Daily Current Affairs Quiz: August 17, 2023

ANSWER: D

ANSWER: A

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: B

• A-HELP is an initiative of the Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying and the Ministry of Rural Development.
• Aim– To empower women by engaging them as trained agents who contribute significantly to disease control, artificial insemination under Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM), animal tagging, and livestock insurance.
• These women assist veterinarians in local departmental activities, help livestock farmers to take loans for entrepreneurship development, fill out applications, register animals in the Information Network For Animal Productivity and Health (INAPH) portal and help with insurance etc.
• Members of women self-help groups registered under the State Rural Livelihood Mission, who are helping in the form of Pashu Sakhi, will be trained as A-HELP.

ANSWER: B

• A team of engineers and researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) is currently developing a humanoid robot called “Pibot” that can fly aircraft without needing to modify the cockpit.
• “Pibot,” can control its arms and fingers to dextrously operate the flight instruments, even with severe vibration in an aircraft, using high-precision control technology.
• Its external cameras allow Pibot to monitor the current state of the aircraft and the internal ones help it manage essential switches on the control panel.
• Pibot is able to memorise complex manuals presented in natural language.
• Its memory is so large that it can memorise all of the Jeppesen aeronautical navigation charts around the world, which is impossible for human pilots, according to the KAIST team.
• It can memorise aircraft operation and emergency manuals and respond immediately.
• It can also communicate with air traffic controllers and humans in the cockpit using voice synthesis.

ANSWER: D

• Navroz- translated to ‘a new day’ – is the time to welcome the new year for Parsi community.
• Also known as Nowruz or Persian New Year, the first day of Zoroastrian calendar Farvardin is observed all over the world on March 21 around the time of vernal equinox as the triumph of spring over darkness.
• The Parsi community in India celebrates Navroz nearly 200 days after the rest of the world as it follows the Shahenshahi calendar.
• Nowruz for India falls in July or August and Parsi New Year 2023 was observed on August 16^th.
• Navroz is believed to be 3000 years old festival and emerged from one of world’s oldest religions Zoroastrianism.
• Parsi New Year is also related to the life of Jamshid, a Persian king of mythology.
• On this day, Parsis in India clean their homes, decorate it, wear new clothes, pray to God for happiness and prosperity and invite friends over for a good time and hearty meal.
• Navroz in India is mainly celebrated in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.

ANSWER: C

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the development of a pilot Public Tech Platform for ‘frictionless credit’ by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH).
• The Public Tech Platform would enable delivery of frictionless credit by facilitating a seamless flow of required digital information to lenders.

WHAT IS FRICTIONLESS CREDIT?

• Under digitalization, the digital credit delivery landscape is characterised by a multitude of data points required for credit assessment, distributed among different entities such as central and state governments, banks, credit information agencies, digital identity authorities, and more.
• This impedes the seamless and timely dispensation of rule-based lending processes.
• Frictionless credit means to streamline digital credit delivery by creating an open architecture using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to integrate various financial stakeholders, enhancing efficiency and innovation.

ABOUT RBIH

• It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBI.
• RBIH aims to create an ecosystem that focuses on promoting access to financial services and products for the low-income population in the country.

ANSWER: A

• Odisha government has withdrawn controversial ‘deemed forest’ order in which district officials were told that ‘deemed forests’ as a category would cease to exist under the recently amended Forest Conservation Amendment Act 2023.
• Deemed forest is land which appears to be a forest but is not notified as forest land by the Centre or the state government.
• The concept came into existence following a Supreme Court order in the TN Godavarman case in 1996, which directed the state government to record such land.

ANSWER: C

• To strengthen India’s energy security and realize the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat by reducing the reliance on imported coal, the Ministry of Coal is actively working on development of the National Coal Logistic Plan, which includes First Mile Connectivity (FMC) through railway siding near coal mines.
• First Mile Connectivity eliminates road transportation of coal in mining areas by using conveyors or roads to the nearest railway siding.
• A comprehensive tally of 67 First Mile Connectivity (FMC) Projects with a combined capacity of 885 million metric tons, are being progressively pursued in three phases to achieve a mechanized coal handling capacity of approximately 1 billion metric tons.
• Benefits- By transporting coal through a conveyor belt or road to the nearest railway siding, FMC reduces the number of trucks on the road and the associated environmental impacts such as air pollution, traffic congestion, and road damage, leading to a cleaner and healthier environment.

ANSWER: B

• Indian products accounts for 35% of total cargo handled by Russia’s Arctic Murmansk port in the first half of 2023.
• Murmansk is located about 2,000 km northwest of Moscow.
• It is located on the Kola peninsula at Barents Sea coast.
• It is the main northern gateway of Russia and a transshipment hub.

ANSWER: D

• Five heliports would be constructed in Hamirpur district at a cost of Rs 12 crore to promote tourism and provide a fast mode of travelling to tourists.