• NEW DELHI: Foreign tourists, except those from Pakistan, China and Afghanistan, would now be allowed to visit some of the most pristine locations of the country which, so far, were out of bounds for them without a special permit, officials said on Monday.

• The home ministry has decided to relax the six-decade-old Protected Area Permit regime from Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur for five years with effect from April 1, a ministry official said.

Citing money laundering concerns, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has banned the country’s banks from offering services to crypto firms or dealing in cryptocurrencies.

The CBI’s supreme committee, also in charge of curbing money laundering and fighting capital flight in Iran, has issued a circular prohibiting banks and financial institutions from transactions that enable buying, selling or promoting cryptocurrencies, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Sunday.

• New Delhi: Paytm Payments Bank announced on Monday that it now has over 100 million KYC wallets, against the constant campaigning done by bank about the benefits of the Know Your Customer (KYC) system.

• After the successful response received, the bank has introduced several options that include Paytm KYC centers and 'Paytm-Ka-ATM' outlets to offer more localised support. Customers can locate these through the 'Nearby' section on the Paytm app. KYC'ed customers also have a choice to open a zero-balance account with Paytm Payments Bank.

Here's the list of the winners:

Best actor (male): Shahid Kapoor

Best actor people's choice award: Ranveer Singh

Entertainer of the year: Kartik Aryan

Best actress (critics): Aditi Rao Hydari

Lifetime achievement award: Simi Garewal

Pride of Indian cinema: Sanjay Dutt

Path breaking producer of the year: Anushka Sharma and Karnesh Sharma

Best director: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari

Outstanding performance - male: Raj Kumar Rao, Rana Daggubati

Outstanding performance - female: Tamannahh Bhatia, Kriti Sanon

Promising face of the year: Aahana Kumra

Best actor (male) Marathi: Vaibhav Tatwawaadi

Best actor (female) Marathi: Pooja Sawant

Socially conscious performance of the year: Rani Mukherjee

Best comic role: Tusshar Kapoor

Best lyricist: Manoj Muntashir

• Keeping the unbeaten streak Indian women white washed the championship by beating host Nepal by 5-0 in the final of team events. Indian men also won team championship. They defeated Pakistan by 3-2 in the final.

• Earlier Indian women grabbed all 7 gold medals in the individual category while men bagged 3 gold and 3 bronze medals. India topped the medal tally winning 10 Gold and 3 Bronze medals in the individual category. Host Nepal remained second and Pakistan got third place.  

• A total 102 players from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka participated in the 3 day championship.

• Washington/New Delhi: India retained the top position as recipient of remittances with its diaspora sending about USD 69 billion back home last year, the World Bank said today.

• Remittances to India picked up sharply by 9.9 per cent, reversing the previous year's dip, but were still short of USD 70.4 billion received in 2014.

• PARIS: Detained Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, widely known as Shawkan, will be awarded UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize, the United Nations' cultural body said on Monday 

• Shawkan was arrested in August 2013 as he covered deadly clashes in Cairo between security forces and supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

• He is one of 700 defendants facing charges of killing police and vandalising property during the clashes.

• We all know that Gmail is pretty rock solid when it comes to filtering out spam emails from our inbox. But once in a blue moon, even the best among us falter.

• That's exactly the case for a number of Gmail users, who've reported being flooded by ads being sent from their Gmail inbox to other users -- without their knowledge, of course.

• A lot has changed in the days since a Russian court ruled to block Telegram messenger  from the country after the company refused to provide access to the private conversations of its users to the government.

• The request for encryption keys came almost a year after the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), the telecom watchdog in Russia asked the app to join its official register.

• World Book Day or World Book and Copyright Day is celebrated every year on April 23.

• It is also known as International Day of the Book or World Book Days.

• The World Book and Copyright Day is being organized by the UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright.