Notes:
A team of scientists has discovered a new species of bamboo-dwelling bat from a bamboo forest in Meghalaya.
It was named as ‘Glischropus meghalayanus’ after the state of Meghalaya, which is celebrating its 50 years of statehood. With this discovery, the total number of bat species from India stands at 131 species with Meghalaya registering the highest bat diversity with 67 species.

Notes:
India and other member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) supported an initiative of China to organise a joint border operation ‘Solidarity-2023’ for the border agencies of the member countries next year.
India’s Border Security Force (BSF) Director announced this at the conclusion of the eighth meeting of the heads of border authorities of the competent bodies of SCO member states, which was held in Delhi, under the chairmanship of India.

Notes:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently released a document titled “Payments Vision 2025”, with guidelines on payments.
The document also focussed on the architecture of digital finance. It includes regulations for BigTechs and fintechs in payments; guidelines on payments involving ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) services; introducing the central bank digital currency (CBDC); and linking credit cards and credit components of banking products to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Notes:
China recently launched its third aircraft carrier named ‘Fujian’. It is also the country’s most advanced and the first fully domestically built naval vessel.
Fujian is the name of China’s eastern coastal province of Fujian. Liaoning and Shandong are names of the two previous aircraft carriers of China. China plans to have around five aircraft carriers while the next carrier is expected to be nuclear-powered.

Notes:
European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has released a set of new data, which has revealed the phenomena of ‘starquakes’.
Starquakes are massive movements on the surface of stars similar to earthquake. The star-mapping Gaia probe has covered almost 1.8 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The data has also revealed the largest chemical map of the entire Milky Way, showing the DNA of millions of stars.