Notes:
Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhaker booked their men’s and women’s quota places for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) by winning a gold and a silver each at the 10th Asian Championship 10M Rifle/Pistol at Wako City, Japan on December 11, 2017. Chaudhary won both the individual as well as the Team gold in the men’s 10m Air Pistol Youth event, while Bhaker clinched a silver in the women’s 10m Air Pistol Youth. Earlier, Mehuli Ghosh and Tushar Mane became the first Indian shooters to secure the women’s and men’s quota places for the 2018 YOG by winning a gold and bronze each in the tournament. In all, India added four medals to their kitty on the final day of the competition to finish with a total haul of 21 medals over four days, including six gold, eight silver and seven bronze, besides four Youth Olympic Games (YOG) quotas.

Notes:
Pistol aces Jitu Rai and Heena Sidhu bagged a bronze each to continue India’s medal charge at the 10th Asian Championship 10m Rifle/Pistol in Wako City, Japan on December 10, 2017. Jitu won an individual bronze in the men’s 10m Air Pistol, which also helped the Indian team comprising Shahzar Rizvi and Omkar Singh besides Jitu, to bag the Team gold in the event.Heena claimed an individual bronze in the women’s 10m Air Pistol. Her effort, along with teammates Shri Nivetha Paramantham and Harveen Srao, helped the Team clinch a silver. India added another individual bronze through Anmol Jain in the junior men’s 10m Air Pistol as well as the Team silver in the event, with combined efforts of Anmol, Gaurav Rana and Abhishek Arya.

Notes:
Sukharanjan Sengupta (85), the veteran journalist, has passed away in Kolkata, West Bengal on December 9, 2017. He had worked for Bengali dailies ‘Jugantar’ and ‘Ananda Bazar Patrika’ in his long career spanning over six decades. Sengupta extensively covered the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1970-71. He came to the limelight after managing to sneak into Marichjhapi, a reserved island in the Sundarbans, on the eve of a state crackdown on migrant settlers in 1979 and filing reports about the state-sponsored cruelty. Despite age, Sengupta never gave up on his journalism and continued to freelance for several Bengali newspapers even years after his official retirement. He has authored several books, mostly in Bengali.

Notes:
Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister of Law & Justice and Electronics & Information Technology, has launched the first NIC-CERT in New Delhi to prevent and predict cyber attacks on government utilities. The NIC-CERT is a setup of National Informatics Centre. It has been setup with an objective of creating a comprehensive framework that integrates world class security components and inbuilt threat intelligence for detection, prevention and incident response. Using the tools, the team will correlate events that would help in generating a canvas of the attack surface and identify the vulnerabilities and possible exploits.

Notes:
The 54th meeting of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) programming committee has started at the Kathmandu-based SAARC Secretariat in Nepal on December 11, 2017. The 2-day meeting will discuss about budget issues of the Secretariat, SAARC five regional centers and four specialized bodies. The representatives of all 8 member countries are participating in it. The SAARC is the regional intergovernmental organization and geopolitical union of nations in South Asia. Its member states include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Notes:
President Ramnath Kovind would be the chief guest at the valedictory function of the World Telugu Conference (WTC), which will be organized at Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in Hyderabad by the Telangana government from December 15 to 19, 2017. According to official release, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu will be the chief guest for the inaugural session of the Conference and the Telangana Sahitya Akademi will be the nodal agency for the conference. The conference will focus on how the Telugu language is preserved, protected, enriched in the Telangana region. It will provide the data related to Telugu Conferences (Telugu Maha Sabhalu) and eminent Telugu Personalities across the Globe.

Notes:
JP Nadda, the Union Health Minister, has launched new initiatives including “LaQshya-A Labour Room Quality Improvement Initiative” and “m-health: Safe delivery application” at a function in New Delhi to observe Universal Health Coverage Day (UHCD-2017) on December 11, 2017. The Laqshya initiative is expected to improve the quality of care that is being provided to the pregnant mother in the Labour Room and Maternity Operation Theatres, thereby preventing the undesirable adverse outcomes associated with childbirth. The goal of this initiative is to reduce preventable maternal and newborn mortality, morbidity and stillbirths associated with the care around delivery in Labour room. The Safe Delivery Application is an m-Health tool that can be used for health workers who manage normal and complicated deliveries in the peripheral areas. It can play a pivotal role in training, post-training reinforcement, mentoring and demonstration.

Notes:
The Madhav National Park (MNP) is located in Shivpuri District of Gwalior region in northwest Madhya Pradesh and covers an area of 354 square kilometres. The park has a varied terrain of forested hills and flat grasslands around the lake and is thus rich in biodiversity. The principal tree species found in the park are khair (Acacia catechu), salai (Boswellia serrata), kerdhai, dhawda, tendu (Diospyros melanoxylon) and palash (Butea monosperma). The park is home to many species of wild animals, including chinkara, chital, nilgai, sambar, chausingha or four-horned antelope, blackbuck, sloth bear, Indian leopard and the common langur.

Notes:
The Universal Health Coverage Day (UHCD) is observed annually on December 12 to promote the human right to health. The day is the anniversary of the first unanimous United Nations resolution calling for all nations to provide for their citizens affordable, quality health care and is promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Notes:
The Australian hockey team has defeated Rio Olympics champions Argentina 2-1 in the final of the Hockey World League Final to win gold at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, Odisha on December 11, 2017. Goals from Blake Govers and Jeremy Hayward helped the defending champions to beat Argentina hockey team. Earlier in the day, India reclaimed the bronze medal in the tournament. In the third-fourth place classification match, they defeated Germany 2-1. Indian took the lead in the 21st minute through SV Sunil. Germany equalised through its reserve custodian Mark Appel in the 36th minute. A penalty corner conversion by Harmanpreet Singh in the 54th minute sealed the win and the third place for the Indians. India had also won the bronze in the last edition of the tournament in Raipur in 2015