Daily Current Affairs Analysis Today : 10 – feb-2023 for ssc UPSC & Bank exams
MoD signs contract with L&T for procurement of 41 indigenous Modular Bridges
The Ministry of Defence signed a contract with Larsen and Toubro for the procurement of 41 indigenous Modular Bridges worth over two thousand 585 crore rupees for the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army.
These game-changing bridges have been designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation, DRDO and will be produced by Larsen and Toubro L&T company as a DRDO-nominated production agency.
Key Points:
Each set of modular bridge shall consist of seven carrier vehicles based on 8×8 Heavy Mobility Vehicles (HMV) and two launcher vehicles based on 10×10 Heavy Mobility Vehicles. Each set shall be capable of mechanically launching a single span fully decked 46-meter assault bridge.
The bridge can be employed over various types of obstacles like canals and ditches with quick launching and retrieval capabilities. The equipment is highly mobile, versatile, rugged and capable of keeping pace with wheeled and tracked mechanized vehicles.
The modular bridges will replace the manually-launched Medium Girder Bridges (MGB) that are currently being used in the Army. The indigenously designed and manufactured modular bridges shall have many advantages over the MGB such as increased span, less time for construction and mechanical launching with retrieval capability.
The procurement of these bridges will give a major boost to the bridging capability of the Army on the western front. The project will showcase India’s progress in designing and developing world class military equipment and pave the way for enhancing defence exports to friendly countries.
The Ministry of Defence signed a contract for the procurement of Modular Bridges with L&T at an estimated cost of over___. ₹2,585 crore
Tech Mahindra to open its 1st data, AI & cloud centre in Saudi
Tech Mahindra has signed an MoU with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to set up a data, AI, and cloud centre of excellence (CoE) in Riyadh.
The CoE will combine academic and socio-economic goals to build national hi-tech talent capacity, create high-quality jobs, promote digital innovation, and upscale small and medium enterprises.
This partnership is in line with Tech Mahindra’s DigitALL philosophy for comprehensive Business Transformation.
The MoU was signed between Ibrahem N Al-Nasser, Deputy Minister for Technology of MCIT, and Ram Ramachandran, Head-Middle East & Africa, Tech Mahindra.
The data & AI and cloud CoE will enable accelerated and sustainable adoption of data analytics and ethical AI. It will further drive cloud-enabled transformation across industries to develop local assets, intellectual property (IP) and promote a cognitive approach across smart services to contribute to Saudi Vision 2030’s digital-led transformation objectives.
The partnership will provide training and development for 2,500 Saudi nationals by providing project deployment programs that enhance skills and develop careers in Data & AI and Cloud.
Tech Mahindra:
Founded: 24 October 1986
Founder: Anand Mahindra
Headquarters: Pune, Maharashtra, India
Chairman: Anand Mahindra
MD & CEO: C.P. Gurnani
Which IT major has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia to set up a data, AI, and cloud centre of excellence (CoE) in Riyadh? Tech Mahindra
LeBron James becomes NBA’s all-time leading scorer
LeBron James became the all-time leading scorer in the National Basketball Association (NBA), surpassing a record held by the great Kareem Abdul Jabbar since 1984.
He pushed his career total to 38,388 points and broke the record that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar held for nearly four decades.
He has won four NBA titles, competing in a total of 10 NBA finals.
He has a career average of 27.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.3 assists, having played 1409 games over a 20-year-long career that started in 2003.
This season, aged 38, LeBron has defied age and expectations, averaging 30/8.5/7.1 for the Los Angeles Lakers.
But while Abdul-Jabbar took 1,560 games to record his total, James set his record in just over 1,400 appearances.
Michael Jordan has the most points per game in NBA history with 30.1. James is fifth on that list with 27.1, just behind another active player, Kevin Durant (27.3).
National Basketball Association (NBA) legend LeBron James recently broke whose record to become the highest point scorer in the league? Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Edelweiss General Insurance rebranded itself as Zuno General Insurance
Edelweiss General Insurance has rebranded itself as Zuno General Insurance Limited (Zuno GI), which is a new age digital insurer with an aspiration to reimagine and redefine Insurance to make it easy, friendly, and transparent.
According to company management, the name brings alive the company’s passion, enthusiasm, and singular focus on providing customers with the most convenient and hassle-free experience powered by tech that’s responsive and intuitive.
The name and identity represents the young, innovative, approachable, digital native and upbeat personality of the brand and resonates with the Millennial and GenZ audience.
The company has also launched a consumer study titled ‘Usage Based Insurance: Decoding Awareness, Perception and Behaviour’. The study was done to understand Millennial and GenZ’s awareness, understanding and consideration for UBI.
Zuno General Insurance has been fore fronting the concept of usage-based insurance (UBI) in India for almost three years now. Zuno General Insurance conducted the survey in eight cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Ahmedabad, in collaboration with Crownit.
Which insurance company has recently rebranded itself as Zuno General Insurance Limited (Zuno GI)? Edelweiss General Insurance
Croatia’s Legendary Football Coach Miroslav Blazevic Dies At 87
Croatia’s famed football coach Miroslav Blazevic, who led the country to a third place finish at the 1998 World Cup, passed away. He was 87.
Blazevic was born in Travnik in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1935 and his coaching career started in the 1960s in Switzerland.
In the next 40 years, he led national teams of Switzerland, Croatia, Iran, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and China’s U-23 side, as well as several clubs including Dinamo Zagreb, Grasshopper Zurich and Shanghai Shenhua.
From 1994 to 2000, Blazevic coached the national team and racked up a number of impressive wins.
In 1998, as the manager of the Croatian national team, Blazevic won the bronze medal at the World Cup in France.
Croatia:
Capital: Zagreb
President: Zoran Milanović
Prime Minister: Andrej Plenković
Currency: Euro
Miroslav Blazevic, who passed away recently, was associated with which sport? Football
Airtel partners Vultr to offer cloud solutions to Indian enterprises
Bharti Airtel has entered a strategic partnership with Vultr, world’s largest privately-held cloud computing company, to deliver cloud solutions to enterprises in India.
Airtel will offer Vultr’s extensive suite of cloud solutions to its enterprise customers, especially those in the digital space and help them gain unrivaled global reach and cost-performance advantage to build, test, and run demanding cloud workloads, the service provider said.
The services will also include cloud compute and optimised cloud compute, as well as ground-breaking cloud GPU and fractionalized GPU offerings for advanced workloads tied to AI, machine learning, HPC, analytics, visual computing, and gaming use cases.
The cloud solutions will be hosted in Airtel’s data centers across Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, enabling businesses to scale their digital operations globally. Businesses of all sizes and across industries can now leverage the latest cloud technologies to accelerate digital innovation, optimize global cloud performance, and maximize return on global cloud spend. The partnership would offer simple and transparent pricing to avoid billing shocks but did not reveal as to what that would be.
The telecom major had previously partnered with Tech Mahindra to deploy captive private network at the automobile maker’s Chakan facility, making it the first 5G enabled auto manufacturing unit in India.
Airtel:
Founded: 7 July 1995
Founder Sunil Mittal
Headquarters: Nelson Mandela Road, New Delhi, India
Chairman: Sunil Mittal
MD & CEO: Gopal Vittal
QR Code-based Coin Vending Machine to be launched: RBI
Shaktikanta Das, the governor of the RBI, announced that a pilot programme to introduce coin vending machines that use QR codes will begin shortly.
In response to the outcome of the monetary policy for the year 2023, the Central Bank Governor announced that the RBI will introduce a coin vending machine that uses a QR code to improve accessibility to coins.
The pilot project is planned to be initially rolled out at 19 locations in 12 cities across the country. These vending machines are intended to be installed at public places such as railway stations, shopping malls, marketplaces to enhance ease and accessibility.
Based on the learnings from the pilot tests, guidelines would be issued to banks to promote better distribution of coins using QCVMs.
Importance:
These vending machines will dispense coins against a debit to the customer’s account using UPI instead of physical tendering of banknotes. This will enhance the ease of accessibility to coins.
This will be beneficial, particularly for tier 2 and higher cities where there is less banking presence.
According to the RBI document, the QR Code-Based Vending Machine will do away with the necessity for actual tendering of banknotes and their authentication.
This is in contrast to traditional cash-based coin vending machines. Customers will also be able to withdraw coins from QCVMs in the necessary quantities and denominations.
As per recent announcement by the Reserve Bank of India, QCVM will eliminate the need for physical tendering of banknotes and their authentication. What is the full form of QCVM? QR Code based Coin Vending Machine
Reserve Bank of India to expand scope of TReDS for better cashflow to MSMEs
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is planning to expand the scope and acceptability of Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) among stakeholders.
It is now proposed to expand scope of TReDS by providing insurance facility for invoice financing, permitting all entities and institutions undertaking factoring business to participate as financiers in TReDS and permitting rediscounting of invoices,” Das said.
The central bank’s decision is expected to boost trade of receivables increasing cash flows to MSMEs.
According to experts wider participation by more entities can keep the receivable discounting pricing under check as the volume on these platforms increases. Also, flexibility to allow re-discounting by existing holders of such discounted receivables will aid liquidity of participants.
Insurance coverage for the discounted receivables can also enhance the volumes and further reduce the pricing of such insured receivables, however the appetite of insurance companies to issue such coverage remains to be seen.
The expansion of the scope of TREDs platform serves to enhance the formalization of the lending eco-system for MSMEs.
Secondary market operations will allow financiers to offload their portfolio to other financiers, which would further enhance liquidity on the TREDs platform and, ultimately, for MSMEs.
Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) Platform:
TReDS is an electronic platform for facilitating the financing / discounting of trade receivables of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through multiple financiers. These receivables can be due from corporates and other buyers, including Government Departments and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs).
TReDS is a payment system authorised under the Payment and Settlement Systems (PSS) Act, 2007. It is a platform for uploading, accepting, discounting, trading and settling invoices / bills of MSMEs and facilitating both receivables as well as payables factoring (reverse factoring). MSME sellers, corporate and other buyers, including Government Departments and PSUs, and financiers (banks, NBFC-Factors and other financial institutions, as permitted) are direct participants in the TReDS and all transactions processed under this system are ‘”without recourse” to MSMEs.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) proposed to increase the scope of which platform by giving the benefit of insurance facility for payment against bills? TReDS
NTPC bagged ‘ATD Best Awards 2023’
The country’s largest power generating company, NTPC Limited has been honoured with ‘ATD Best Awards 2023’ by the Association for Talent Development (ATD), USA.
This is the sixth time that NTPC Limited has won this award for demonstrating enterprise success in the field of talent development.
The foundation of NTPC’s culture has always been to engage employees through creative techniques. The award is testimony to NTPC’s contemporary HR practices.
The ATD Best Awards recognises organisations that demonstrate enterprise through talent development. NTPC has been successful in creating an ecosystem, which empowers employees to enhance their skill sets. The award includes small and large private, public, and not-for-profit organizations from across the globe. The Association for Talent Development, USA is the world’s largest association in the field of talent development and ATD’s BEST AWARD is most coveted recognition in Learning and Development.
NTPC:
The NTPC which was earlier known as National Thermal Power Corporation of India is owned by the Government of India. It was set up in 1975.
The Vindhyachal Thermal Power Station in the Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh, with an installed capacity of 4,760MW, is currently the biggest thermal power plant in India.
It is a coal-based power plant owned and operated by NTPC.
The total installed commercial capacity of the company was 69454 MW before the JPL deal.
Headquarters: New Delhi;
Chairman and Managing Director: Gurdeep Singh
Name the India’s largest power generating company, which has been honoured with ‘ATD Best Awards 2023’? NTPC Limited
Travellers to India from G20 nations can use UPI for merchant payments: RBI
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) intends to provide travellers to India access to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to make merchant payments while they are in the country.
To begin with, this facility will be extended to travellers from the Group of Twenty nations, arriving at select international airports. This facility will soon be enabled across other entry points.
UPI has become a ubiquitous payment instrument as regards retail digital payments.
Allowing access to travellers will not only add to the volume of transactions on UPI but also make it easier for tourists to make payments and reduce their dependence on cash.
UPI transactions touched a record high of 8.03 billion transactions in January, adding up to Rs 12.98 trillion.
In Calendar 2022, the UPI processed over 74 billion transactions at Rs 125.94 trillion, reveals NPCI. In 2021, the platform processed over 38 billion transactions, worth Rs 71.54 trillion.
Unified Payment Interface:
UPI is that financial system through which instant payment can be made. With the help of UPI, two parties can transfer money to each other on a mobile platform. Financial transactions can also be done between two parties, person to person or person to merchant. To link a bank account to any UPI, it is necessary that your bank has UPI facility and having a UPI application on your phone makes the task even easier.
G20 members: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, European Union
Chairman (Incumbent): Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
Formation: 26 September 1999
Purpose: Bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy
Initially, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is going to start providing this UPI facility at select international airports for travelers coming from which countries? G-20
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