Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2023

Notes:
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) designated the first seven days of February as World Interfaith Harmony Week in 2010.
The idea of World Interfaith Harmony Week was first proposed at the United Nations in 2010 by Jordan’s King Abdullah II. UNGA encourages all countries to voluntarily disseminate the message of interfaith tolerance and goodwill in accordance with their religious traditions.

Notes:
Assam state government has initiated action on child marriage. The state police have so far arrested nearly 2,500 people for marrying minor girls or facilitating such marriages.
Assam Cabinet earlier decided to book men who marry girls aged below 14 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Those who marry girls in the age group of 14-18 years will be tried under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.

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India, France, UAE agreed to establish a formal trilateral cooperation, in fields including energy, defence, economy
The three countries said that they will explore the possibility of working with the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) to pursue actionable projects on clean energy, environment and biodiversity.

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Lucknow will host the first meeting of the G20 Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG). A Digital India Mobile Van has been introduced with respect to the meeting.
The Digital India Mobile Van will tour other cities in the country, enlightening citizens about G20 DEWG and Digital India’s key initiatives including PMJDY, DigiLocker, Aadhaar, UMANG, e-Way Bill, e-Aushadhi, Aarogya Setu, Co-WIN, e-Rupi, and India Stack Global.

Notes:
Reliance Retail has become the first Indian retailer to introduce Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), also known as digital rupee.
The company has piloted the use of Digital Rupee in one store in Mumbai, and is planning to make this facility available in all its stores in Mumbai within the next three to four months, in accordance with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms.

Notes:
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that the US has emerged as India’s top destination for merchandise exports during April-December this fiscal at USD 59.7 billion.
The US was followed by UAE (USD 23.31 billion); Netherlands (USD 14.1 billion); China (USD 11 billion); Singapore and Bangladesh (about USD 9 billion each).

Notes:
Medium-density Amorphous (MDA) Ice is a new form of ice that was recently discovered by scientists. This ice has same density and structure as water.
The ice was created by scientists in a container with stainless steel balls at a -200°C. The MDA ice does not have any ordered structure. It will provide the opportunity to improve the understanding of the properties of water.

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 Black Galaxy or ‘Invisible galaxy’ was recently discovered by researchers in Italy. It was found and characterised using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array.
The Black Galaxy is compact and has a large amount of interstellar dust. It is forming stars at a rate 1,000 times faster than the Milky Way.