• Chilean ex-President Sebastián Piñera, who served two terms and was also a billionaire businessman, has died in a helicopter crash at the age of 74.
• Three other people aboard the aircraft survived when it came down in a lake near the southern town of Lago Ranco.
• National mourning has been declared and tributes have poured in.
• Piñera came to power in 2010, the first conservative politician to be elected president after the end of military rule 20 years earlier.

• The Tomtom Traffic Index 2023 was released by company called TomTom, which specialises in location technology.
• The report looked at 387 cities in 55 countries, measuring how traffic affected travel time, fuel costs, and carbon emissions using data from over 600 million car navigation systems.
• It showed that London had the slowest traffic in 2023.
• Two cities in India, Bengaluru and Pune, were among the ten worst for traffic in 2023, according to the TomTom report.
• Bengaluru was in 6th place, taking an average of 28 minutes and 10 seconds for a 10-kilometre journey, and Pune was in 7th place, taking 27 minutes and 50 seconds.
• Bengaluru, known as the IT capital of India, was also named the second most congested city in 2023, with Dublin, Ireland being the only city worse.

• Super 30 founder Anand Kumar has joined the elite list of Indian celebrities who have been granted the ‘Golden Visa’ by the United Arab Emirates government.
• Kumar was nominated for the Golden Visa by the UAE Embassy in India.
• The coveted Golden Visa, introduced by the UAE in 2019, grants long-term residency, permitting independent living, working, and studying.
• Individuals in the fields of science, knowledge, culture, and art are granted the Golden Visa.
• Kumar getting the coveted visa represents a noteworthy inclusion from the academic sector, traditionally dominated by Bollywood and sports icons.
• Kumar, a Mathematics educator, started his Super 30 programme in Patna in 2002, known for coaching underprivileged students for JEE-Main & JEE-Advanced, the entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
• He was named in Time magazine’s list of Best of Asia 2010.

In 2023, he was awarded the Padma Shri, fourth highest civilian award by the Government of India.

• In the face of severe protests from different student organizations, civil societies and political parties, the Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) has allowed both Roman and Bengali scripts as the script of choice for writing answer scripts of Kokborok paper in the board examinations.

ABOUT KOKBOROK LANGUAGE

• Kokborok is the lingua franca of most of Tripura’s 19 tribal communities.
• It is an oral language like most indigenous languages of the region.
• Kokborok was first recognised as an official state language of Tripura in 1979.
• It belongs to Tibeto-Burman family.
• Tripura’s primary Opposition TIPRA Motha party has been demanding the Roman script to be declared as the official script for the indigenous language and as one of the scripts allowed for board exams.

• N. Women will work closely with the Kerala State’s gender parks and provide technical assistance for the Safe City project and gender data hub.

ABOUT SAFE CITY PROJECT

• The Safe City project aims to create a safe, secure and empowering environment for women in public places, to enable them to pursue all opportunities without the threat of gender-based violence and/or harassment.
• It, further, aims to prevent and curb all forms of crimes against women and girl children in public places by providing safer urban infrastructure and efficient access to law enforcement agencies.
• It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme and an initiative of Ministry of Home Affairs.
• The Empowered Committee under Nirbhaya fund has approved Safe City projects in 8 selected cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Lucknow).

• Ministry for Health and Family Welfare launched two new initiatives recently.

ABOUT KILKARI

• ‘Kilkari’ (meaning ‘a baby’s gurgle’), is a centralized interactive voice response (IVR) based mobile health service which delivers free, weekly, time-appropriate 72 audio messages about pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare directly to families’ mobile phones from the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is one year old.
• Women who are registered in Reproductive Child Health (RCH) portal) based on the woman’s LMP (last menstrual period) or the child’s DoB (Date of Birth), receive a weekly call with pre-recorded audio content directly to the mobile phones of pregnant women and mothers with children under the age of one year.
• Kilkari audio messages are present in the form of voice of a fictitious doctor character called Dr. Anita.
• Kilkari Programme is centrally hosted by MoHFW for all the States/UTs and no further investment in the technology, telephony infrastructure or operational costs is required to be borne by States/UTs.
• This service is FREE of cost for States/UTs and beneficiaries.
• The programme is a service integrated with centralized Reproductive Child Health (RCH) portal of MoHFW’s and is the single source of information for this mHealth service.
• Currently Kilkari is under implementation in 18 States / UTs

ABOUT MOBILE ACADEMY

• Mobile Academy is a free audio training course designed to expand and refresh the knowledge of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and improve their communication skills via their mobile phones, which is both cost-effective and efficient.
• It is an anytime, anywhere training course that can train thousands of ASHAs simultaneously via mobile phone.
• Mobile Academy is operational in 17 States/UTs except Chandigarh with six languages viz. Hindi, Bhojpuri, Oriya, Assamese, Bengali & Telugu version.

• Rio de Janeiro has declared a public health emergency because of an outbreak of dengue fever.
• The Brazilian city declared the emergency, just days before Carnival celebrations kick off across Brazil.

ABOUT DENGUE FEVER

• Dengue (DENG-gey) fever occurs in tropical and subtropical areas of the world.
• Vector- an infected Aedes species (Ae. aegypti or Ae. albopictus) mosquito.
• Dengue is caused by one of any of four related viruses: dengue virus 1, 2, 3, and 4.
• A person can be infected with dengue multiple times in their life.
• Mild dengue fever causes a high fever and flu-like symptoms.
• The severe form of dengue fever, also called dengue hemorrhagic fever, can cause serious bleeding, a sudden drop in blood pressure (shock) and death.
• Dengue fever is most common in Southeast Asia, the western Pacific islands, Latin America and Africa.
  • But the disease has been spreading to new areas, including local outbreaks in Europe and southern parts of the United States.
• The symptoms usually begin four to 10 days after being bitten by an infected mosquito.
• Dengue fever causes a high fever — 104 F (40 C) — and any of the following signs and symptoms-
  • Headache, Muscle, bone or joint pain, Nausea, Vomiting, Pain behind the eyes, Swollen glands, Rash etc.
• There is no specific treatment for dengue. The focus is on treating pain symptoms.

• The 23^rd edition of World Sustainable Development Summit was held recently in New Delhi.
• The theme of this year’s summit is “Leadership for Sustainable Development and Climate Justice”.

ABOUT WSDS

• The World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS) is the annual flagship Track II initiative of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
• It was instituted in 2001.
• It is the only independently convened international summit on sustainable development and environment, based in the Global South.

ABOUT TERI

• TERI is a leading think tank dedicated to conducting research for sustainable development of India and the Global South.
• TERI is an independent, multi-dimensional organization, with expertise in research, policy, consultancy and implementation.
• Established- 1974
• The institution believes that resource efficiency and waste management are the keys to smart, sustainable, and inclusive development.
• TERI’s work across sectors is focused on-
  • Promoting efficient use of resources
  • Increasing access and uptake of sustainable inputs and practices
  • Reducing negative impact on environment and climate

Headquartered in New Delhi, TERI has regional centres and campuses in Gurugram, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Mumbai, Panaji, and Nainital.

• Colonel Sapna Rana has become the first woman from Himachal Pradesh to command a battalion in the Indian Army.
• She joined the Officers Training Academy in Chennai in 2003 and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Indian Army in 2004.
• The 41-year-old officer is currently commanding an Army Service Corps (ASC) battalion in the Northeast.

• Nayib Bukele, the incumbent President of El Salvador, secured a thumping victory for a second consecutive term in elections in the Central American country.
• The electorate roundly voted for a continuation of the security plan “the state of exception” which has brought such a radical change to the nation.
• More than 75,000 people have been arrested under the policy in just under two years, but entire communities have been freed from an asphyxiating degree of gang control.