Today's Current Affairs-3rd October 2022

INTERNATIONAL

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveils prototype humanoid Optimus robot

• Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, unveiled a model of the humanoid “Optimus” robot, which uses some of the same Artificial Intelligence (AI) software and sensors as the Autopilot driving assistance system in Tesla vehicles. At Tesla AI Day 2022, which was held to show off how far the company’s research into autonomous robots and vehicles had progressed, Optimus was unveiled.
• Optimus was initially seen during the event pacing around the stage, along with updates on new self-driving software and a first look at the Dojo hardware that powers Tesla’s AI research, according to media sources.
• Elon Musk claims that this humanoid prototype is capable of more than what was demonstrated in real life.
• But at the Tesla AI Day celebration, it was used for the first time without a tether.

About Tesla:

CEO: Elon Musk (Oct 2008–)

Founded: 1 July 2003, San Carlos, California, United States

Headquarters: Austin, Texas, United States

Founders: Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard, JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, Ian Wright

 NATIONAL

Centre Extends AFSPA In Districts Of Arunachal Pradesh & Nagaland For Six Months

• AFSPA in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh: The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, has been applied to 12 districts in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh for an additional six months, according to the federal government. In order to aid the military forces in carrying out the anti-insurgency operations, it has also been expanded in some areas of five more districts of the two northeastern states.
• The AFSPA will be extended for six months starting in nine districts of Nagaland: Dimapur, Niuland, Chumoukedima, Mon, Kiphire, Noklak, Phek, and Zunheboto.
• The AFSPA will be also extended for six months starting in 16 police station areas in four additional districts: Kohima, Mokokchung, Longleng, and Wokha. This was announced in a notification by the Home Ministry.

About Nagaland:

Founded: 30 November 1963

Capital: Kohima (Executive Branch)

Chief Minister: Neiphiu Rio

Governor: Prof Jagdish Mukhi

About Arunachal Pradesh:

Capital: Itanagar (Executive Branch)

Chief Minister: Pema Khandu

Governor: B. D. Mishra.

25 Per Cent Extra Seats To Be Created For Foreign Students In Universities, HEIs: UGC's New Guidelines 

• UGC Guidelines for International Students: The University Grants Commission (UGC guidelines) said that higher education institutions (HEIs) nationwide would now be able to add up to 25% extra seats for international students and must have a transparent admissions procedure for them. Last month, the draught of “Guidelines for Admission and Supernumerary Seats of International Students in Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes in Higher Educational Institutions in India” was made available to the public for comment.
• Over and beyond their overall sanctioned enrolment for undergraduate and graduate programmes, HEIs may generate up to 25 percent of supernumerary seats for overseas students.
• The choice on additional seats must be made by the relevant higher education institutions in accordance with the detailed directives and laws issued by the regulatory agencies, taking into account the infrastructure, faculty, and other criteria.

About University Grants Commission (UGC):

Founded: 1956

Sector: Higher education

First executive: Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar

Headquarters: New Delhi

Agency executive: D. P. Singh (Chairperson)

 AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Swedish scientist Svante Paabo wins Nobel Prize in medicine

• The Nobel Prizes 2022 for medicine or physiology was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo. Svante Pääbo was given the award “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution,” the Nobel Prize committee. Considered the most prestigious prize in the scientific world, it is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357).
• Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova. Importantly, Pääbo also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections.

About Nobel Prize:

Ceremony date: 10 December 2022

First awarded: 1901; 121 years ago

About Sweden:

Capital: Stockholm

Currency: Swedish krona

Prime Minister : Magdalena Andersson

Dr. Madhav Hada to be awarded 32nd Bihari Puraskar

• Writer Dr Madhav Hada will be awarded the 32nd Bihari Puraskar for his 2015 literary criticism book ‘Pachrang Chola Pahar Sakhi Ri’, the KK Birla Foundation announced. A literary critic and academic, Hada has written extensively on literature, media, culture and history. He has also been a member of the general council of the Sahitya Akademi and the Hindi Advisory Board. He has been a recipient of the Bhartendu Harishchandra Award for Media Studies and the Devraj Upadhyay Award for Literary Criticism.
• Hada’s book ‘Pachrang Chola Pahar Sakhi Ri’ focuses on the life of medieval devotee poet Meera. In his book, Hada explores the processes of Meera’s image formation.

 RANKING

Indore bags cleanest city award for sixth year, M.P ranks first among States

• Indore bagged the title of India’s cleanest city for the sixth time in a row as the results of the Central government’s annual cleanliness survey ‘Swachh Survekshan Awards 2022’ were announced. Madhya Pradesh secured the first position in the category of best performing states, followed by Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
• Surat is the second cleanest city and Navi Mumbai comes a close third in the category of cities with a population of more than a lakh.
• Tripura has bagged the top rank among the states having fewer than 100 urban local bodies.
• In the category of cities having a population of fewer than one lakh, Maharashtra’s Panchgani was ranked number one, followed by Chhattisgarh’s Patan (NP) and Maharashtra’s Karhad.
• As part of Swachh Bharat Diwas celebrations on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, President Droupadi Murmu will confer six awards – Swachh Survekshan Grameen (SSG) 2022, Swachhta Hi Sewa 2022, Sujlam 1.0 & 2.0, Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) Functionality Assessment, Har Ghar Jal certification and Start-up Grand Challenge.

About Madhya Pradesh:

Capital: Bhopal (Executive Branch)

Chief Minister: Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Governor: Mangubhai C. Pate

Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra topped destinations for foreign tourists 2021

• As per a report by Union Tourism Ministry, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had the highest numbers of foreign tourist visits, with 1.26 million and 1.23 million, respectively in 2021. The over 280-page report titled ‘India Tourism Statistics 2022’ was released by Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on World Tourism Day at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. India received 677.63 million domestic tourist visits in 2021, an increase of 11.05 per cent from 610.22 million in 2020, the report said.
• The report said due to restrictions related to COVID-19, “the number of foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) in India during 2021 decreased to 1.52 million as compared to 2.74 million in 2020, registering a negative growth of 44.5 per cent”.
• The total number of foreign visitors for 2021-22 was 3,18,673, declining 23.4 per cent on year from 4,15,859 in 2020-21, according to the data.
• Sharing data about the footfall at various sites under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the report said the Taj Mahal was the most popular centrally-protected ticketed monument for domestic visitors in 2021-22, while the Group of Monuments at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu was the most visited centrally-protected ticketed monument for foreign visitors during the same period.

About Tamil Nadu:

Governor: R. N. Ravi

Capital: Chennai

Chief Minister: M. K. Stalin

About Maharashtra :

Governor: Bhagat Singh Koshyari

Chief Minister: Eknath Shinde

Capital: Mumbai

 BANKING AND ECONOMY

Pegatron to boost Apple iPhone production in India

• With the opening of a factory in Mahindra World City in Chennai, Taiwan’s Pegatron became the third Apple supplier to establish a production facility in India. It will put about Rs 1,100 crore into the facility, which might lead to the creation of 14,000 employment. The other two Apple suppliers with facilities in India are the Taiwanese companies Foxconn and Wistron.
• The opening of Pegatron’s factory coincides with Apple’s anticipated relocation of at least a quarter of its manufacturing operations to India by 2025.
• Hosur, Coimbatore, and Sriperumbudur will be transformed into centres for the production of electronics by Tamil Nadu.
• 20% of the nation’s electronics are produced with help from the state. Among the state’s main investments are Samsung, Foxconn, Tata Electronics, and Dell. Stalin claimed that the government was improving the supply chain.

About Pegatron:

CEO: Liao Syh-jang (1 Jul 2016–)

Headquarters: Taipei City, Taipei, Taiwan

Founded: 1 January 2008

New rules for debit, credit cards begin with tokenisation

• The rules and regulations for online payments for debit and credit cards have been changed. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) card-on-file (CoF) tokenization norms came into effect on 1st October 2022. RBI’s CoF tokenization aims to improve the payment experience of cardholders.
• The new rule released by RBI says that neither businesses nor payment aggregators can save customer card details on their platforms. The card details can only be saved by card networks or issuing banks.
• Tokenisation has replaced sensitive card information including card number, and card expiry with cryptographically-generated random strings.
• Once the card is Tokenised, the generated card token can be used for processing payments as a substitute for card details. The Tokenised card eliminates the risk of loss of sensitive card information.

About Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI):

Founded: 1 April 1935, Kolkata

Founder: British Raj

Governor: Shaktikanta Das

Core infra sector growth hits 9-month low in August

• The output of eight core infrastructure sectors grew 3.3 per cent in August the lowest in nine months as against 12.2 per cent in the year-ago period, according to official data released. The previous low was in November 2021 at 3.2 per cent. It stood at 4.5 per cent in July.
• The production growth of eight infrastructure sectors — coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertiliser, steel, cement and electricity — was 9.8 per cent during April-August this fiscal, compared to 19.4 per cent a year ago. Crude oil and natural gas production contracted by 3.3 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively, during the month under review.
• In August, the fertiliser output rose by 11.9 per cent against a contraction of 3.1 per cent in the same month last year. The growth rates for coal, refinery products, steel, cement and electricity slowed to 7.6 per cent, 7 per cent, 2.2 per cent, 1.8 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively. Production of coal (weight: 10.33%) grew by 7.6% in August 2022 compared to August 2021. In comparison to the same time in 2022–2023, its cumulative index rose by 22.7% from April until August in FY23. Production of crude oil (weight: 8.98%) fell by 3.3% YoY in August 2022, and its cumulative index fell by 1.1% from April to August 2022–2023 compared to the same period in the previous year.