Current Affairs Quiz - September, 2023

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced to enhance transaction limits for small value digital payments in offline mode to ₹500 from the earlier cap of ₹200.
These can be made using any channel or instruments such as cards, wallets, mobile devices in face-to-face mode only. Although the upper limit of an offline payment transaction shall be ₹500, the total limit on a payment instrument will be ₹2,000 at any point in time.

Notes:
The Valkyrie, a next-generation drone, is a prototype, has been introduced by the United States military force.
It will serve as a supplement to the fleet of traditional fighter jets. The robot is powered into flight by a rocket engine and it can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range.

Notes:
As 42 per cent workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme still not eligible for Aadhaar-based payment system (ABPS), the deadline for enabling Aadhaar-based payment for MGNREGA workers was extended till December 31
Earlier, the deadline was September 1 and this is the fifth extension by the Centre. This was announced by the Ministry of Rural Development.

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:
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has reconstituted two of its groups of ministers (GoMs) tasked with identifying necessary System Reforms to curb evasion and analysing the revenue trends from the 6-year-old indirect tax regime.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar is back at the helm of the GoM on GST System Reforms, replacing his colleague Devendra Fadnavis.

Notes:
Air pollution is reducing the life span of people living in South Asia by 5.1 years, according to a new report. The region accounts for more than half of the total life years lost globally due to high pollution.
In India, on average, poor air quality takes 5.3 years off the life of a person, while cardiovascular diseases decrease the average Indian’s life expectancy by around 4.5 years.

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:
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) launched the “Adopt a Heritage 2.0” programme under which corporates are invited to fund amenities at monuments from their corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds.
The aim of “Adopt a Heritage 2.0” programme is to enhance the visitor experience at centrally protected monuments, improve amenities, and bolster the culture and heritage value of the country.

Notes:
Australia will send a delegation of industry, government, academic, media and arts representatives to Beijing for a dialogue with their Chinese counterparts next week to stabilise its relationship with China, as per Australia’s Foreign Ministry.
Trade, investment, people-to-people links as well as regional and international security are among the issues up for discussion in the next talks. The high-level dialogue had been held annually from 2014 until it was stopped in 2020.

Notes:
Bhubaneswar and Guwahati will host India’s opening two home matches in the FIFA World Cup 2026 and AFC Asian Cup 2027 Preliminary Joint Qualification Round 2, the All India Football Federation announced.
India have been drawn in Group A of the Asian qualifiers, alongside Qatar, Kuwait, and the winners of the Preliminary Joint Qualification Round 1 fixture between Afghanistan and Mongolia.