Daily Prelims 9th February 2024

1) Dachigam National Park (DNP): Due to heavy snowfall, Himalayan Black Bears are provided a special diet to aid them during hibernation period at rehabilitation centre of DNP.  

• Located in Jammu and Kashmir and spread in Zabarwan mountain ranges of great Himalayas.  
• Occupies almost half of catchment zone of world famous Dal Lake.  
• Dagwan is the major river in the park  
• Holds the last viable population of Hangul or Kashmir stag (IUCN status: critically endangered) in world.  
• Poaching by Gujjars, Bakarwals is the main cause for Hangul decline.  
• Also, inhabits largest population of Asiatic black bear in Asia. 

2) Safe City Project: UN Women will provide technical assistance to Kerala for the Safe City project and gender data hub.  

• Established in 2010, UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and empowerment of women.  
• Safe City Projects  
• It is an initiative of Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under Nirbhaya Funds Scheme.  
• It aims to create a safe, secure and empowering environment for women in public places.  
• MHA has approved Safe City projects in 8 selected cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Lucknow. 

3) Payment aggregators: Juspay, Zoho, and Decentro have received final authorisation from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for Payment Aggregator (PA) licences.  

• PAs are entities that facilitate e-commerce sites and merchants to accept various payment instruments from the customers without the need for merchants to create a separate payment integration system of their own.  
• In the process, they receive payments from customers, pool and transfer them on to the merchants.  
• PAs are different from Payment Gateways as latter only provide technology infrastructure to facilitate payment transaction without any involvement in fund handling 

4) Kokborok: Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) has allowed both Roman and Bengali scripts for the Kokborok examination in Tripura.  

• It is mother tongue of Borok people who are geographically known as Tripuris.  
• Borok inhabits Tripura and other North-Eastern States along with Uttarakhand.  
• Belonging to Tibeto-Burman family, It is the lingua franca (common language between speakers of different native languages) of most of Tripura’s tribal communities.  
• It is recognized as one of the official state languages of Tripura. 

Places in News: 

1) Iran (Capital: Tehran):  

• Iran announced 15-day visa-free policy for Indian tourists.  
• Political features:  
• Location: Iran is a country in the Middle East or West Asia.  
• Bordering nations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq.  
• Bordering water bodies: Caspian Sea, Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf.  
• Geographical features:  
  • Major mountain ranges: Zagros, Elburz,  
  • Highest Point: Mount Damavand (it is a dormant volcano and also the highest volcano in the Middle East)  
  • Major deserts: Dasht-e-Kavir and Dasht-e- Lut