Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2023

Notes:
Saudi Arabia was confirmed as the host of football’s 2027 Asian Cup Tournament at the Asian Football Confederation Congress in Bahrain.
Saudi was the only bid presented at the Congress after India’s withdrawal in December 2022. Qatar will host the next edition of the Asian Cup, from June 26 to July 16, 2023. Qatar will become the first country to host three Asian Cups, after 1988 and 2011.

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:
Operation AAHT was conducted recently by Railway Protection Force (RPF) to identify and rescue victims of human trafficking.
As part of this operation, the RPF makes use of its infrastructure and intelligence to gather analyse clues about victims, source, route, destination, popular trains used for human trafficking and other details. It collaborates with the local police to curb human trafficking.

Notes:
The Indian Armed Forces are looking to procure 18 armed Predator MQ 9A drones from the United States.
Of these 18 drones, six will be provided for each of the three armed forces. These unmanned aerial vehicles are capable of flying up to 50,000 feet for a maximum duration of 24 hours. It is capable of carrying air-to-ground missiles to target high-value ground targets or air-to-air missiles.

Notes:
Superbugs are types of germs, like bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites that are not easily killed by antibiotics.
According to a recent report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), superbugs could be a major cause of death in the future. Overuse of antibiotics in animal farming and pollution from pharmaceutical companies can cause these germs to become resistant to antibiotics.

Notes:
‘World Pulses Day’ is observed on February 10 to raise global awareness about the importance of pulses as a stable global food source that delivers nutritional and environmental security across the world.
The theme for World Pulses Day 2023 is ‘Pulses for a Sustainable Future’.

Notes:
India signed a MoU with Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle Joint Business Council (IMT-GT JBC), to promote adoption of energy efficiency.
The MoU was signed during the Working group meeting of G20 on energy transition at Bengaluru. The MoU aims to further promote the adoption of energy efficiency and sustainable practices. Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) signed MoU with IMT-GT JBC coinciding with the India Energy Week celebrations.

Notes:
Myanmar’s military-led government has inaugurated a nuclear power information centre, along with Russia’s state atomic energy company.
This is seen as a step toward developing atomic power to fill energy shortages in the Southeast Asian nation. Myanmar hopes to build and operate a reactor under a preliminary agreement between Myanmar and Russia’s Rosatom that was signed in 2015

Notes:
US Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank recently introduced Wall Street bank stress-test scenarios.
The central bank will examine the ability of the 23 biggest US lenders to withstand crisis conditions without degrading their capital. For the first time, the so-called stress test will feature an ‘exploratory market shock’ to the trading books of the largest and most complex banks.

Notes:
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is the latest innovation in the field of medicine, to treat cancer.
Rather than relying on drugs, like chemotherapy or immunotherapy, the CAR T cell therapy treatments utilise a patient’s own cells that have been altered in a lab to stimulate T-cells and attack tumour cells. Currently, CAR T-cell therapy has received clearance for treating leukemia and lymphoma types of cancer.