Daily Current Affairs 16th March 2023: Your guide for daily General Knowledge Preparation
Dear Readers,
This post contains important current affairs of 16th March 2023. It includes all Major National, International, Business and Sports related current affairs of 16th March 2023. A brief explanation of every current affair is provided to further enhance your general knowledge. Once you have gone through these current affairs we would recommend to you to try 16th March 2023 Current affairs test.
Honours & Awards
1. Recognition for RBI’s Shaktikanta Das by Central Banking
- Central Banking magazine honoured Shaktikanta Das, the Reserve Bank of India’s Governor, with the ‘Governor of the Year’ accolade for 2023.
- Reason for Award: His exemplary leadership during challenging times, such as the collapse of a major non-banking entity, the global pandemic, and inflationary pressures resulting from Ukraine’s invasion by Russia.
- Central Banking also recognized the National Bank of Ukraine as the Central Bank of the Year.
- Central Banking is a globally recognized economic research publication.
National & International Appointments
2. Confirmation of Eric Garcetti as US Ambassador to India
- The US Senate has endorsed Eric Garcetti as the forthcoming US Ambassador to India.
- This appointment fills a crucial diplomatic vacancy that persisted for over two years.
- The decision came after a 52-42 vote, which had been under consideration in the US Congress since July 2021.
- Kenneth Juster was the most recent ambassador from the US to India, serving until January 2021.
International News
3. SIPRI Report 2023: India as the Top Arms Importer
- The 2023 report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) announced that India took the top spot as the global leader in arms imports in 2022.
- India maintained its position as the chief arms importer from 2018 to 2022, with Saudi Arabia coming second.
- The report highlighted an 11 percent decline in India’s arms imports between 2013-17 and 2018-22.
- While Russia continued as India’s principal arms provider in these periods, its contribution reduced from 64% to 45%. France took the second spot, followed by the US.
- Globally, the US led in military spending, constituting 40% of worldwide expenditures, with Russia (16%) and France (11%) following suit.
Appointments and Resignation
4. New Leadership Roles at LIC
- The Life Insurance Company (LIC) announced Tablesh Pandey and M. Jagannath as its newest Managing Directors.
- Tablesh Pandey’s tenure begins on 1 April 2023, while M. Jagannath commenced his role on 13 March 2023.
- Both Raj Kumar and BC Patnaik, two of LIC’s managing directors, recently departed from the firm, leaving four managing directors now in place.
- Jagannath previously managed the South Central Zone in Hyderabad, while Tablesh Pandey held an Executive Director position at LIC’s Central office in Mumbai.
About Silicon Valley Bank
- Founded in: 1983 by Roger V Smith
- Current President: Gregory W. Baker
- Based in: Santa Clara, California, USA
Science
5. OpenAI Unveils ‘GPT-4’
- OpenAI, responsible for the development of ChatGPT, has introduced its more sophisticated version named GPT-4.
- GPT-4 surpasses ChatGPT in terms of creativity, precision, and problem-solving capacities.
- OpenAI describes GPT-4 as a “large multimodal model” that, although not surpassing human abilities in real-life scenarios, demonstrates “human-level performance” on various standard measures.
- A unique feature in GPT-4 is its ability to process both textual and visual data, allowing it to respond to images or a mix of text and images. This capability can be employed for tasks like photo captioning or image descriptions and recognition.
- Additionally, GPT-4 can analyze and categorize documents infused with pictures, texts, and diagrams. It supports interactions of up to 25,000 words, facilitating more extended dialogues and content generation.
Significant Dates
6. Celebrating World Consumer Rights Day on March 15
- March 15 marks the global commemoration of World Consumer Rights Day.
- Aim: To accentuate consumer rights and champion consumer protection.
- The day also serves as a platform to call out market malpractices and laud the global consumer movement’s unity.
- The theme for 2023 is “Empowering Consumers Through Clean Energy Transitions”.
- The inception of World Consumer Rights Day can be traced back to March 15, 1962, when US President John F. Kennedy stressed the significance of consumer rights to the US Congress. The day’s official celebration started in 1983, with organizations like Consumer International championing it and initiating related activities.
