Current Affairs is the most important area in all competitive exams. But the difficulty level is very high. That’s why; many aspirants get confused, how to select Current Affairs for Preparation of Competitive Examination? In this Post, Daily Current Affairs 28 February 2023, we have tried to cover each and every point and also included all important facts from National/ International news that are useful for upcoming competitive examinations such as UPSC, SSC, Railway, State Govt. etc.
So, here is the Top News of the Day for 28 February 2023 to help you prepare the Latest Current Affairs part. After reading this section, you can successfully attempt Current Affairs Quiz.
Current Affairs for Competitive Exam – 28 February 2023
National Science Day 2023 celebrated on 28th February
National Science Day 2023: Every year on February 28th, National Science Day honours Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, also known as C.V. Raman, an Indian scientist and physician who discovered the “Raman Effect.” Every year, it is celebrated to honour the value of science and to serve as a reminder of the influence it has had on humankind’s way of life. In honour of India’s G20 leadership, the event this year has the theme “Global Science for Global Wellness.”
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Notably: To commemorate the announcement of the discovery of the “Raman Effect,” the Government of India designated February 28 as National Science Day in 1986, under then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Raman was born to a family of Sanskrit scholars in Trichy (present-day Tiruchirapalli) in the Madras Presidency in 1888. At the age of only 16, He received a BA degree from Presidency College in Madras, and was placed first in his class. While studying for his MA degree, at the age of 18, he got published in the Philosophical Magazine: this was the first research paper ever published by Presidency College.
What is the “Raman Effect”?
The Raman Effect is the phenomenon that occurs when a light stream passes through a liquid and a fraction of the light scattered by the liquid is of a different colour. This happens due to the change in the wavelength of light that occurs when a light beam is deflected by molecules.
In general, when light interacts with an object, it can either be reflected, refracted or transmitted. One of the things that scientists look at when light is scattered is if the particle it interacts with is able to change its energy. The Raman Effect occurs when the change in energy of light is influenced by the vibrations of the molecule or material under study, resulting in a change in wavelength.
In their first report to Nature, titled “A New Type of Secondary Radiation,” CV Raman and co-author KS Krishnan wrote that 60 different liquids had been studied, and all showed the same result – a tiny fraction of scattered light had a different colour than the incident light. “It is thus,” Raman said, “a phenomenon whose universal nature has to be recognised.”
The importance of the discovery
CV Raman’s discovery took the world by storm as it had deep implications far beyond Raman’s original intentions. “The character of the scattered radiations enables us to obtain an insight into the ultimate structure of the scattering substance,” Raman said in his Nobel Prize speech in 1930. For quantum theory, in vogue in the scientific world at the time, Raman’s discovery was crucial.
The discovery would also find its use in chemistry, giving birth to a new field known as Raman spectroscopy as a basic analytical tool to conduct nondestructive chemical analysis for both organic and inorganic compounds. With the invention of lasers and the capabilities to concentrate much stronger beams of light, the uses of Raman spectroscopy have only ballooned over time.
Shailesh Pathak named FICCI Secretary General
Shailesh Pathak named FICCI Secretary General: Former bureaucrat Shailesh Pathak has been appointed as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s new Secretary General (FICCI). On March 1, he will assume command. In a career spanning 37 years, Pathak has worked with the government as an IAS officer as well as helmed large companies in the private sector. Following graduation, he earned an MBA from IIM Calcutta in 1986. He has an LLB as well as a Diploma in Ornithology. He has scaled a 6831 metre peak in the Himalayas and has trekked extensively.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Ficci also announced that Arun Chawla, Director General, will superannuate on June 30, 2023, and transition to an advisory role.
About the FICCI:
FICCI, which was founded in 1927, is India’s largest and oldest apex business organisation. Its history is closely interwoven with India’s struggle for independence, its industrialization, and its emergence as one of the most rapidly growing global economies.
A non-government, not-for-profit organisation, FICCI is the voice of India’s business and industry. From influencing policy to encouraging debate, engaging with policy makers and civil society, FICCI articulates the views and concerns of industry. It serves members from the Indian private and public corporate sectors, as well as multinational corporations, drawing strength from diverse regional chambers of commerce and industry across states and reaching out to over 2,50,000 companies.
FICCI provides a platform for networking and consensus building within and across sectors and is the first port of call for Indian industry, policy makers and the international business community.
Pakistan Govt raises policy interest rate by 200 bps for IMF Bailout
Pakistan Govt raises policy interest rate by 200 bps for IMF Bailout: In the midst of a severe economic crisis, Pakistan’s government has decided to raise the policy rate to 19% or 200 basis points, a 2% increase. It is currently at 17 percent.
A new high in Pak’s level of Interest rate:
The increase is based on rates the government set in the auction to raise domestic debt. This will push the interest rate to 19%, just below the previous record of 19.5% set in October 1996.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Part of Pak-IMF Deal:
With the new decision, Pakistan has agreed to another IMF condition for the release of USD 1.1 billion in critical funding as part of the USD 6.5 billion bailout package. Sources in the Ministry of Finance maintained that a technical level discussion had virtually taken place between Islamabad and the IMF review mission. They said that there was expectation that Islamabad would increase the interest rate by two per cent. It was noted said that most of the pre-conditions of the global money lender’s had been fulfilled. It was further learnt that Pakistan had given a detailed briefing to the IMF officials on the sources of foreign exchange till June. Earlier this month, the relevant Pakistani officials and the IMF staff concluded the ninth review of the $6.5 billion bailout package without a staff-level agreement. However, both sides agreed to a set of measures that could still help clinch the deal.
Policy suggestions by IMF to Pak:
The Pakistani authorities had hoped to persuade the IMF to implement the conditions gradually, but their hopes were dashed during the IMF mission’s 10-day visit. Pakistan agreed to implement the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP), which contained policy suggestions by IMF. Officials still hoped that the staff-level agreement could be reached soon. There was broad agreement on allowing market forces to determine the rupee’s value, lifting import restrictions, and allowing already imported goods to be cleared.
Power Sector Crisis In Pak:
Sources said that discussion on some issues of the power sector was in the final stage after which the staff-level agreement with the IMF would be reached.
Also the power tariff was to be increased and new taxes imposed to pave the way for the deal. However, because of a severity of the economic crisis, every agreed measure would be tough on an overwhelming majority of the Pakistani people.
Lionel Messi scores 700th career club goal
Lionel Messi scores 700th career club goal: Lionel Messi scored his 700th career club goal in Paris St. Germain’s 3-0 victory over Marseille. With the goal, Messi became just the second player in history to score 700 career club goals, according to IFFHS (International Federation of Football History and Statistics). Messi’s long-time rival Cristiano Ronaldo is the other player to do so. Meanwhile, Messi’s rival Ronaldo has 709 goals in club competitions, including a hat-trick for Al-Nassr against Damac in the Saudi Pro League.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Messi began his senior club career with FC Barcelona in 2004, playing the first 17 years of his club career with the squad. He scored a whopping 672 goals during his time with Barcelona, averaging roughly 40 goals per season over that stretch. Following the 2020-21 season, Messi joined PSG. The 35-year-old has only scored 28 goals in 62 appearances for the French club. He has, however, spent much of his time with PSG alongside Mbappé and Neymar. Messi wasn’t the only PSG player to reach a significant milestone in Sunday’s win. Mbappé scored the other two goals in the match, giving him 200 goals with PSG.
Meta launches LLaMA model, a research tool more potent than OpenAI’s GPT-3
LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI): Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, announced Meta Platforms’ impending release to researchers of LLaMA, a new large language model (Large Language Model Meta AI). It’s raining chatbots! After OpenAI’s ChatGPT sparked a revolution, Google introduced its BARD and several others followed suit. The model, created by Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team, is meant to help scientists and engineers investigate AI applications and functions such as answering questions and summarising documents.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Notably: LLaMA, a set of foundation language models that range from 7B to 65B parameters. LLaMA-13B surpasses OpenAI’s GPT-3 (175B) while being over ten times smaller, and LLaMA-65B is comparable to DeepMind’s Chinchilla-70B and Google’s PaLM-540B.
The release of LLaMA comes as tech companies race to promote advances in AI techniques and integrate technology into their commercial products. As CNBC notes, Meta’s release differentiates from competitors’ models in that it will be available in a variety of sizes ranging from 7 billion to 65 billion parameters. Meta’s launch of LLaMA may mark a major development in AI language models. The social media giant’s commitment to open science and allowing researchers to study under a non-commercial license will limit the model’s misuse. LLaMA’s versatility and problem-solving potential may provide a glimpse of AI’s substantial potential benefits to billions of people at scale.
Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, Inc. has officially changed its stock market ticker symbol to META from FB. The name change, first announced in October 2021, is effective on 9 June 2022.
Important takeaways for all competitive exams:
- Meta Founded: February 2004;
- Meta CEO: Mark Zuckerberg (Jul 2004–);
- Meta Headquarters: Menlo Park, California, United States.
IOC to set up green hydrogen plants at all refineries
IOC to set up green hydrogen plants at all refineries: India’s top oil firm IOC will set up green hydrogen plants at all its refineries as it pivots a Rs 2-lakh crore green transition plan to achieve net-zero emissions from its operations by 2046, its chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya said.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
More About The Indian Oil Corporation’s (IOC’s) re-modelling of business:
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is re-modeling its business with a greater emphasis on petrochemicals to hedge volatility in the fuel business, while also transforming petrol pumps into energy outlets that offer EV charging points and battery swapping options in addition to conventional fuels to position itself for the future, he said.
India’s Increasing Oil Demand:
The company intends to expand its refining capacity to 106.7 million tonnes per annum from 81.2 million tonnes as it sees India’s oil demand climbing from 5.1 million barrels per day to 7-7.2 million bpd by 2030 and 9 million bpd by 2040.
Significance of IOC’s Hydrogen Push:
Hydrogen — the cleanest known fuel that discharges only oxygen and water when burnt — is being touted as the fuel of the future, but its relatively higher cost then alternate fuel currently limit its usage in industries. Refineries, which turn crude oil into fuel such as petrol and diesel, use hydrogen to lower the sulfur content of diesel fuel.
Currently, this hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels such as natural gas. IOC intends to split water using electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar to produce green hydrogen. Vaidya said the company will set up a 7,000 tonnes per annum green hydrogen producing facility at its Panipat oil refinery at a cost of Rs 2,000 crore by 2025.
IOC currently emits 21.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) per year, the majority of which comes from its refining operations. This will rise to 40.44 MMTCO2e by 2030 after considering the expansions planned and taking the emissions of its subsidiaries into account.
The company plans to use natural gas in refineries in place of liquid fuels as well as replace grey hydrogen (produced from fossil fuel) with green one that is manufactured from renewable power.
It plans for green hydrogen to account for 50 per cent of its overall hydrogen output in 5-10 years and 100 per cent by 2040.
Vaidya also said IOC plans to raise renewable energy capacity to 12 gigawatts from current 256 MW, and would have electric vehicle charging facilities at 10,000 fuel stations in two years.
Nokia updates their logo to mark the beginning of a new era
Nokia updates their logo: Nokia will no longer use the colour blue and will instead use whatever is more fitting given the circumstances, so no specific colour scheme is assigned. Nokia is now a “enterprise technology company,” according to Lundmark, rather than just a maker of smartphones.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Nokia will focus more on selling equipment to other companies while also expanding its telecom equipment business. They include tools for automated manufacturing and private 5G networks, positioning the business as a rival to Microsoft and Amazon in the industry. A “three-phased approach to generate sustainable, profitable growth” is being developed by Nokia. Following the reset phase, Nokia will “continue to accelerate” in order to establish itself as “an unrivalled technology leader.” The announcement on Sunday is consistent with Nokia’s long-term financial objectives, which were reaffirmed with Q4 2022 results.
About Nokia’s New Logo:
In nearly 60 years, Nokia made the first change to the company’s brand identity. The rebranding is part of the Finnish 5G equipment manufacturer’s goal of expanding and “being in businesses where we can see global leadership.” The logo isn’t blue anymore. The word “NOKIA” is now rendered in a variety of colours and five different shapes. “The company’s new logo expresses the principles and mission of Nokia in a vibrant, energetic, and modern way. It was created as a representation of teamwork, which, in Nokia’s opinion, is essential for networks to reach their full potential and achieve improvements in sustainability, productivity, and accessibility.”
What’s Nokia’s plan?
Nokia is focused on four major “enablers” to meet the targets: creating future-ready talent, investing in long-term research, particularly in important areas like 6G, digitising internal operations to increase agility and productivity, and rebranding.
Nearly ten years ago, Nokia stopped manufacturing mobile phones. According to CEO Lundmark, the redesign was done to disassociate the company’s name from its products.
Lt Gen RS Reen takes charges as Director General Quality Assurance
Lt Gen RS Reen takes charges as Director General Quality Assurance: Lt Gen RS Reen was appointed Director General Quality Assurance. Lt Gen Reen is a 1986-batch officer who attended the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun. He had completed his BE (Electrical) from National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, Specialisation in Radio Engineering and post-graduation in Communication Engineering from MC EME, Secunderabad. He was a senior faculty at Defence Institute of Quality Assurance, Bengaluru.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
Reen holds a Six Sigma Black Belt certification from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. He has done certification in Reliability Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur and is Qualified Lead Auditor in Quality Management System & Integrated Management System from Bureau Veritas, Bengaluru.
Previous Posting
He was Controller (Missile System) in Secunderabad and led the Senior Quality Assurance Estt., Brig at Headquarters, Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA). Reen also headed the DQA(L) as Additional Director General (Electronics) at HQ DGQA, New Delhi.
About the Director General Quality Assurance
The DGQA is an inter-service organisation functioning under the Department of Defence Production in the Ministry of Defence. It is responsible for second party quality assurance of all defence stores and equipment, both imported as well as indigenous, for the Indian Army, Indian Navy (excluding Naval Armaments) and common user items for the Indian Air Force procured from private sector and public sector undertakings.
Karnataka plans country’s first marina at Byndoor
Karnataka plans country’s first marina at Byndoor: To promote coastal tourism in Karnataka, the Karnataka government will construct the country’s first Marina, or a boat basin with dockage, at Byndoor in Udupi district. The government will also seek permission from the Centre for the relaxation of coastal regulation zone (CRZ) to take up beach tourism in coastal areas and pilgrim tourism.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
The government will collect and develop the history of tourism in the state by collecting the history of the greatest dynasties such as Ganga, Kadamba, Rashtrakoota, Chalukya, and Hoysala from the Department of Archaeology. This will not only help the development of tourism but also help people understand the rich history of the state.
According to the CM, the government proposed to build a corridor of ancient temples like Madhukeshwara in Banavasi and Dattatreya in Ganagapura and promote ‘Yatra tourism’. Instructions are given to develop the Benakal area. The development of the Anjanadri Betta is on. The government will develop the Benakal area while Anjanadri Hill is under development. There is also a plan to pay recognised tourist guides a monthly honorarium of Rs 5000. Karnataka is blessed with nature’s bounty. It has a 350-km coastal area, 10 different weather zones, 400-km of the Western Ghats, a rich biodiversity with sunshine for 300 days, and several rivers.
Important takeaways for all competitive exams:
- Karnataka Capital: Bengaluru (Executive Branch);
- Karnataka Governor: Thawar Chand Gehlot;
- Karnataka Chief minister: Basavaraj Bommai
MIT professor Hari Balakrishnan wins 2023 Marconi Prize
MIT professor Hari Balakrishnan wins 2023 Marconi Prize: Computer scientist Hari Balakrishnan has been awarded the 2023 Marconi Prize. Dr. Balakrishnan is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The prize, announced annually by the Marconi Society and named after Italian wireless pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, is considered among the world’s topmost honours in the field of information and communication technology.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
He is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Marconi Prize is a top honor for computer scientists and is awarded by the U.S.-based Marconi Foundation. It is given to those who have made a significant contribution to increasing digital inclusivity through advanced information and communications technology.
PM Modi to release 13th installment of Rs 16,800 crore under PM-KISAN
PM Modi to release 13th installment of Rs 16,800 crore under PM-KISAN: Ahead of Holi and rabi harvesting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release the 13th instalment of financial benefits worth Rs 16,800 crore to over eight crore eligible farmers under the flagship PM-KISAN scheme on Monday i.e. February 27, 2023. The highly anticipated release of the PM-KISAN 13th instalment will take place at Belagavi, Karnataka, an official statement said on Sunday.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
PM-KISAN refers to Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi.Under this scheme, eligible farmers are provided with a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year in three equal installments of Rs 2,000 each every four months. The fund is directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.
Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Benefits
Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), eligible farmers are provided with a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000 each every four months. The funds are transferred directly to the beneficiaries bank accounts. The scheme was launched in February 2019, but it went into effect in December 2018.
PM Modi to inaugurate Shivamogga airport in Karnataka
PM Modi to inaugurate Shivamogga airport in Karnataka : Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Shivamogga airport in Karnataka on 27 February 2023. The airport has been built on 663 acres of land with an investment of ₹449.22 crore.
February 2023 Current Affairs Quiz
The prime minister visited Karnataka to initiate several other development projects as well that cost more than Rs 3,600 crore. He said he believed these projects would help develop the state and that these would boost commerce, connectivity, and tourism in the region.
Apart from this, the prime minister has also inaugurated several other development projects in the poll-bound state. The Passenger Terminal Building of the airport can handle 300 passengers per hour. The foundation was laid in June 2020 by former CM B S Yediyurappa.
