Notes:
The Union Budget 2023-24 has allocated Rs. 2,516 crore for the computerization of 63,000 PACS over the next 5 years.
Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) are village-level cooperative credit societies that act as the last link to the 3-tier cooperative credit structure, which is headed by the State Cooperative Bank or SCB. Credit from the SCB is transferred to the district central cooperative banks (DCCBs), which will then transfer the credit to the PACS.

Notes:
US President Joe Biden recently delivered the State of the Union (SOTU) Address at the Joint Session of the Parliament in the US Capitol in Washington DC.
This is Biden’s second SOTU address. According to the country’s Constitution, the US President is required to deliver the state of the Union to Congress and recommend measures that he judges to be necessary and beneficial.

Notes:
Bard is an AI chatbot that is being developed by Google as a competitor for the popular Microsoft-backed ChatGPT.
Bard will use AI to generate answers in text when queries are typed by the users. This chatbot will function based on the AI model called LaMDA, which was introduced by Google in 2021 as a generative language model for dialogue applications.

Notes:
The Trade Receivable Discounting System (TReDS) is an electronic platform that facilitates the financing or discounting, trading and settling invoices of the MSMEs.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to expand the scope of the TReDS to allow the use of insurance facilities. This will facilitate secondary market operations on the TReDS.

Notes:
The Eagle 44 (Oghab 44) is the first underground air force base of Iran. It is capable of housing fighter jets equipped with cruise missiles.
The unveiling of the Oghab 44 is seen as a display of Iran’s aerial military strength in response to a joint drill conducted by the US and Israel. It will host jets and drones equipped with long-range cruise missiles to destroy adversary targets in case of attack.