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DAILY DOSE 29^th FEB -2024 CURRENT AFFAIRS

History: 29^th February

1504 – Christopher Columbus predicted eclipse
Today, February 29, 2024, we are celebrating Leap Day, which is a rare and special occasion that occurs only once every four years. During this day, an extra day is added to the year, making it 366 days long instead of the usual 365.
Leap Day came about as a result of the Julian calendar, which was used way back in 46 BCE.

Adani Group has inaugurated South Asia’s largest ammunition and missile complex in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh spanning 500 acres.
This facility is poised to become one of the region’s most extensive integrated ammunition manufacturing complexes, producing high-quality small, medium, and large-caliber ammunition for the armed forces, paramilitary forces, and police.
The complex has commenced production of small-caliber ammunition, with an initial batch of 150 million rounds, which accounts for approximately 25% of India’s annual requirement.
This unveiling coincides with the 5th anniversary of the Balakot airstrike, also known as ‘Operation Bandar,’ a landmark operation by the Indian Air Force that showcased India’s strategic assertiveness in countering external threats.

The Indian government has amended the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022 and allowed married couples to use an egg or sperm of a donor in case one of the partners is suffering from a medical condition.

Recent Amended Provisions:

It allows surrogacy with donor gametes if either spouse in the intending couple is certified by the District Medical Board to require donor gametes due to a medical condition.
This implies that couples still cannot opt for surrogacy if both partners have medical issues.
For divorced or widowed women opting for surrogacy, it mandates the use of the woman’s own eggs alongside donor sperm.

Major Provisions of the Amended Surrogacy Rules:

The March 2023 amended rules only permitted the use of the intending couple’s own gametes, barring couples with specific medical conditions from having biological children through surrogacy.
These restrictions caused distress and challenged the right to parenthood for affected couples.

The Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs announced the first Pey Jal Survekshan Awards.
Pey Jal Survekshan Awards consists of various categories;
Pey Jal Gold, Silver, and Bronze City Awards, where Gold signifies top performers in their respective population categories (1 to 10 Lakh, 10 to 40 Lakh, and More than 40 Lakh),
Silver denotes the 2nd position, and Bronze the 3rd.
The awards extend to commendations for Best Water Body, Sustainability Champion, Reuse Champion, Water Quality, City Saturation, and AMRUT 2.0 Rotating Trophy of the Year.

Google DeepMind has just introduced Genie, a new model that can generate interactive video games from just a text or image prompt
Genie AI Model is a foundation world model that is trained on videos sourced from the Internet.
The model can “generate an endless variety of playable (action-controllable) worlds from synthetic images, photographs, and even sketches.”
It is the first generative interactive environment that has been trained in an unsupervised manner from unlabelled internet videos.
When it comes to size, Genie stands at 11B parameters and consists of a spatiotemporal video tokenizer, an autoregressive dynamics model, and a simple and scalable latent action model.

At the 37th African Union Summit member countries took the initiative of forming Africa Club.
Africa Club is the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions which are African-owned and controlled is launched at the African Union summit.
The initiative aims to amplify Africa’s influence in the global financial system by aligning its functions with the SDGs and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
It seeks to introduce innovative financial instruments, provide a venue for debt management discussions and foster collaborative efforts to address the specific needs of African countries.

African Union:

The AU is an intergovernmental organization consisting of the 55 member states that make up the countries of the African Continent.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started its largest military exercise in Europe, the Steadfast Defender 2024, recently.
Steadfast Defender 2024 is NATO’s most extensive military exercise since the Cold War era.
It involves 90,000 forces from 31 member countries and NATO partner Sweden and is conducted across various NATO nations.
The exercise will feature an impressive array of military hardware, including over 50 naval vessels ranging from aircraft carriers to destroyers, and a formidable air contingent of more than 80 units comprising fighter jets, helicopters, and drones.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Ajay Manikrao Khanwilkar was recently appointed as the chairperson of Lokpal.
Lokpal statutory body established under the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act 2013.
Mandate to inquire into allegations of corruption against certain public functionaries and for related matters.
The Lokpal will consist of a chairperson and a maximum of eight members.
The Chairperson should be either the former Chief Justice of India, or a former Judge of the Supreme Court, or an eminent person who fulfils the eligibility criteria as specified.
Out of the maximum eight members, half will be judicial members.
The judicial member of the Lokpal should be either a former Judge of the Supreme Court or a former Chief Justice of a High Court.
A minimum of fifty per cent of the Members will be from SC / ST / OBC / Minorities and women.

8) PM Modi announces 4 astronauts for Gaganyaan:

The astronauts are undergoing training for the country’s maiden human space flight mission.
The four astronauts are – Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla.
The Gaganyaan Mission is India’s first human space flight program.

9) Reliance Launches “Vantara,” a National Initiative for Animal Welfare:

Reliance Industries and Reliance Foundation have launched a bold initiative, Vantara (Star of the Forest), dedicated to the rescue, treatment, care, and rehabilitation of animals in need.

Garuda Aerospace highlights Precision Farming with Kisan Drone at Krishi Darshan Expo.
Krishi Darshan Expo 2024 hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, served as a comprehensive platform for showcasing the latest agricultural technologies and innovations.
Precision farming also known as precision agriculture (PA), is a farming management strategy that leverages information technology to enhance agricultural production sustainability.