Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2023

Notes:
The 36th Surajkund International Crafts Mela was inaugurated by Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar in Faridabad, Haryana.
For this year, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is the participating international entity while eight northeast states, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura, are the theme states. The artists of these states will come together to showcase their art, handicrafts, and cuisines on a single platform.

Notes:
Google has invested nearly USD 400 million in artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic AI. The two companies announced a partnership that will see the AI start-up use Google’s cloud computing services.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei announced that they would use Google Cloud to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems and to create a robust AI platform.

Notes:
As per the CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) trade database, 28 incidents of Red Sanders confiscation, seizure, and specimen were exported from India.
These consignments were exported to China (53.5%), Hong Kong (25.0%), Singapore (17.8%) and the United States of America (3.5%) from 2016 to 2020. Red Sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus) or red sandalwood, is an endemic tree species with distribution restricted to the Eastern Ghats of India and is found in Andhra Pradesh.

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:
Experts at the 5th International Marine Protected Areas Congress in Canada have recommended the setting up of Marine Protected Areas.
Marine protected areas are regions in the ocean where human activities are regulated by the government. These protected areas are set up to address issues such as pollution, litter, overfishing, and climate change.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated to the nation Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Helicopter Factory at Tumakuru in Karnataka.
The factory is India’s largest helicopter manufacturing facility and will initially produce LUHs. He also unveiled the Light Utility Helicopter (LUH). Initially, this factory will produce around 30 helicopters per year and can be enhanced to 60 and then 90 per year in a phased manner.

Notes:
The ‘zero-draft’ of the pandemic treaty was launched recently by the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB).
The international treaty is expected to be presented at the World Health Assembly in 2024. The aim of the pandemic treaty is to strengthen national and international-level preparedness against future pandemics.

Notes:
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a union of six Arab states namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Indian Government revealed that around half of India’s migrant population works in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Most of the migrants are semi-skilled or unskilled workers, while 20-23% are white-collar professionals such as doctors, engineers, architects, chartered accountants, and bankers.