The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India was linked to Singapore's PayNow payments system on February 21 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong. Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, and Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, led the launch of this cross-border connectivity on Tuesday. The linkage of two real-time payment systems will enable faster and cost-efficient transfer of money. It will help residents of both countries to send cross-border remittances more quickly and cheaply. It is e
Amazon has said that its self-driving vehicle unit, Zoox, successfully carried passengers on a public road in its fully autonomous vehicle on public roads for the first time. On February 14, the electric vehicle, which does not have a steering wheel, ran a mile-long route carrying employees between Zoox’s two main buildings in Foster City, California. The company said that its employees are test-riding the taxi on California public roads. It now plans to operate a shuttle for employees on the same trip, while it seeks additional clearances to expand its service to the public. Amazon s
Japan-based global data centre and telecommunications company NTT has outlined plans to invest Rs 2,000 crore in a hyperscale data centre in Kolkata over the next few years, said Shekhar Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, NTT Global Data Centers & Cloud Infrastructure India and NTT Communications India on February 13. This investment is part of the ongoing $2.5 billion total investment plan of the company in India announced about two years ago. NTT Limited shared plans to build three data centres in Kolkata with a cumulative capacity of 25MW IT load; the first building will be on ground
Saudi Arabia will send its first ever woman astronaut on a space mission later this year. Rayyana Barnawi will join fellow Saudi male astronaut Ali Al-Qarni on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) during the second quarter of 2023, the official Saudi Press Agency said on February 12. The astronauts will join the crew of the AX-2 space mission and the space flight will launch from the USA, the agency added. With the launch, Saudi Arabia will become the second Arab country after its neighbour the United Arab Emirates to send its citizens into space. In 2019, Emirati astronau
The research agency of US Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said on February 13 that a modified F-16 fighter jet had completed an Artificial Intelligence-controlled test flight for the first time in history. The F-16 was modified and upgraded to an all-new configuration that came to be known as the X-62A Variable In-flight Simulation Test Aircraft or VISTA. It was reportedly flown by an artificial intelligence for 17 hours. In early December 2022, Alternating Conditional Expectations (ACE) algorithm developers uploaded their AI software into a spec
The United States Air Force's newest fifth-generation fighters F-35A Lightning II and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made a debut at Aero India 2023 on February 13-17. Arguably the world’s most advanced fifth-generation fighters, the aircraft arrived at Yelahanka Air Force Station in Bengaluru after their respective journeys from Utah and Alaska air force bases in the USA. Sending a wave of excitement through the crowds at the exposition, the fighter jets were a sight for selfie-clicking. The planes will conduct daily aerial demonstrations at Aero India 2023, a five-day marquee event. “T
The Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has announced that air taxis will start operating in Dubai by 2026. The UAE premier also approved the designs of four aerial taxi "vertiports", one of which will be located near Dubai International Airport. The air taxi fare would be initially high but could be in the range of an Uber eventually, media reports stated. Sheikh Mohammed made the announcement on Twitter, where he revealed that he had approved designs for air taxi stations at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week. A video with the t
Chinese scientists have cloned three “super cows” that are able to produce 18,000 litres of milk per year and over 100,000 litres of milk in their lifetimes. The accomplishment may help reduce China’s dependency on imported dairy cows, say experts. For cloning, the scientists from the Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology took somatic cells from the ears of highly productive Dutch Holstein Frisian cattle and placed them in surrogate cows, read a news release from the university. This technique of somatic cell nuclear transfer was the same used to cr
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune is working on India’s first indigenous family of microprocessors. C-DAC’s roadmap for processors is aimed at helping the country become self-reliant in microprocessors development using indigenous design. C-DAC has made significant progress in the development of the VEGA series of dual-core and quad-core microprocessors, and two designs are ready for fabrication, said Director General Magesh Ethirajan. The first one is a 32-bit embedded processor which could be used in smart energy meters, smart water and gas meters, Intern
Astronomers have observed 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing its total number of confirmed moons to 92. The king of the planets, Jupiter is the largest one in our solar system and now also the one with the most known moons. The discovery was made during observations by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and his team. The team used technologies like the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in September 2021 and the Dark Energy Camera located on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in August 2022. The Dark Energy Camera