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
