About Shinkun La Tunnel:

• It is an upcoming motorable tunnelunder the 16,580 feet high Shinku-La pass betweenHimachal’s Lahaul valley and Ladakh’s Zanskar valley. 
• It is located on the Nimu-Padam-Darcha Road link.
• The length of the tunnel will be 4.1 km.
• After completion, the Shinku-la tunnel will be the longest high altitude highway tunnel in the world.
• The Border Roads Organization (BRO) will construct the tunnel at a cost of Rs. 1,681.5 crores.
• It will provide all-weather road connectivity to Ladakh, and this will be the shortest route to the border areas of Ladakh.
• It is expected to streamline the transportationof heavy machinery to strategic locationssuch as Kargil, Siachen, and the Line of Control (LOC), reducing travel distances by approximately 100 km.
• The traffic movement in the tunnel will not be vulnerable to long-range artillery shelling or missile firings, either by China or Pakistan.

Key Facts about Border Roads Organisation (BRO):

• It is a road construction executive force in India that provides support to the Indian Armed Forces.
• Establishment: It was formed on 7 May, 1960, to secure India's borders and develop infrastructure in remote areas of the north and north-east states of the country.
• It developsand maintains road networks in India's border areas and friendly neighboring countries.
• This includes infrastructure operations in 19 states and three union territories (including Andaman and Nicobar Islands) and neighboring countries such as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Tajikistan, and Sri Lanka.
• Officers and personnel from the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF) form the parent cadre of the BRO.
• It is also staffed by officers and troops drawn from the Indian Army's Corps of Engineers on extra regimental employment (on deputation).
• BRO is also included in the Order of Battle of the Armed Forces, ensuring their support at any time.
• Motto of the organization: Shramena Sarvam Sadhyam (everything is achievable through hardwork).

Q1: What is the Line of Control (LOC)?

LoC is a geographical line lying between India and Pakistan’s controlled parts of the former (under the British) Jammu and Kashmir and controlled by the army. This line is not actually a legally recognized international boundary but prevails as per de facto. After the Simla Agreement signed in July 1972, this line was officially renamed as "Line of Control" from “the Cease-fire Line”.

Source: BRO to complete 2 roads near China border, start work on world’s highest tunnel

About Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO): 

• It is the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) of India for the medical devices industryunder the provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
• It is responsible for overseeing the import, manufacture, sale, and distributionof medical device in the country. The CDSCO ensures that medical devices comply with safety, quality, and efficacy standards.
• It works under the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India.
• The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) is the head of the CDSCO.
• Headquarters: New Delhi.
• Under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, CDSCO is responsible for,
  • Approval of new drugs;
  • Conduct of clinical trials;
  • Laying down the standards for drugs;
  • Control over the quality of imported drugs in the country;
  • Coordinationof the activities of State Drug Control Organizations;
• CDSCO, along with state regulators, is jointly responsible for the grant of licenses for certain specialized categories of critical Drugs such as blood and blood products, I. V. Fluids, Vaccine, and Sera.
• The CDSCO conducts inspections and audits to ensure that medical device companies are complying with regulations related to safety, quality, and efficacy.

Q1: What is the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940?

Drugs and Cosmetics Act regulates the import, manufacture, and sale or distribution of drugs and cosmetics through licences and permits. Its main objective is to ensure that the drugs and cosmetics marketed in India are reliable, efficient, and in compliance with national standards. The associated Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, which were formulated in association with the 1940 Act, provide provisions for classifying medications into schedules and instructions for the storage, sale, presentation, and prescription of each schedule.

Source: Centre takes away state powers for issuing NOC for export of drugs

About Glyptothorax punyabratai:

• The species was collected from Tung Stream, a tributary of the Tissa River, in the Brahmaputra River basin.
• It is a new catfish species.

Key Facts about Catfish

• Catfish represent one of the largest groups of freshwater fishes, with more than 2000 species.
• Most catfish are found in freshwater but a few are marine.
• Most species of catfish are nocturnal.
• Catfish are primarily benthic or bottom-dwellers.
• Features:
  • Most catfish have a cylindrical body with a flattened ventral to allow for benthic feeding.
  • Catfish are so-named because of the long barbels, or feelers, which are present about the mouth of the fish and resemble cat whiskers.
  • Most catfish possess leading spines in their dorsal and pectoral fins. 
  • Catfish are scaleless, a characteristic of catfishes distinguishing them from others.

Q1: What are Invertebrates?

Invertebrates are characterized by their lack of a backbone or vertebral column. Instead, they have other structural features that support and protect their bodies. Invertebrates comprise a vast array of animal groups, including insects, spiders, crustaceans, mollusks etc

Source: New Catfish Species Discovered in Arunachal Pradesh by ICAR-NBFGR

About Pyrenees Mountains:

• The Pyrenees are a chain of mountains in southwestern Europe that form a natural border between Spain and France. 
• It is a fold mountain chain created by the continental collision of the microcontinent of Iberia with the massive Eurasian plate.
• They are quite old mountains incomparison to the Alps.
• It extends for about 500 kmfrom the coasts of the Mediterranean Seain the east to the Bay of Biscay (Atlantic Ocean) in the west.
• At the eastern end, it is six miles wide and 80 miles wide at the center. 
• Politically, it is divided into the Spanish and French Pyrenees. The tiny country of Andorra is found sandwiched between them, in the eastern part of the Pyrenees Mountains.
• It separates the rest of continental Europe from the Iberian Peninsula.
• The western end of the Pyrenees Mountains merges with the Cantabrian Mountains, located in the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Located in Spain, Aneto Peak, is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees Mountains (3,404 m).

Q1: Which countries border the Mediterranean Sea?

22 countries and one territory (Gibraltar - a British Overseas Territory) have coasts on the Mediterranean Sea. The European Countries are Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece. The West Asian (Middle Eastern) countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea are Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestine Gaza Strip and the divided island of Cyprus. Five North African nations have coasts on the Mediterranean Sea: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Source: Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron's Personal Diplomacy in the French Pyrenees

About LockBit Ransomware: 

• It is malicious software designed to block user access to computer systems in exchange for a ransom payment.
• It was formerly known as “ABCD” ransomware, but it has since grown into a unique threat within the scope of extortion tools.
• It is a subclass of ransomware known as a ‘crypto virus’ due to forming its ransom requests around financial payment in exchange for decryption.
• It focuses mostly on enterprises and government organizations rather than individuals.
• It functions as ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). It is now working to create encryptors targeting Macs for the first time.
• Working
  • It works as a self-spreading malware, not requiring additional instructions once it has successfully infiltrated a single device with access to an organisational intranet.
  • It is also known to hide executable encryption files by disguising them in the . PNG format, thereby avoiding detection by system defences.
  • Attackers use phishing tactics and other social engineering methods to impersonate trusted personnel or authorities to lure victims into sharing credentials.
  • Once it has gained access, the ransomware prepares the system to release its encryption payload across as many devices as possible.
  • It then disables security programs and other infrastructures that could permit system data recovery.

Q1: What is Encryption?

Encryption is a way of scrambling data so that only authorized parties can understand the information. In technical terms, it is the process of converting human-readable plaintext to incomprehensible text, also known as ciphertext.

Source: U.S. announces $10 million bounty for alleged LockBit ransomware creator

About Spektr-RG(SRG):

• Spektr-Rentgen-Gamma (Spektr-RG, SRG) is a German-Russian high-energy astrophysics space observatory to study the universe in the X-ray range of electromagnetic radiation.
• It was launched on July 13, 2019, on a Proton-M rocket from the cosmo drome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. 
• It moves along a so-called halo orbit around the outer Lagrange point (L2) of the Sun-Earth system at a distance of 1.5 million km from the Earth with a period of about 6 months.
  • A Lagrange point is a position in space where the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.
• Instruments:
  • The primary instrument of the mission is eROSITA, built by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany.
• It is designed to conduct a seven-year X-ray survey, the first in the medium X-ray band less than 10 keV energies, and the first to map an estimated 100,000 galaxy clusters.
• This survey may detect new clusters of galaxies and active galactic nuclei.
  • The second instrument, ART-XC, is a Russian high-energy X-ray telescope capable of detecting supermassive black holes.

It is intended to replace the Spektr-R, known as the “Russian Hubble”. Spektr-R was launched in 2011 to observe black holes, neutron stars, and magnetic fields, aiding understanding of cosmic expansion.

Q1: What are Pulsars?

Pulsars are rotating neutron stars observed to have pulses of radiation at very regular intervals that typically range from milliseconds to seconds. Pulsars have very strong magnetic fields, which funnel jets of particles out along the two magnetic poles. These accelerated particles produce very powerful beams of light. Often, the magnetic field is not aligned with the spin axis, so those beams of particles and light are swept around as the star rotates. When the beam crosses our line of sight, we see a pulse; in other words, we see pulsars turn on and off as the beam sweeps over Earth.

Source: New accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar discovered

About Arecanut: 

• The arecanut palm is the source of common chewing nut, popularly known as betel nut or supari. 
• It is one of the important commercial crops grown in India.
• Required climatic condition
  • The cultivation of arecanut is mostly confined to 28º north and south of the equator. 
  • Temperature: It grows well within the temperature range of 14ºC and 36ºC.
  • Soil: The largest area under the crop is found in gravelly laterite soils of red clay type. It can also be grown on fertile clay loam soils. Sticky clay, sandy, alluvial, brackish and calcareous soils are not suitable for arecanut cultivation.
  • Rain: It can be grown in areas receiving annual rainfall of 750 mm.
  • Altitude: It can be cultivated upto an altitude of 1000 m from mean sea level.
• India is the largest producer of arecanut and at the same time largest consumer also.

Major states cultivating this crop are Karnataka (40%), Kerala (25%), Assam (20%), Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya and West Bengal.

Q1: What is Loam soil?

It is a type of soil that is a mixture of sand, silt, and clay. Loam soil holds nutrients and has a texture that retains water long enough for plant roots to access it.

Source: Tirthahalli areca emerges best variety among nuts grown in Karnataka