Daily Current Affairs and GK | 27 and 28 October 2024

Topic: Defence

1. Aircraft complex for manufacturing of C-295 military aircraft has been inaugurated by PM Modi.

• PM Modi and his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez jointly inaugurated the TATA Aircraft Complex for the manufacturing of C-295 Military aircraft in Vadodara.
• This is India’s first private sector Final Assembly Line for military aircraft.
• In addition to Tatas, defence PSUs like Bharat Electronics Ltd and Bharat Dynamics Ltd will contribute to this programme.
• Private Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises will also contribute to this programme.
• In October 2022, the foundation stone for the Vadodara Final Assembly Line had been laid by the PM Modi.
• Total 56, C 295 military aircrafts will be produced for India under the projects. 
• Tata Advanced Systems Limited will manufacture 40 in Vadodara.
• Spain-based aviation giant Airbus will directly deliver 16 aircraft.
• The military transport aircraft manufactured at this facility will be capable of carrying 71 troops or 49-50 paratroopers.
• The first of these Made-in-India aircraft will be ready by September 2026. 

Topic: Sports  

2. In Table Tennis, India’s Yashaswini Ghorpade and Krittwika Roy won the women’s doubles title.

• The Indian duo won the title at the WTT Feeder Cagliari 2024 table tennis tournament in Italy.
• They defeated the South Korean pair of Yoo Siwoo and Kim Haeun 3-1 in the final.
• Earlier, the Indian table tennis players defeated the Italian team of Arianna Barani and Maria Picu 3-0 in the first round.
• The team defeated Japan’s Sachi Aoki and Sakura Yokoi in the quarter-finals.
• They secured place in the final with 3-1 win over German Sophia Klee and Franziska Schreiner.

(Source: News on AIR)

Topic: Space and IT

3. Sarvam AI has launched a new language model for 10 Indian languages.

• The latest language model of Sarvam AI was trained with NVIDIA's NeMo framework on the Yotta Shakti Cloud using HGX H100 systems.
• The new AI model called Sarvam-1 supports Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu languages.
• Sarvam 2B launched its first foundational AI model in August 2024.
• This new AI model has been developed with 2 billion parameters. Parameter count is used to indicate the complexity of an AI model.
• Sarvam-1 and Phi-3 Mini AI models fall under the category of small language models (SLMs).
• Sarvam-1 is more efficient in handling Indic language scripts as compared to previous LLMs by using minimal tokens per word.
• Sarvam-1 is more efficient, with inference speeds that are 4-6 times faster than larger models like Gemma-2-9B and Llama-3.1-8B.

Topic: Awards and Prizes

4. Bibhab Kumar Talukdar received ‘The Harry Messel Award’.

• Bibhab Kumar Talukdar of Assam has received ‘The Harry Messel Award for Conservation Leadership by the Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
• He received the award during the ongoing 5th IUCN SSC Leaders’ Meeting in Abu Dhabi.
• 300 conservation experts have participated in the meeting to address the intertwined crises of biodiversity and climate change.
• Talukdar has received the award for his significant contributions to species conservation, particularly through his leadership in the SSC.

Topic: MoUs / Agreements

5. META collaborated with IndiaAI to advance open source AI innovation, research and development.

• On October 25, Meta announced a strategic collaboration with 'IndiaAI' at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to promote open-source AI innovation, R&D, and skills development in India.
• This includes the establishment of the Centre for Generative AI, Srijan at IIT Jodhpur.
• Also, it includes the launch of the 'AI for Skilling and Capacity Building' initiative in partnership with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
• This partnership will enable the development of indigenous AI applications and advance skill development in AI.
• Additionally, it will also boost research capabilities aimed at contributing to India’s AI mission of ensuring technological sovereignty and the vision of India-specific AI solutions.

Topic: Awards and Prizes

6. Sports Ministry discontinued the Dhyan Chand Lifetime Award.

• In an effort to "rationalise" the nation's numerous sporting accolades, the sports ministry stated on October 24 that the discontinuation of the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement from this year onwards and the introduction of the Arjuna Award (Lifetime).
• Arjuna Award (Lifetime) will be given for lifetime contribution towards sports development.
• Dhyan Chand Lifetime Achievement Award was instituted in 2002, named after Hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand.
• This award is given to individuals who have participated in Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games etc.
• Dronacharya Award will be given to recognize the efforts of coaches at the grassroots/development level.
• Additionally, in recognition of the Khelo India Scheme, the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy will be awarded to the University for overall top performance in the Khelo India University Games.
• In 2023, Dhyan Chand Lifetime Achievement Award was given to former shuttler Manjusha Kanwar, former hockey exponent Vinit Kumar and Kabaddi player Kavitha Selvaraj.

Topic: National Appointments

7. Cabinet committee appointed a full-time MD for NAFED for five years.

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has appointed Deepak Agarwal as the regular MD of NAFED for a period of five years.
• ACC is responsible for appointing senior officials to key positions in the Central government, public sector undertakings and autonomous bodies.
• National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED) was established on 2nd October 1958.
• It was set up to promote Cooperative marketing of agricultural produce to benefit the farmers.
• Its headquarters is in Delhi and regional offices are in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.
• NAFED was also part of “Operation Greens” where price stabilization measures were implemented to increase farmers’ income.

Topic: Sports

8. Sharapova and Bryan brothers have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

• Five-time singles Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova and American twins Bob and Mike Bryan have been inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025.
• They will be officially inducted on Aug 23, 2025, in a ceremony at the Hall of Fame in Newport.
• Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach the world number one ranking in 2005.
• She also won a silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
• The Bryan brothers had won 16 Grand Slam men’s doubles titles together and were the world’s top-ranked team for a record 438 weeks.
• The Bryans also won Olympic gold at London 2012 and were part of the U.S. Davis Cup-winning team in 2007.