Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2023

Notes:
Assam launched a clean district ranking drive called MODI (Most Outstanding District Initiative), to boost solid waste management and sanitation.
Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that the most outstanding district will be awarded Rs 100 crore towards infrastructure development and the results will be tentatively declared by the first week of April 2024. The cabinet also approved installation of 2,000 CCTV cameras across the state.

Notes:
During a recent experiment, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectroscope (APXS) on board the Pragyan rover of Chandrayaan-3 detected the presence of sulphur and other minor elements in the lunar South Pole region.
APXS instrument also carries radioactive sources that emit alpha particles and X-rays onto the surface sample.

Notes:
The England Cricket Board (ECB) announced that it will increase the match fees for the England Women’s cricket team to bring them in line with the Men’s cricket team.
England joins the likes of New Zealand, India and South Africa in announcing equal match fees for both men’s and women’s teams.

Notes:
Terry Gou, who founded Apple supplier Foxconn, has announced that he will run as an independent candidate in Taiwan’s presidential election.
The country’s Presidential elections are scheduled to take place in September this year. Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is a major supplier to Apple and has many factories in China that manufacture iPhones.

Notes:
President Droupadi Murmu released the commemorative coin on Late NT Rama Rao on his centenary year at Rashtrapati Bhavan Cultural Centre.
NT Rama Rao, who founded the Telegu Desam Party (TDP), also served as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh for three terms. He initiated many public welfare programs.

Notes:
A team of technology experts of BITS Hyderabad, IIT Mumbai and IIT Kharagpur, has won Asian Development Bank’s grant of USD 3.99 lakh (₹3.32 crore) to develop TUTEM.
TUTEM stands for Technologies for Urban Transit to Enhance Mobility and Safe Accessibility. It aims for safe public transport travel in Hyderabad.

Notes:
Inception, a unit of Abu Dhabi AI company G42, has released ‘Jais’, the world’s most advanced Arabic large language model.
Jais is a bilingual Arabic-English model that has been trained on a massive dataset of text and code. It can be used for a variety of tasks, such as machine translation, text summarization, and question answering. It was trained on the Condor Galaxy, the world’s largest AI supercomputer, using 116 billion Arabic tokens and 279 billion English tokens.

Notes:
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma inaugurated the State’s longest flyover, named Nilachal Flyover after the Nilachal Hills near which it stands.
It measures a total of 2.63 kilometres and starting from Maligaon Chariali to Kamakhya Gate in Guwahati. The flyover was built at a cost of ₹420.75 crore.

Notes:
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured an image of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander. Launched in 2009, the LRO’s primary mission is to create a 3D map of the Moon’s surface from a polar orbit. Equipped with seven science instruments, including a powerful telescope and camera system that can discern details as small as 2.5 meters across, the LRO has played a pivotal role in lunar geology, mineralogy, and environmental studies. It orbits the Moon in an eccentric polar mapping orbit. One of its remarkable instruments is a laser altimeter, which measures reflection times to produce precise 3D maps of the lunar surface. The spacecraft also carries instruments designed to explore dark craters for signs of water ice and a temperature sensor that uncovered the coldest spot in the solar system.

Notes:
Southeast Asian leaders decided that Myanmar won’t take over the rotating leadership of their regional bloc as scheduled in 2026.
The Philippines agreed to take over the regional bloc’s chairmanship in 2026 at an ASEAN summit hosted by Indonesia.