About Kumbhalgarh Fort:

• It is located in the Rajsamand district of Rajasthan.
• It is strategically located in the western Aravalli hills.
• Considered to be the second most significant citadel in the Mewar region after Chittorgarh, this majestic fort was constructed in the 15th century AD by Rana Kumbha, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mewar.
• Spanning over 36 kilometers, its walls are second only to the Great Wall of China, earning it the moniker “the Great Wall of India.”
• The fort has also been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the group of Hill Forts of Rajasthan.
• The fort contains seven fortified gateways and ancient temples—both, Hindu and Jain, as well as the Lakhola Tank, the most famous tank within the fort, which was built by Rana Lakha.
• For centuries, Kumbhalgarh Fort served as a refuge for Mewar rulers during times of war.
• It is the birthplace of Mewar’s legendary king, Maharana Pratap. Maharana Pratap led numerous battles against the Mughal Empire, with Kumbhalgarh serving as his sanctuary..
• The fort is surrounded by the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary.

About Loktak Lake:

• It is located in the state of Manipur.
• It is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India.
• The lake is famous for its phumdis.
  • Phumdis are unique, heterogeneous masses of vegetation, soil, and organic matter that float on the water's surface.
  • Only 20% of a phumdis’ thickness floats above the water surface; the other 80% remains submerged.
  • The floating masses are strong enough to support fishing huts, human settlements, and animal habitats.
• The Keibul Lamjao National Park is an integral part of the lake. It is the world's only floating national park.
• The park is best known as the habitat of the endangered sangai deer, also called the brow-antlered deer, which is native to Manipur.
• Rivers like Khuga, Western, Nambul, Imphal, Kongba, Iril, Thoubal, Heirok, and Sekmai drain into this lake.
• It was designated as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1990.
• It features under the Montreux Record in 1993, “a record of Ramsar sites where changes in ecological character have occurred, are occurring, or are likely to occur”.
• It supports hydropower, fisheries, transport, and tourism.

About Kashmir Flycatcher:

• It is a small passerine bird in the flycatcher family Muscicapidae.
• Scientific Name: Ficedula subrubra
• Distribution:
  • It is endemic to the Indian Subcontinent.
  • It makes its home in the northwest Himalayas. It breeds in the Kashmir region.
  • It is a migratory bird.
  • It winters largely in the high altitudes of the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats and in Sri Lanka.
• Conservation Status:
  • IUCN Red List: Vulnerable

About Trachischium lalremsangai:

• It is a new species of burrowing snake.
• It was discovered in Murlen National Park, Mizoram, a biodiversity-rich forest landscape within the Indo–Burma biodiversity hotspot.
• The species was named after Dr. Lalremsanga in recognition of his remarkable contributions to herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians) in India, especially in Northeast India.
• The snake is distinguished by its smooth iridescent scales; brown body with a white-speckled underside; and a unique arrangement of head scales.

Key Facts about Murlen National Park:

• It is located in the Champhai district of Mizoram near the Indo-Myanmar border.
• It lies within the Mizo Hills, part of the Patkai range.
• The climate is subtropical, with heavy rainfall from May to September and mild winters from November to February.
• Vegetation: It has different forest types, namely tropical semi-evergreen, subtropical broadleaved, submontane, bamboo, grassland, and cliff vegetation.
• Flora:
  • It is home to a variety of plant species, including species of medicinal plants and many varieties of orchids.
  • Among others, bamboo brakes, rhododendrons, and unique flowering trees cover vast expanses of the forest.
• Fauna:
  • It harbours mammal species, including the Bengal tiger, leopard, Himalayan black bear, and the endangered hoolock gibbon.
  • Avian life thrives here hosting bird species such as Hume’s pheasant (State bird) and the kalij pheasant.

About Zwan-Wolf Effect:

• It is a process where charged particles are squeezed along magnetic structures, known as flux tubes.
• The Zwan-Wolf effect was discovered in 1976 and has so far only been observed in planetary magnetospheres and not their atmospheres.
• How does it happen?
  • The solar wind is a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the sun.
  • As the solar wind nears the magnetic field of a planet, it becomes compressed near the magnetic boundaries.
  • This creates a difference in pressure, or pressure gradient, that squeezes the charged particles along the magnetic field, away from the stream.
  • As a result, closer to the stream is an area with a lower density of charged particles. This is called the Zwan-Wolf effect.
  • On Earth, this mechanism deflects much of the solar wind and protects us from the Sun’s constant bombardment.

Why are the New Findings Important?

• Unlike Earth, Mars is not protected by a global magnetic field, affecting how it interacts with the solar wind and space weather.
• The Zwan-Wolf effect was observed in the ionosphere — deep within the Martian atmosphere below 200 km — which contains significant numbers of electrically charged particles.
• The data showed that these charged particles were being squeezed and distributed around Mars’ atmosphere.
• It suggests that Mars, despite lacking a global magnetic field, experiences similar interactions with the solar wind, offering valuable insights into the planet's atmospheric dynamics.

Key Facts about MAVEN Spacecraft:

• Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) is the first spacecraft mission dedicated to surveying the upper atmosphere of Mars.
• It is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
• It aims to understand the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate over time.
• It was launched in 2013 and arrived at Mars in 2014.
• It carries three packages of instruments:
  • One package studies the solar wind and its impact on Mars’s ionosphere. (Since Mars has no magnetic field, its atmosphere would be slowly removed by interaction with the solar wind.)
  • The second package is an ultraviolet spectrometer that studies the upper atmosphere.
  • The third package is a mass spectrometer that studies the composition of the upper atmosphere.
• MAVEN found that Mars lost about 2/3 of its early atmosphere to space. 

About International Booker Prize:

• It is awarded annually.
• It was established in 2005 as the Man Booker International Prize.
• It celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
• It recognises the vital work of translators, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between authors and translators.
• In addition, shortlisted authors and translators each receive £2,500.
• This prize aims to encourage more reading of quality fiction from all over the world.

Indian Winners of International Booker Prize

• Geetanjali Shree– Tomb of Sand (2022), translated by Daisy Rockwell. It was first Hindi work to win this prize.
• Banu Mushtaq– Heart Lamp (2025), translated by Deepa Bhasthi  which was the first Kannada work to win this prize.

About Ayush Anudan Portal:

• It is developed by the Ministry of Ayush under the Ayush Grid initiative.
• It is a digital platform to streamline the submission, processing, and monitoring of funding proposals under Central Sector Schemes of the Ministry of Ayush i.e.
  • Ayurgyan, Ayurswasthya, Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants, International Co-operation and Promotion of Information, Education and Communication. 
• The primary objective of this portal is to ensure 100% transparency, efficiency, accountability and easy accessibility in the grant management process.
• The portal can be accessed through the Ministry’s My Ayush Integrated Services Portal (MAISP), which serves as the Ministry’s single-window digital platform.
• Features of the Portal:
  • It has scheme-wise application management system, enabling proposals to be categorised, processed, and monitored according to the specific requirements of different Central Sector Schemes of the Ministry.
  • It also incorporates a real-time application tracking mechanism, allowing applicants and officials to monitor proposal status at every stage of processing.
  • It is integrated with the NGO Darpan Portal.

About Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Launched Precision Guided Missile-V3:

• It is a precision-guided air-to-surface missile launched from drones.
• It has been developed by Research Centre Imarat Hyderabad as the nodal lab along with other DRDO laboratories.
• Features:
  • The ULPGM-V3 is equipped with a high definition dual-channel seeker that can strike a wide variety of targets.
  • It can be fired in plain and high-altitude areas.
  • It has day-and-night capability and two-way data link to support post-launch target/aim-point update.
  • It is equipped with three modular warhead options
    • Anti-armour to destroy modern age armoured vehicles equipped with Rolled Homogeneous Armour (RHA) with Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA); Penetration-cum-Blast warhead with Anti Bunker application and Pre-fragmentation warhead with a high lethality zone.
  • The ULPGM-V3 can be carried and operated by individual soldiers in remote and mountainous regions.
  • Range: It can achieve a maximum range of 4 km during the day and 2.5 km at night.
  • Weight:5 kg which enables integration with lightweight drones.

About Blue Straggler Star:

• Blue Straggler Stars are hot, blue, massive stars seem to have a different trajectory of evolution from the norm.
• These are a class of star observed in old, dense stellar systems such as globular clusters.
• They lie on an extension of the main sequence star and are bluer and brighter than the main-sequence turn-off stars.
• These objects are found in star clusters, dwarf galaxies, and in the field.
• How are they Different?
  • There are a few stars, when they are expected to start expanding in size and cooling down, do just the opposite.
  • They grow brighter and hotter as indicated by their blue colour, thus standing out from the cooler red stars in their vicinity in the colour-magnitude diagram.
  • Since they lag behind their peers in the evolution, they are called stragglers, more specifically, blue stragglers, because of their hot, blue colour.
• Why they Behave Differently?
  • Possibility 1: They do not belong to the family of stars in the cluster, and hence not expected to have the group properties.
  • Possibility 2: The straggler draws matter from the giant companion star and grows more massive, hot and blue, and the red giant to end up as a normal or smaller white dwarf. 
  • Possibility 3: The straggler draws matter from a companion star, but that there is a third star that facilitates this process.

About SHE-MART Initiative:

• SHE-MART (Self Help Entrepreneurs-Marketing Avenues for Rural Transformation) is a Government of India initiative to empower women entrepreneurs by creating community-owned retail outlets within cluster-level federations of self-help groups.
• It is aimed at creating stronger market linkages, improving visibility of local products, strengthening SHG institutions, and enabling women entrepreneurs to expand and scale their businesses.
• Key Features of SHE-MART Initiative:
  • Community-Owned Retail Outlets: Retail outlets owned and managed by local women's groups within cluster-level federations, ensuring community control and ownership.
  • Direct Market Access: Creating structured retail platforms for women entrepreneurs to sell products and access formal markets without intermediaries.
  • Economic Growth: Moving women up the economic value chain from income generation to enterprise ownership, transforming them from earners to business owners.
  • Permanent Infrastructure: Permanent retail points for SHG-made goods with value-added product support, ensuring sustainable business operations.
  • Empowerment: Greater control over markets, branding, and sustainable income generation, empowering women economically and socially.
• SHE Mart will primarily support SHG-made goods including handicrafts, textiles, food products, agricultural produce, and value-added processed products.
• Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Rural Development, implemented under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission.