Current Affairs Quiz - December, 2023

Notes:
People celebrated the 554th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith. The Sikh community mark Guru Nanak’s Prakash Utsav with various rituals, including Asa di vaar, ardas, Nagar kirtan, Akhand Paath Sahib, langar, and cultural programs.
The festival includes worshipers singing hymns in procession during the pre-dawn hour. Pakistan issues 3000 visas to Sikh pilgrims to celebrate birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.

Notes:
Pakistan and the UAE have inked several agreements under which the Gulf nation is likely to invest between USD 20-25 billion in the cash-strapped nation, according to a media report.
The caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar’s meeting with the UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was held in Abu Dhabi. Pakistan is battling an acute balance of payments crisis and falling foreign exchange reserves.

Notes:
Karnataka government on signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with tech firm Meta to launch two initiatives aimed at raising awareness among students and educators about online safety and digital citizenship.
The state government plans to train 1 lakh teachers and 10 lakh students in digital safety and AR/VR skills by 2025 through this partnership with Meta.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the Terms of Reference for the Sixteenth Finance Commission.
The 16th Finance Commission’s recommendations, upon the acceptance by the government, would cover the period of five years commencing April 1, 2026. Article 280(1) of the Constitutions lays down that the modalities for setting up of a Finance Commission. The Fifteenth Finance Commission was constituted in 2017, whose recommendations are valid up to the financial year 2025-26.

Notes:
French ambassador to India honoured Lalithambika, former director, Directorate of the Human Spaceflight Programme of ISRO with Legion d’Honneur.
Lalithambika has worked extensively on various ISRO rockets, especially PSLV. Lalithambika is the second ISRO scientist after former ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar to be awarded the Legion d’Honneur of France for promoting Indo-French space cooperation.

Notes:
The common term used for tactics like false scarcity claims, confirm-shaming, forced bundling, and subscription traps in online transactions, which were recently addressed by the Indian government, is “dark patterns.” Government of India has notified guidelines banning online platforms from deploying deceptive designs or ‘dark patterns’ tricking users into certain choices benefitting the company. Any commercial entity systematically offering goods or services in India must refrain from such practices numbered in the rules. With e-commerce expanding, curbs became imperative as exploitative mechanisms undermine consumer autonomy and fair competition. Companies could face penalties for violations. As digital adoption rises, informed consent and transparency in interface flows matter. Hence regulations aim safeguarding web-use.

Notes:
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft recently discovered that an asteroid named Dinkinesh, which it flew past last month, has a tiny “contact binary” moon – two space rocks gently rested against each other. The International Astronomical Union approved the name “Selam” for this moon, meaning “peace” in Ethiopia’s language.
The names Dinkinesh and Selam refer to two famous hominid fossils discovered in Ethiopia. Dinkinesh is the Ethiopian name for the 3.18 million-year-old Lucy fossil that the Lucy mission is named after. Selam was a 3-year-old girl’s fossil found in 2000 in Dikika, belonging to the same species as Lucy and dating over 100,000 years earlier than her.

Notes:
Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has clarified that Brazil is seeking OPEC+ membership to convince member nations to move away from fossil fuels, not to cap its own oil output. Lula said Brazil aims to persuade major oil producers to invest profits into renewable energy development assistance for poorer regions like Africa and Latin America instead.
Brazil seeks a leadership role in rallying OPEC+ oil economies to finance global south’s green transition through proceeds earned from essentially the last fossil fuel boom before inevitable decline. Joining the 23-member group controlling 40% of world’s oil reserves aligns with Lula’s climate justice advocacy, with rainforests protection another priority. Hence Brazil is eyeing OPEC+ as platform for climate action cooperation.

Notes:
Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar recently inaugurated the 5th edition of Global Ayurveda Festival in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. The Global Ayurveda Festival (GAF) 2023 with the theme ‘Emerging Challenges in Healthcare and a Resurgent Ayurveda’ was held from 1 – 5 December.
The conclave witnessed the participation of Kerala Governor, Chief Minister of Kerala, Union Ayush Minister, Union Minister of Animal Husbandry Parshottam Rupala, President of the Republic of Mauritius, Minister of State for Indigenous Medicine of Sri Lanka, among others.

Notes:
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has enabled two-factor authentication for all e-waybill and e-invoice systems to further enhance the security of the goods and services tax systems.
The feature was enabled on December 1 and was rolled out on Monday. Currently the pilot rollout has been done for a state of Haryana and after seamless operation of the same in the state, it is being rolled out for Punjab, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Delhi taxpayers in the first phase. In the second phase, it will be rolled out across the country.