Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 24 September 2022

::NATIONAL::

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched its State of the Education Report for India: Artificial Intelligence in Education recently.

Key highlights of the report:

AI market in India is expected to reach US$7.8 billion by 2025 at rate of 20.2%CAGR.
AI literacy is becoming highly relevant in India.
India has the highest relative AI skill penetration rate (3.09 times the globalaverage).
Report focuses on comprehensive and personalized intelligent tutoringsystems (ITS) and today’s education system flaw that one-size-fits-all approach.
ITS addresses this through tracking the learning outcomes and assessingthe competencies of students individually in real time.

Key challenges:

The Supreme Court on September 20 said it will examine whether the excommunication of the Dawoodi Bohra community’s members can be continued.

About:

The DawoodiBohras are members of the Muslim community’s Shia sect.
Their leader is known as the Al-Dai-Al-Mutlaq. For over 400 years, the leader has been based out of India, including the current and the 53rd leader, His Holiness Dr SyednaMufaddal Saifuddin.
Around 1 million members of the community are spread across the world.
The leader of the community is recognised by the members as having the right to excommunicate its members.
In practice, being excommunicated includes not being allowed to access a mosque belonging to the community or a burial dedicated to the community.
Bombay Prevention of Excommunication Act, 1949

Gulf Organisation for Research & Development (GORD), UNFCCC secretariat and UNEPunveiled an online GET to facilitate eco-friendly events.

About:

This platform was first introduced at UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow,Scotland in 2021.
Purpose of GET is to encourage actions to reduce negative impacts of events, including theircarbon footprint, at planning and implementation stages.

It allows for:

Transparent reporting of calculated carbon footprint and actions to address sustainability;
The third-party verification process (optional but encouraged) to receive a sustainability rating;
To recommending use of high-quality carbon credits to compensate for unavoidable GHGemissions.

Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre, an autonomous body under the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, celebrated ‘Sign Language Day’ under Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav in New Delhi.

About:

International Day of Sign Languages (IDSL) is celebrated annually across the world on 23 September.
This year’s theme was “Sign Language Unite Us.”

The Japanese Yen has declined further as the Bank of Japan has stuck with its policy of yield curvecontrol.

About:

Yield control curve (YCC), also referred as interest rate caps, aims to control interest rates along someportion of the yield curve.
It involves targeting a longer-term interest rate by a central bank, then buying or selling as many bonds as necessary to hit that rate target.
Different from Quantitative Easing (QE) and short-term interest rate targets, YCC focuses onbond prices and provides economic stimulus as short-term rates near zero.

A district court in Varanasi allowed a petition seeking carbon dating of the structure inside the Gyanvapi mosque that the Hindu side has claimed is a ‘Shivling’.
The court has issued notices to other parties wanting to know whether they have any objection to carbon dating.

About:

Carbon dating is a widely-used method applied to establish the age of organic material, things that were once living. Living things have carbon in them in various forms.
The dating method makes use of the fact that a particular isotope of carbon called C-14, with an atomic mass of 14, is radioactive, and decays at a rate that is well known.
The most abundant isotope of carbon in the atmosphere is carbon-12 or a carbon atom whose atomic mass is 12. A very small amount of carbon-14 is also present. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the atmosphere is almost static, and is known.