Paithanichi
• Best Bengali Film: Avijatrik
• Best Assamese Film: The Bridge
• Best Child Artist: Anish Mangesh Gosavi for Tak-Tak
• Best Children’s Film: Sumi
• Best Film on Environment Conservation/Preservation: Talendanda
• Best Film on Social Issue: Funeral
• Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director: Mandela

ANSWER: D

• Recently, Punjab Chief Minister has been admitted to hospital, days after he had drunk a glass of water directly from River Kali Bein.

What is the Kali Bein?

• The 165-km rivulet starts from Hoshiarpur, runs across four districts and meets the confluence of the rivers Beas and Sutlej in Kapurthala.
• Along its banks are around 80 villages and half a dozen small and big towns.
• Waste water from there as well as industrial waste used to flow into the rivulet via a drain, turning its waters black, hence the name Kali Bein (black rivulet).
• Dense grass and weeds grew on the water until a cleaning project started.

Why did Bhagwant Mann drink water from it?

• The occasion was the 22nd anniversary of the cleaning project, which had started on July 16, 2000.

Significance of the Kali Bein

• The Kali Bein is of great significance to Sikh religion and history, because the first Guru, Nanak Dev, is said to have got enlightenment here.
• When Guru Nanak Dev was staying at Sultanpur Lodhi with his sister Bebe Nanki, he would bathe in the Kali Bein.
• He is said to have disappeared into the waters one day, before emerging on the third day.
• The first thing he recited was the “Mool Mantra” of the Sikh religion.

How did the cleaning project start?

• It was started by environmentalist Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal (now AAP Rajya Sabha MP), a former Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) member, with a handful of followers, without government help.
• They removed weeds, treated the water and spread awareness among residents.
• Six years of hard work paid off when then President A P J Abdul Kalam visited the site in 2006 and praised them for their effort.
• The then Congress government in Punjab then announced that it would take up the project to stop the discharge of untreated water into the rivulet.
• The government identified around 73 villages in three districts releasing sewer water into the Kali Bein.

ANSWER: C

• Recently, the government called off a three-week old tax imposed on the export of petrol. Windfall taxes on shipments of diesel and ATF, and on domestically produced crude oil was also cut.

What is windfall Tax?

• Windfall taxes are imposed by a government against certain industries when they experience above-average profits due to economic conditions.
• Windfall taxes are primarily directed on companies in a certain industry that sees the most windfall economically.

Background

• India imposed windfall taxes on July 1, following the super normal profits of energy companies. But since then, international oil prices have cooled down, and profit margins have eroded for both oil producers and refiners. International crude prices slumped on concerns of a global recession.
• On July 1, the government levied export duties amounting to Rs 6 per litre of $12 per barrel on petrol and ATF, while it imposed Rs 13 a litre or $26 a barrel on diesel. The government imposed Rs 23,260 per tonne or $40 per barrel windfall tax on crude production.

Objective

• The above taxes were slapped to garner more revenue as well as to limit exports.
• The government stated that the objective was to shore up domestic supplies as refiners were preferring to export than to meet the local requirements.
• The government expected to bring over Rs 1 lakh crore additional revenue in the full year.

 Implications

• Once the windfall taxes were imposed, the realised spread on diesel and petrol fell to near loss-making levels. The realisation on ATF and crude also dipped to below 15-year averages. After the windfall tax, the realised spread on petrol was just $2 per barrel. The diesel spread too fell in a similar manner to $30 a barrel, while ATF crashed to $25-30 a barrel.
• As per a report, the windfall tax scrapped away 40 per cent of earnings for oil producers. This is apart from the royalty and cess that they are required to pay.
• However, Brent crude price cooled off by $15-20 per barrel in the past couple of weeks to $100 per barrel.
• The government corrected the anomaly that was the result of the windfall taxes.
• The slashing of windfall taxes is expected to benefit Reliance that operates two oil refineries in Gujarat, out of which one is focussed only on exports, state-owned ONGC and Oil India Ltd, and Vedanta Ltd that account for almost all of the crude oil produced in the country, and Russia’s Rosneft-backed Nayara Energy, which operates a 20 million tonnes a year refinery at Vadinar in Gujarat.

ANSWER: A

• India received 87 billion dollars in remittances in 2021, the top remittance recipient, and way ahead of countries like China and Mexico, according to a World Health Organisation report.
• The First WHO World report on the health of refugees and migrants said that today about one in eight people in the world, some one billion, are migrants.
• The report by the specialised agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health said that in 2021 the top five remittance recipients in current US dollars were India, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Egypt.
• With USD 87 billion, India was the top remittance recipient among low- and middle-income countries, as per 2021 estimates, way ahead of China and Mexico’s 53 billion dollars, the Philippines (36 billion dollars) and Egypt (33 billion dollars).
• The United States was the largest source country for remittances in 2020, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland.

ANSWER: A

• According to officials, African swine fever has been reported from two farms at Mananthavady in Kerala’s Wayanad district.
• The disease was confirmed among pigs of two farms in the district after the samples were tested at the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases in Bhopal.
• According to an official from the Animal Husbandry Department that the samples were sent for testing after pigs at one of the farms died en masse. Now the test result has confirmed the infection.
• According to the official Directions have been issued to cull 300 pigs of the second farm.
• The Department said steps are being taken to prevent the disease from being spread.
• The state had earlier this month tightened bio-security measures following an alert from the Centre that African swine fever has been reported in Bihar and a few northeastern states.
• African swine fever is a highly contagious and fatal viral disease affecting domestic pigs.

ANSWER: B

• The World Federation of Neurology (WFN)celebrates World Brain Day on every July 22, focusing on a different theme each year. According to WHO, good brain health is a state in which every individual can realize their own abilities and optimize their cognitive, emotional, psychological and behavioural functioning to cope with life situations.
• Theme of World Brain Day 2022: “Brain Health for all”

This year’s World Brain Day campaign consists of 5 key messages:

1. Awareness:

• Create awareness about brain and brain diseases. Give special lectures on brain to children in schools and colleges.

2. Prevention:

• Serious diseases like stroke, brain infection, epilepsy etc. can be controlled by proper preventive measures. Around 80 to 90 percent of stroke cases can be prevented by controlling its underlying causes like high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, heart diseases, obesity, smoking etc.

3. Advocacy:

• It is very important that the scientific study of brain diseases, new discoveries and treatments are accessible to the masses at an affordable cost.

4. Education:

• Education for all is still on paper in many parts of the world and all governments and non-governmental organizations of the world must join hands to overcome this socio-educational inequality.

5. Access:

• Resources for information and treatment of brain diseases should be easily accessible to everyone in all parts of the world, be it in the form of digital information or in the form of newsletters for awareness campaigns.

ANSWER: B

• Sadio Mané was named African Player of the Year after a season in which he kicked the winning penalty for Senegal as they claimed their first Africa Cup of Nations title and repeated the feat when they secured World Cup qualification.
• Mané finished ahead of Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah, and fellow Senegalese Edouard Mendy in the voting for the award given by the Confederation of African Football.
• It was the second time the 30-year-old Mané, who last month joined German champions Bayern Munich, has won the award after receiving it in 2019.
• The Confederation of African Football did not give the award in 2020 and 2021. It now recognises a player’s accomplishments over a season rather than during a calendar year.

ANSWER: D

• The Chintpurni Temple Trust has decided to set up a museum-cum-interpretation centre for visitors to have a virtual three-dimensional (3-D) experience about various temples in the district as well as historical facts or legends associated with them.
• According to the, Deputy Commissioner Raghav Sharma, who is also the Chairman of the Chintpurni Temple Trust, the museum would be set up in the Mai Das Sadan, which is part of the multi-purpose tourist-cum-facilitation centre, near the shrine, four contiguous halls would serve as the main part of the centre.
• According to DC, “Visitors will walk through rooms having three-dimensional video animations with audio effects around them. Each room will provide a virtual tour of some of the major shrines in the district with a brief about their history. They will get a feeling of being physically present at these shrines.”
• According to the DC, “An exercise to create interiors for the right type of audio-visual effects has already begun. A detailed project report for the museum will be prepared by August 20 to be presented at the meeting of the Trustees.”
• After the approval of the State Art, Culture and Language Department, the work on the project was expected to begin in September.

 ANSWER: B

• Trout fish will be available at half the price during the three-day-long fair launched by the state Fisheries Department on the Mall Road in Manali.
• Tourists and locals will be able to taste varieties of trout fish during the fair.
• The officials of the department gave information about the schemes being run for fish farmers in the state.
• The main objective of the fair was to make people aware of the trout fish variety. Hundreds of farmers in the state are strengthening the economy with the production of trout fish. The department is also encouraging people to adopt fish culture.
• According to the, Fisheries Department Director, 666 trout fish farmers were associated with the department.
• The main purpose of holding the fair in Manali was to encourage people from across the country and abroad to visit here and enjoy the trout fish.
• Tourists can promote trout fish in their states as well. People of other states can also strengthen their economy by producing trout fish and can spread information about it.