current affairs 16 July 2022

India ranked 135th in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022 released by the World Economic Forum.

• The Global Gender Gap Index for 2022 released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Wednesday, and it ranks India at 135 out of 146 countries. In 2021, India was ranked 140 out of 156 countries.
• Iceland retained its place as the world's most gender-equal country, followed by Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden, as per the annual Gender Gap Report 2022 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) released in Geneva.
• The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender parity across four key dimensions or sub-indices — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

NASA unveils first images of the unseen universe with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope.

• NASA has released the next wave of images from James Webb Space Telescope, revealing depths of unseen universe that have paved the way for a new era of astronomy.
• The new images from the James Webb Space reveal details about a stellar nursery, atmosphere of a faraway gas planet, a quintet of galaxies locked in a dance of close encounters and a cloud of gas around a dying star.
• President Joe Biden unveiled this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field.
• NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far.
• The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory.

After Lithuania, Balkan nation Croatia becomes 20th country to adopt Euro as currency.

• European Union (EU) formally approved Croatia's accession to the eurozone, paving the way for the Balkan nation to adopt euro as its currency from January 1, 2023.
• Croatia's switch from the kunas to the euro in 2023 will come less than a decade after the former Yugoslav republic joined the EU.
• One of the adopted legal acts sets the conversion rate between the euro and the Croatian kuna at 7.53450 kunas per €1.
• Lithuania was the last EU member to adopt the euro in 2015, and Bulgaria is the next in line to join the eurozone.
• The Balkan country has stated its willingness to adopt it as of January 1, 2024.

Uttarakhand became the first state in India to start the "Bal Vatika" scheme under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

• Uttarakhand has become the first state in India to initiate the Bal Vatika scheme as part of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
• As a part of this framework, Pre-primary classes in Uttarakhand will now be known as Bal Vatikas.
• Students will be taught the Vedas and the Puranas in Sanskrit, alongside other parts of the curriculum.
• The Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami inaugurated the Bal Vatika Classes at the Directorate of Secondary Education, Nanurkheda.
• The innovative new syllabus for the Bal Vatikas has been prepared by the SCERT and in the present stage the classes will be conducted across five thousand Anganwadi centres in Uttarakhand.

Japanese government decided to honour former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with the country’s highest order posthumously.

• The Japanese government has decided to award former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with the country’s highest order posthumously.
• Abe will receive the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum.
• The longest-serving PM of Japan will be the fourth former prime minister to receive the decoration under the postwar Constitution.