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• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has revealed in a reply to an RTI that the printing of Rs 2,000 currency notes has been stopped. Not a single Rs 2,000 note has been printed this financial year.
• The RBI printed 3,542.991 million notes in the financial year 2016-17, which came down to 111.507 million notes in 2017-18 and was further reduced to 46.690 million notes in the year 2018-19. The high circulation of Rs 2,000 notes might defeat the government's objectives as it is easier to smuggle the high-denomination notes.

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• Air India became the first airline in the world to use a Taxibot on a A320 aircraft with passengers on-board.
• Taxibot is a robot-used aircraft tractor for taxiing an aircraft from parking bay to runway and vice versa.

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• Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, his wife Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Banerjee, 58, was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 1988.
• He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to his profile on the MIT website. In 2003, Banerjee founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), along with Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and he remains one of the lab’s directors.
• He also served on the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

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• As part of India’s strategy to combat climate change, Indian Railways will become "net zero" carbon emitter by 2030, said railways and commerce minister Piyush Goyal. India is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China, and is among countries most vulnerable to climate change.
• Meanwhile, the national carrier has a rail network of around 125,000km, making it the world’s largest railway network under a single management. It also has large tracts of land along its network, which will be used to set up solar power generation capacities.
• This assumes significance given that with a requirement of about 12 billion units of electricity a year, Indian Railways’ power consumption has been growing at an average 5% a year.
• The railways plans to source 10% of its electricity needs through renewable energy sources by 2020.

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• Mastercard, along with cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, announced the launch of a nationwide initiative to accelerate the acceptance and adoption of digital payments.
• Titled ‘Team Cashless India’, the initiative brings consumers and merchants to the forefront of the digital payments dialogue.
• The campaign encourages all Indians to nominate one or more merchants who currently do not accept digital payments.
• Mastercard will work together with Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), acquirer banks and fintech companies to support nominated merchants to deploy digital payments acceptance infrastructure.

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• The Indian Air Force will be carrying out a joint military exercise 'Shinyuu Maitri' with Japanese Air Self Defence Force (JASDF) from 17 to 23 October.
• The exercise will be held at Air Force Station, Arjan Singh in Panagarh town in West Bengal. The focus of the exercise will be to undertake Joint Mobility and Tactical interoperability among the two forces.
• The exercise will be held at Air Force Station, Arjan Singh in Panagarh town in West Bengal.

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• Indian Army now has the precision-guided Excalibur artillery ammunition, built by the United States of America's Raytheon, in its inventory which gives the force the ability to annihilate the enemy at a much greater range with extreme accuracy.
• The revelation was made at the Army commanders conference where it was also announced that the indigenous Dhanush 155mm/45 Calibre towed artillery gun system, also called desi Bofors, is now a part of the force.
• Excalibur artillery ammunition, capable of hitting targets even in densely populated areas 50 kilometres away with an error margin of less than 2 metres, has been procured by the India Army under fast track procedures.

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• Indian Air Force (IAF) and Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) started participating in a bilateral joint exercise named Ex-Eastern Bridge-V.
• The joint exercise will be held at Air Force Base Masirah in Oman. Earlier in 2017, the exercise Ex-Eastern Bridge-IV was held at Jamnagar, India.
• Indian Air Force and Royal Air Force of Oman will also promote the exchange of experience, operational knowledge and professional interaction during the participation in a joint exercise.

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• Shri J.P.S. Chawla assumed charge as the new Controller General of Accounts, Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure.
• Prior to assuming the charge of CGA, Shri Chawla served as Principal Chief Controller of Accounts, Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC) where he was instrumental in the finalisation of the accounting procedure and operationalisation of GST Network (GSTN) before the national rollout of GST.
• He also played a key role in the integration of the IGST refund payment network of CBIC with the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) as part of the Government of India’s decision to digitise all Government receipts and payments through the PFMS portal of the Office of Controller General of Accounts.

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• In a first, a serving district and sessions judge was appointed as the Union Law Secretary.
• Anoop Kumar Mendiratta has been appointed as the new Law Secretary (Secretary, Legal Affairs) in the Union Law Ministry, according to a Personnel Ministry order.
• Mendiratta is at present the District and Sessions Judge, North-East District, Karkardooma Courts, Delhi. He has been appointed to the post on contractual basis till March 30, 2023, i.e. till his attaining the age of 60 years.

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• Senior IPS officer of Gujarat cadre Anup Kumar Singh has been appointed as director general of the National Security Guard (NSG).
• The appoint of Singh, a 1985-batch IPS officer, as the DG of the 'black cats commando' force was approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
• The NSG was raised as the federal contingency force to counter terrorists and hijack-like incidents in 1984. The commandos of the force are based in five hubs across the country, apart from their main garrison in Gurgaon's Manesar. They also render personal security to some of the most high-profile VVIPs.

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• India's first visually-impaired IAS officer Pranjal Patil has taken charge as Thiruvananthapuram sub-collector. This is her second assignment since her appointment into service in 2018.
• Pranjal was received by the office staff and district collector K Gopalakrishnan at his office in the state capital. Pranjal lost her vision at the age of 6.
• In 2016, she secured 773rd rank in the UPSC exam. Though she was eligible for various posts under IRS, she was not appointed because of her visual impairment. Pranjal gave a second attempt in 2017 in which she secured 124th rank, easily qualifying for IAS.

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• International Rural Women's Day is observed on 15 October every year across the globe.
• This year’s theme for International Day of Rural Women 2019 is ‘building resilience to face the climate crisis.’
• The objective of this theme is to highlight the important role that rural women and girls play in building resilience against climate change. Another aim of this day is to remember that the world’s sustainable future is not possible without rural women and girls.

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• World Students’ Day is celebrated on 15 October which is the birth anniversary of the Missile Man of India Dr. Abdul Kalam.
• He was the 11th President of India (2002-2007). Being a politician, he was a scientist and a teacher.
• He played a crucial role in the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998 and so, he earned the title 'Missile Man of India'. On 27 July 2015, he suffered a cardiac arrest while delivering a lecture to the students of IIM Shillong.

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• Since 1981, World Food Day has been held every year on 16 October.
• The theme of World Food Day 2019 is “Our Actions Are Our Future. Healthy Diets for A #ZeroHunger World".
• It focuses on tackling global hunger.