Current Affairs Quiz - November, 2023

Notes:
Indian firm Merlinhawk Aerospace signed a joint venture agreement with Italy’s Vega Composites to establish a manufacturing and design facility in the Tamil Nadu defence corridor.
The strategic joint venture is aimed at tapping the growing market of India while developing design expertise and transferring manufacturing knowhow to India.

Notes:
The board of the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) approved a regulatory framework for Index Providers.
It has objective of fostering transparency and accountability in governance and administration of financial benchmarks in the securities market.

Notes:
The Indian government has announced a phased introduction of blending compressed biogas with natural gas.
Starting at 1% from April 2025, this initiative aims to reach a 5% blend by 2028. India, which is one of the world’s largest importers of oil and gas, ships in about half of its overall gas consumption and wants to cut its imports cost.

Notes:
National Metallurgist Award (NMA) 2022 was awarded by the Union Ministry of Steel.
Five distinguished metallurgists were being conferred with the coveted NMA 2022 in five categories. Dr Kamachi Mudali Uthandi was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Dr Debashish Bhattacharjee was awarded the National Metallurgist Award.

Notes:
Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is a small autonomous helicopter presently operating on the planet Mars. It is part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission.
The Ingenuity helicopter has recently set records for airspeed and flight endurance on the Red Planet. Simultaneously, groundbreaking rotor tests on Earth at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory unveiled advancements for potential use in future Mars helicopters.

Notes:
The Indian government announced compulsory blending of compressed biogas, which is extracted from municipal and agriculture waste, in natural gas to cut reliance on imports.
Initially, 1 per cent of biogas will be blended in gas used in automobiles and household kitchens for cooking from April 2025, a government statement said. The share will be increased to around 5 per cent by 2028.

Notes:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to pay a two-day visit to Dubai this week to attend World Climate Action Summit, which is part of the 28th meeting of the United Nations ‘Conference of the Parties’ on climate, known as COP28.
The global summit on climate change would focus on reducing emissions and supporting developing countries in dealing with extreme weather events.

Notes:
Last financial year, 34 asset management companies (AMCs) have conducted 10,364 programmes covering more than half a million participants.
281 investor awareness programmes (IAPs) were conducted by AMFI covering 84,818 participants. In the previous year, 33 AMCs had conducted 8,426 programmes covering about half a million investors. The mutual fund industry has added 4.7 million new investors over the last one year. SEBI has mandated AMCs to invest two basis points of their assets under management on investor awareness activities.

Notes:
India’s Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs Smriti Zubin Irani launched the Guide on Gender-Inclusive Communication.
It is a collaborative effort by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), the National Gender and Child Centre (NGCC), Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie, along with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and UN Women.

Notes:
IndiGo has launched an AI chatbot, 6Eskai, powered by the GPT-4 technology with an aim to address travellers’ queries in 10 different languages and to offer a platform for booking tickets across the entire network.
Developed in-house by IndiGo’s digital team, in close collaboration with Microsoft, the AI chatbot is capable of booking tickets, applying discounts, booking addons, performing web check-ins, helping in seat selection, planning trips, answering FAQs, and connecting customers with an agent. Moreover, the bot is also capable of understanding verbal instructions using speech-to-text models.